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A Study Guide for Mario Puzo's "The Godfather," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
Tyrant, blackmailer, racketeer, murderer - his influence reaches every level of American society. Meet Don Corleone, a friendly man, a just man, areasonable man. The deadliest lord of the Cosa Nostra. The Godfather. A modern masterpiece,The Godfather is a searing portrayal of the 1940s criminal underworld. It is also the intimate story of the Corleone family, at once drawn together and ripped apart by its unique position at the core of the American Mafia. Still shocking forty years after it was first published, this compelling tale of blackmail, murder and family values is a true classic.
This volumes reintroduces critics, film musicologists, cinemagoers, and fans of Francis Ford Coppola's cinema and Nino Rota's music to the events that led to the realization of the three films that make up The Godfather Trilogy, commenting on their significance both musically and culturally. Released in 1972, 1974, and 1990 respectively, Coppola's three-part saga is one of the greatest artistic accomplishments (and financial successes) in the history of Hollywood cinema.
Provides behind-the-scenes anecdotes from the three Godfather films, detailing the financial success of the films, the cooperation of the real Mafia with the makers of the films, and portraits of the cast and crew, accompanied by more than one hundred personal photographs.
From a penniless director, a has-been star and a relatively unknown lead came a movie which own three Oscars. Includes excerpts from original reviews of the film. Provides a background including biographies of key cast and crew and a cultural context of the movie. Looks at the production, key scenes, themes and techniques used in making the movie. Go behind the scenes with the ultimate film guides and get the bigger picture. Examine how The Godfather was Francis Ford Coppola's vision and how he achieved it through his casting decisions, his choice of location for filming and the use of light to create mood and atmosphere. Consider how by use of narrative, imagery, and cinematography, he is able to convey an atmosphere of the family as a close knit community and the characters as tragic figures. Find out what Marlon Brando brought to the role of Don Vito Corleone and how important the film was to Al Pacino's career. Get short biographies of Francis Ford Coppola, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Mario Puzo, the writer, and Robert Evans, who was head of production at Paramount. Get a bibliogrpahy of the books related to The Godfather, a listing of cinematic terms used and a filmography of Coppola. Written in an accessible manner, The Godfather is excellent reading for the movie fan and film student alike. William Malyszko is the head of Film & Media studies at the Langley
The Godfather trilogy is among the most significant works of Hollywood cinema of the last quarter century. They provide a richly complex look at a whole segment of American life and culture spanning almost the whole century. In six essays, written especially for this volume, The Godfather trilogy is re-examined from a variety of perspectives. Providing analyses on the form and significance of Coppola's achievement, they demonstrate how the filmmaker revised the conventions of the American crime film in the Viet Nam era, his treatment of the capitalism of the criminal underworld and its inherent violence, the power struggles within Hollywood over the film, and the contribution of opera to the epic force and cinematic style of Coppola's vision of an American criminal dynasty. The Godfather articulates the themes, styles, mythologies, performances, and underlying cultural values that have made the film a modern classic.
Sonchai Jitpleecheep—John Burdett’s inimitable Royal Thai Police detective with the hard-bitten demeanor and the Buddhist soul—is summoned to the most shocking and intriguing crime scene of his career. Solving the murder could mean a promotion, but Sonchai, reeling from a personal tragedy, is more interested in Tietsin, an exiled Tibetan lama based in Kathmandu who has become his guru. There are, however, obstacles in Sonchai’s path to nirvana. Police Colonel Vikorn has just named Sonchai his consigliere (he’s been studying The Godfather on DVD): to troubleshoot, babysit, defuse, procure, reconnoiter—do whatever needs to be done in Vikorn’s ongoing battle with Army General Zinna for control of Bangkok’s network of illegal enterprises. And though Tietsin is enlightened and (eerily) charismatic, he also has forty million dollars’ worth of heroin for sale. If Sonchai truly wants to be an initiate into Tietsin’s “apocalyptic Buddhism,” he has to pull off a deal that will bring Vikorn and Zinna to the same side of the table. Further complicating the challenge is Tara: a Tantric practitioner who captivates Sonchai with her remarkable otherworldly techniques. Here is Sonchai put to the extreme test—as a cop, as a Buddhist, as an impossibly earthbound man—in John Burdett’s most wildly inventive, darkly comic, and wickedly entertaining novel yet. From the Hardcover edition.
