The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather is a 1972 epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo, starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte and Diane Keaton, and features John Cazale, Talia Shire and Abe Vigoda.

The story, spanning the years 1945 to 1955, chronicles the experiences of the Italian-American Corleone family. During his daughter Connie's wedding reception, crime family patriarch Don Vito Corleone hears requests for favors, one of which comes from singer Johnny Fontane asking for help in landing a movie role that will revitalize his flagging career. The Don's adopted son and family consigliere, Tom Hagen, is dispatched to Hollywood to meet with wealthy studio head Jack Woltz to fulfill Fontane's request. Woltz angrily refuses to cast Fontane, but when he later finds the severed head of his prized racehorse in his bed, he changes his mind.

Upon Hagen's return, drug lord Virgil Sollozzo asks Don Corleone to protect the rival Tattaglia family's heroin business through his political connections. Disapproving of drug trafficking and fearing the loss of his political influence, he rejects the proposal and sends his henchman, Luca Brasi, to spy on Sollozzo and the Tattaglias, but they kill Brasi. Sollozzo's men then try to assassinate Corleone, but he survives with bullet wounds. Sollozzo then kidnaps Hagen and persuades him to offer Corleone's eldest son, Sonny, the deal previously offered to the Don. As a warning, the Tattaglias send the Corleones fish wrapped in Luca Brasi's bulletproof vest to confirm that he sleeps with the fishes. Vito's youngest son, Michael, thwarts a second assassination attempt at the hospital where his father is recuperating, but in the process he is accosted by corrupt police Captain McCluskey, who breaks his jaw. Sonny retaliates by having Tattaglia's son, Bruno, killed.

The Godfather received Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay, and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In addition, it had been ranked third -- behind Citizen Kane (1941) and Casablanca (1942) -- on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list by the American Film Institute, and second when the list was published again in 2007.