The three-minute scene that made The Godfather the best movie ever made

The Godfatherdirected by acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppolaquickly became a classic of cinema and one of most important films of every time. Mainly due to its innovation in terms of aesthetics, photography and narrative, the feature film ranks first in several rankings of the best productions in history.

Similarly, the development of the film was not easy, as it was full of problems problems and setbacks. When the project began to be planned, Coppola had just won a Oscar Prize for his work as screenwriter of the film pattonbut I didn’t have much experience as a director yet.

With Mario Puzzoauthor of the original novel, wrote a screenplay whose story It wasn’t that similar to the one in the book., focusing mainly on the life of Don and Michael Corleone and leaving out the storyline of Johnny Fontane and Las Vegas. The main problem here is that its working she wasn’t that attractive as described in the novel.

This adds to the pressures of the Italian American League for Civil Rights, who did not want the production to come to light because, they argued, it did not represent Italian immigrants in the United States. They only allowed the project to continue when the production company confirmed that members of the organization and word “mafia“You would never say.

However, Coppola and Puzo were not happy with the script they had prepared. That’s why they decided hire another writer to help them polish it and give it more dynamism: Robert Towne.

Robert Towne’s scene that turned The Godfather into a masterpiece

Coppola was friends with Towne, who at the time, in the early 1970s, was a respected screenwriterthough not as famous as it would become a few years later, with the release of Roman Polanski’s film chinatown. Desperate that Puzo and Coppola didn’t have a solid product to show producers, they asked Towne to review it and make changes which he deemed necessary.

The main problem they had was one of the most important scenes, which was to be shot the day after meeting Robert Towne: the conversation between Don Vito and his son Michele. With only hours to fix it, the new writer took notes from the original script to prepare for that moment. TO 4 in the morning on the day of filming, Towne handed the new stock to Coppola.

That scene would clarify the relationship of both characters, how don corleone sees family and businessjust as you understand functioning of the world. The movie would win Oscar for “Best Adapted Screenplay” and in accepting the award Coppola made it abundantly clear when he thanked the new screenwriter for his brilliant scene: ‘this is Bob Towne’s scene’.