They’re hard to miss at grocery stores and newsstands in America—the colorful, heavily illustrated tabloid newspapers with headlines promising shocking, unlikely, and sometimes impossible stories within. Although the papers are now ubiquitous, the supermarket tabloid’s origin can be traced to one man: Generoso Pope Jr., an eccentric, domineering chain-smoker who died of a heart attack at age sixty-one. In The Godfather of Tabloid, Jack Vitek explores the life and remarkable career of Pope and the founding of the most famous tabloid of all— the National Enquirer. Upon graduating from MIT, Pope worked briefly for the CIA until he purchased the New York Enquirer with dubious financial help from mob boss Frank Costello. Working tirelessly and cultivating a mix of American journalists (some of whom, surprisingly, were Pulitzer prize winners) and buccaneering Brits from Fleet Street who would do anything to get a story, Pope changed the name, format, and content of the modest weekly newspaper until it resembled nothing America had ever seen before. At its height, the National Enquirer boasted a circulation of more than five million, equivalent to the numbers of the Hearst newspaper empire. Pope measured the success of his paper by the mail it received from readers, and eventually the volume of reader feedback was such that the post office assigned the Enquirer offices their own zip code. Pope was skeptical about including too much celebrity coverage in the tabloid because he thought it wouldn’t hold people’s interest, and he shied away from political stories or stances. He wanted the paper to reflect the middlebrow tastes of America and connect with the widest possible readership. Pope was a man of contradictions: he would fire someone for merely disagreeing with him in a meeting (once firing an one editor in the middle of his birthday party), and yet he spent upwards of a million dollars a year to bring the world’s tallest Christmas tree to the Enquirer offices in Lantana, Florida, for the enjoyment of the local citizens. Driven, tyrannical, and ruthless in his pursuit of creating an empire, Pope changed the look and content of supermarket tabloid media, and the industry still bears his stamp. Grounded in interviews with many of Pope’s supporters, detractors, and associates, The Godfather of Tabloid is the first comprehensive biography of the man who created a genre and changed the world of publishing forever.
A brilliant examination of our forty year obsession with the classic film trilogy—and a personal reflection on what it means to be Italian-American Forty years and one billion dollars in gross box office receipts after the initial release of The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola's masterful trilogy continues to fascinate viewers old and new. The Godfather Effect skillfully analyzes the reasons behind this ongoing global phenomenon. Packed with behind-the-scenes anecdotes from all three Godfather films, Tom Santopietro explores the historical origins of the Mob and why they thrived in America, how Italian-Americans are portrayed in the media, and how a saga of murderous gangsters captivated audiences around the globe. Laced with stories about Brando, Pacino, and Sinatra, and interwoven with a funny and poignant memoir about the author's own experiences growing up with an Italian name in an Anglo world of private schools and country clubs, The Godfather Effect is a book for film lovers, observers of American life, and Italians of all nationalities.
The novel is a sequel to the Godfather Trilogy. It tends to depict the chronicle of the notorious Corleone Family as a metaphor for capitalism in America. In other words, the novel aims to shed light on the ascent of a new underworld figure, who is the product of the tumultuous events that took place and drastically changed the world we live in throughout the past three decades in terms of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Gulf War, the September 11 attacks, and the invasion of Iraq. The Godfather IV portrays the rise of Robert Corleone (the protagonist) to power, as well as the remarkable transformations in his volatile life; from a decent warmhearted young man, a brilliantly preeminent student, to a brutish streetfighter, and a coldblooded murderer, who eventually becomes the head of the most powerful mafia family in the whole world.
In this entertaining and insightful essay, Mario Puzo chronicles his rise from struggling writer to overnight success after the publication of The Godfather. With equal parts cynicism and humor, Puzo recounts the book deal and his experiences in Hollywood while writing the screenplay for the movie. Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Evans, Peter Bart, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino all make appearances-as does Frank Sinatra, in his famous and disastrous encounter with Puzo. First published in 1972, the essay is now available as an ebook for the first time. A must-have for every Godfather fan! Featuring a foreword by Ed Falco, author of The Family Corleone.
It is 1963 in New York, and things have never been better for the Corleones. They've taken out their Mafia rivals, and legitimised the Family. Outside the fortified building owned by Michael Corleone, newly undisputed Boss of Bosses, a parade of people - among them former mob rivals and an emissary from the Mayor of New York - wait to ask the great man for favours. Only one thing remains to be done. Traitorous former Corleone capo Nick Geraci has powerful friends and far too much to say, and needs to be brought in. But then everything changes. As fireworks explode over First Avenue, news arrives that Jimmy Shea, President of the United States and an old friend of the Corleone's, has been assassinated...
The Godfather Doctrine draws clear and essential lessons from perhaps the greatest Hollywood movie ever made to illustrate America's changing geopolitical place in the world and how our country can best meet the momentous strategic challenges it faces. In the movie The Godfather, Don Corleone, head of New York's most powerful organized-crime family, is shockingly gunned down in broad daylight, leaving his sons Sonny and Michael, along with his adopted son, consigliere Tom Hagen, to chart a new course for the family. In The Godfather Doctrine, John Hulsman and Wess Mitchell show how the aging and wounded don is emblematic of cold-war American power on the decline in a new world where our enemies play by unfamiliar rules, and how the don's heirs uncannily exemplify the three leading schools of American foreign policy today. Tom, the left-of-center liberal institutionalist, thinks the old rules still apply and that negotiation is the answer. Sonny is the Bush-era neocon who shoots first and asks questions later, proving an easy target for his enemies. Only Michael, the realist, has a sure feel for the changing scene, recognizing the need for flexible combinations of soft and hard power to keep the family strong and maintain its influence and security in a dangerous and rapidly changing world. Based on Hulsman and Mitchell's groundbreaking and widely debated article, "Pax Corleone," The Godfather Doctrine explains for everyone why Francis Ford Coppola's epic story about a Mafia dynasty holds key insights for ensuring America's survival in the twenty-first century.
