Francis Ford Coppola’s superb film The Godfather changed American cinema and, by extension, American culture. The film had it all: an epic length; a sweeping narrative; a rich cinematography by Gordon Willis; and a haunting musical score composed by Nino Rota.

The fiftieth anniversary has led to retrospectives, and much elevated commentary on the reasons for its impact and continuing popularity.

Among the very best accounts of the actual making of the film is this book by Mark Seal. The title is a reference to the pivotal scene in the film, where the traitorous Paulie Gatto meets vengeance and his end. Like more than a few memorable lines in the movie, it was the improvisations of the actors concerned which enriched the dialogue. This included the immortal phrase ‘leave the gun, take the cannoli’ crafted by Richard Castellano and uttered by his character, Pete Clemenza.

This throwaway line is more than matched by an observation of Sonny Corleone, played by James Caan. Lecturing his brother Michael (Al Pacino) on how difficult it is to murder someone at close quarters, by mockingly holding his fingers near his brother’s head. Caan inserted the phrase ‘bada bing’ in lieu of a gunshot. A legend was established in the words which memorably became the name of Tony’s New Jersey strip club in the television hit, The Sopranos.

But nothing competes effectively with the expression attributed to Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) at his persuasive best. The phrase that he ‘made him an offer he could not refuse’ is now part of our lexicon. It introduces Kay Adams (played by the outstanding Diane Keaton) to the realities of the Corleone Family by the returning US Marine and wartime hero, Michael.

There is not a weak performance in the film, which is unusual given the arguments over which actors would be employed in the various parts. Seal details many of the heated arguments between producer Robert Evans and director Coppola. For example, Al Pacino was a virtual unknown, having had minor impact in the movie The Panic in Needle Park. James Caan, who had impressed as the character ‘Mississippi’ alongside John Wayne in Howard Hawk’s Western El Dorado, was originally slated to play Michael. With a hindsight of five decades, it now appears that the characters embraced the actors, and that they were always bound to inhabit their roles.

The mesmerising performance central to the film is, of course, that of Brando as the Don. Brando’s reputation and his recent appearances on the screen prior to the making of The Godfather did not instil any confidence or affection in the minds of the studio bosses at Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles. Coppola prevailed, and Brando’s performance is now history. The rough edges of previous Hollywood gangsters, George Raft, James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart, were set aside by the character of Vito Corleone: understated, authoritative, yet routinely murderous.

And there were real murderers to confront in the making of The Godfather. For the New York City Families of the 1970s were at best sceptical and at worst hostile to the making of the movie in New York. There were problems with locations for filming, problems with unions, and problems with people who were uncooperative. In particular, the head of the Italian-American Anti-Defamation League Joseph Colombo was strident in his opposition to the film. And Colombo had clout: descended from the Profaci crime family, he was also the Boss of the Colombo crime family, and had the endorsement of none other than Frank Sinatra.

Tortuous negotiations led to the elimination of the word ‘mafia’ from the film, and the recruitment as extras of a number of ‘good fellas’. Cooperation became the norm, including at the Old Luna Restaurant in the Bronx, where they filmed the murder of the corrupt police captain McCluskey (Sterling Hayden) and Virgil ‘The Turk’ Sollozzo (Al Lettieri). Impressively, the changes made to the movie script left intact all the qualities in Mario Puzo’s original novel.

Puzo had largely been a couch-potato failure until the paperback rights to his novel were auctioned for a record amount of over US$400,000. This influx of cash merely helped fuel Puzo’s gambling addiction, but he worked hard at the translation from New York City to LA. This was not without its difficulties as an episode in Chasen’s restaurant demonstrated. A fool introduced him to Sinatra, who was dining alongside John Wayne. Sinatra was appropriately hostile to the author of the great gangster novel.

There would be other great American gangster films which followed The Godfather, including Sergio Leone’s gritty Once Upon a Time in America and Martin Scorsese’s homeboy GoodFellas. But neither would approach the layered sophistication of The Godfather, which was at once about the Family and the country which spawned them. Seal quotes the character, the appropriately named Amerigo Bonasera, who appears in the opening scene of the film to seek a favour from The Don. Bonasera says softly, ‘I believe in America’. The favour he seeks from Don Corleone is to have killed those vicious criminals who assaulted his daughter. Corleone declines, but the perpetrators are held accountable.

The American justice system failed Bonasera. The Corleone Family did not. This is a recurring theme throughout the movie. Captain McCluskey is in the pay of Sollozzo ‘the Turk’, bent on killing Don Corleone. Police corruption is turned back on its head, as Tom Hayden (Robert Duvall) reveals that the family has similarly corrupt journalists who will write the story of an NYPD captain who was corroded by the rackets.

The three core moments of the film are to be found in Michael Corleone crossing the line and becoming a murderer, through to the Family dealing with their enemies as they move out to Lake Tahoe, Nevada. However, the nature of their ruthlessness is most graphically on show in the horse’s head in the Hollywood producer’s bed.

This is an America that runs parallel to the Declaration of Independence and Walt Disney. Fifty years on, The Godfather and its sequel continue to write a history of American cinematic crime which is at once both brutally honest and inevitably chilling.