7-The Godfather & The Godfather part II. Director:Francis Ford Coppola. Cast:Al Pacino,Marlon Brando,Robert Duvall,John Cazale,Talia Shire,Diane Keaton,James Caan and Robert De Niro.



"(Cinema)combines so many other art forms, as do theater and opera, but the essence of cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images, images of people during emotional moments, or just images in a general sense, but put together in a kind of alchemy. A number of images put together a certain way become something quite above and beyond what any of them are individually.
This, of course, was one of the elements of the Eisenstein film that was so exciting. How the editing was able to take -- that's always fascinating -- take this, and this, and put it together, and have something come out that was neither of those two things. Of course, the sense of rhythm that editing can do! I was struck, I remember, on 'Ten Days That Shook The World', how although it was a silent film, there were sequences where you actually almost could hear the machine guns firing, because of the way it was edited. So it's a form of alchemy, of magic, that is very appealing. I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. Because the very earliest people who made film were magicians. One of the aspects of it was the idea of an illusion, a magical illusion, in the early days of movies.
Magicians were among the first to experiment with cinema. Some of the early pioneers, like Meliès, were magicians who used cinema to create illusions. Cinema always had this ability to create some kind of magic, as did the theater for me, through lighting. To use technology to create magic is what appealed to me, I think.
-Francis Ford Coppola-
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"The Godfather was a very unappreciated movie when we were making it. They were very unhappy with it. They didn't like the cast. They didn't like the way I was shooting it. I was always on the verge of getting fired. So it was an extremely nightmarish experience. I had two little kids, and the third one was born during that. We lived in a little apartment, and I was basically frightened that they didn't like it. They had as much as said that, so when it was all over I wasn't at all confident that it was going to be successful, and that I'd ever get another job."
-Francis Ford Coppola-
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"We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. My father was a musician, so we were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music. We ate Italian food, and pizza, when no one knew what pizza was really.
But I remember very vividly, when I was a little boy, my mother would say to me, "America is the greatest country in the world." And there was a sense, as Italian-Americans, that it was a great privilege to live in America and be Americans.
Most Italians who came to this country are, you know, very patriotic. And what that meant was just that there was this exciting possibility that if you worked real hard, and you loved something, that you could become successful, and wouldn't be held down, due to who your family was and what have you. And certainly, in my case, I found that to be true. I became quite successful very young, and it was mainly because I was -- I would have to say -- because I was so enthusiastic and I just worked so hard at it.
-Francis Ford Coppola-