Rita Gigante grew up in a world swirling with secrets, lies, and multiple sins. Her father, notorious Mafia boss Vincent "the Chin" Gigante, was the leader of the Genovese crime clan and the head of all five New York crime families for decades. But until she was 16, she was kept in the dark about his underworld activities. She unknowingly hung out at mob headquarters and witnessed her dad’s whispered meetings around the dinner table, but only knew what she was told by her mother and siblings about his odd behavior: Dad’s sick. Keep your mouth shut. Don’t talk about the family. Living with the family secret—and other shocking betrayals she was to uncover, then instructed to conceal—plunged Rita into emotional and physical turmoil for years. And then there was the blockbuster secret she herself kept hidden away: As the youngest girl in an old-fashioned, devout Catholic family, how could she confess to the unforgiving Godfather that she was a lesbian? They were all going to hell, she figured . . . unless she could find a way to embrace the truth and find redemption. In The Godfather’s Daughter, Rita details her spiritual journey as she unravels the mysteries of her family and herself, and learns what it means to live in the truth she finds. It’s a real-life father-daughter tale of betrayal and faith, violence and love—and how a young woman escaped from a spiraling darkness to reach the light. And in the end, with his daughter’s healing help, even the Godfather finally learns to live in the light and atone for his sins.
In the Godfather Garden is the true story of the life of Richie “the Boot” Boiardo, one of the most powerful and feared men in the New Jersey underworld. The Boot cut his teeth battling the Jewish gang lord Abner Longy Zwillman on the streets of Newark during Prohibition and endured to become one of the East Coast’s top mobsters, his reign lasting six decades. To the press and the police, this secretive Don insisted he was nothing more than a simple man who enjoyed puttering about in his beloved vegetable garden on his Livingston, New Jersey, estate. In reality, the Boot was a confidante and kingmaker of politicians, a friend of such celebrities as Joe DiMaggio and George Raft, an acquaintance of Joseph Valachi—who informed on the Boot in 1963—and a sworn enemy of J. Edgar Hoover. The Boot prospered for more than half a century, remaining an active boss until the day he died at the age of ninety-three. Although he operated in the shadow of bigger Mafia names across the Hudson River (think Charles "Lucky" Luciano and Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, a cofounder of the Mafia killer squad Murder Inc. with Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro), the Boot was equally as brutal and efficient. In fact, there was a mysterious place in the gloomy woods behind his lovely garden—a furnace where many thought the Boot took certain people who were never seen again. Richard Linnett provides an intimate look inside the Boot’s once-powerful Mafia crew, based on the recollections of a grandson of the Boot himself and complemented by never-before-published family photos. Chronicled here are the Prohibition gang wars in New Jersey as well as the murder of Dutch Schultz, a Mafia conspiracy to assassinate Newark mayor Kenneth Gibson, and the mob connections to several prominent state politicians. Although the Boot never saw the 1972 release of The Godfather, he appreciated the similarities between the character of Vito Corleone and himself, so much so that he hung a sign in his beloved vegetable garden that read “The Godfather Garden.” There’s no doubt he would have relished David Chase’s admission that his muse in creating the HBO series The Sopranos was none other than “Newark’s erstwhile Boiardo crew.”
'The bloody victory of the Corleone Family was not complete,' begins the final chapter of Mario Puzo's The Godfather, 'until a year of delicate manoeuvring established Michael Corleone as the most powerful Family chief in the United States.' The Godfather: The Lost Years takes place in the years 1955-65, but it is built upon the story of that 'year of delicate political manoeuvring' - and how, in winning the battle of that year, Michael Corleone set the stage to lose the war: the war to make the Family legitimate, the war to keep the Corleones supremely in power, the war to stay true to his father's wishes, the war to give not just his Family but his family a safe and happy life. The Godfather: The Lost Years is not just a sequel. A magnificent novel in its own right, by an acclaimed young American novelist, it traces the nexus of ambitious, audacious decisions that Michael Corleone implements, their ultimate failure, and, after the Family's literal and figurative years in the wilderness (of Las Vegas), Michael's literal, physical return to New York, and his attempts to regain control there.
James Brown's explosive biography is now the major Hollywood film directed by Tate Taylor (THE HELP) and produced by Mick Jagger, GET ON UP. James Brown: A man who played 350 shows a year at his peak. Who broke the colour barrier of 1950s and '60s pop. Who supported the Civil Rights movement through his music, playing a racially charged Boston in the hours after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination and travelling to Vietnam to support black troops. Who won and lost several fortunes. And who became one of the greatest musical innovators of all time... In his own words, this is the incredible life story of the Godfather of Soul, giving the inside story of his life and music, taking the reader on a journey from his impoverished childhood to his evolution into one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. With photos, unmissable anecdotes about Little Richard, Elvis, Tina Turner, Otis Redding, Tammi Terrell, Michael Jackson, and many others, plus an updated introduction and epilogue and an exhaustive discography.