The Godfather Movie (1972) Interesting Facts, Mistakes

The Godfather Movie Story Summary

The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.

The Godfather Movie Stars

Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan 

The Godfather Movie Storyline

The Godfather "Don" Vito Corleone is the head of the Corleone mafia family in New York. He is at the event of his daughter's wedding. Michael, Vito's youngest son and a decorated WW II Marine is also present at the wedding. Michael seems to be uninterested in being a part of the family business. Vito is a powerful man, and is kind to all those who give him respect but is ruthless against those who do not. But when a powerful and treacherous rival wants to sell drugs and needs the Don's influence for the same, Vito refuses to do it. What follows is a clash between Vito's fading old values and the new ways which may cause Michael to do the thing he was most reluctant in doing and wage a mob war against all the other mafia families which could tear the Corleone family apart. 

The Godfather Movie Interesting Facts

• During an early shot of the scene where Vito Corleone returns home and his people carry him up the stairs, Marlon Brando put weights under his body on the bed as a prank, to make it harder to lift him.
• Lenny Montana (Luca Brasi) was so nervous about working with Marlon Brando that in the first take of their scene together, he flubbed some lines. Director Francis Ford Coppola liked the genuine nervousness and used it in the final cut. The scenes of Luca practicing his speech were added later.
• James Caan improvised the part where he throws the FBI photographer's camera to the ground. The actor's frightened reaction is genuine. Caan also came up with the idea of throwing money at the man to make up for breaking his camera. As he put it, "Where I came from, you broke something, you replaced it or repaid the owner."
• Cinematographer Gordon Willis earned himself the nickname "The Prince of Darkness," since his sets were so underlit. "Paramount Pictures" executives initially thought that the footage was too dark, until persuaded otherwise by Willis and Francis Ford Coppola that it was to emphasize the shadiness of the Corleone family's dealings.
• Marlon Brando wanted to make Don Corleone "look like a bulldog," so he stuffed his cheeks with cotton wool for the audition. For the actual filming, he wore a mouthpiece made by a dentist. This appliance is on display in the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York.
• There was intense friction between Francis Ford Coppola and Paramount Pictures, in which Paramount Pictures frequently tried to have Coppola replaced, citing his inability to stay on schedule, unnecessary expenses, and production and casting errors (Coppola actually completed the film ahead of schedule and under budget).
• According to Richard S. Castellano, he defended Gordon Willis during a disagreement Willis was having with Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola got revenge on Castellano by making him do twenty takes of the shots of Clemenza walking up four flights of stairs.
• The cat held by Marlon Brando in the opening scene was a stray that Coppola found while on the lot at "Paramount Pictures," and was not originally called for in the script. So content was the cat that its purring muffled some of Brando's dialogue and, as a result, most of his lines had to be looped.
• Note the attention to detail: most of the cars have wooden bumpers. Bumpers were removed by car owners during World War II, and replaced with wooden ones. The chrome ones were turned in to help with the war effort. After the war, it took several years for them to be replaced.
• Marlon Brando did not memorize most of his lines and read from cue cards during most of the film. As a matter of fact, Marlon, who was the father of Method acting, was famous for this; he felt that doing a cold open type reading for the cameras, and then using that very first un-practiced take, was the best way to get an authentic performance. He did the exact same thing for Superman. The set for Krypton was filled with the cards pasted here and there for Marlon as he read his lines for the first time.
• The smack that Vito gives Johnny Fontane was not in the script. Marlon Brando improvised the smack and Al Martino's confused reaction was real. According to James Caan, "Martino didn't know whether to laugh or cry."
• The scene where Sonny beats up Carlo (Connie's husband) took four days to shoot, and featured more than 700 extras. The use of the garbage can lid was improvised by James Caan.
• Richard S. Castellano ad-libbed the line "Leave the gun, take the cannoli."
• Orson Welles lobbied to get the part of Don Vito Corleone, even offering to lose a good deal of weight in order to get the role. Francis Ford Coppola, a Welles fan, had to turn him down because he already had Marlon Brando in mind for the role and felt Welles wouldn't be right for it.
• Francis Ford Coppola insisted on the film being called "Mario Puzo's The Godfather" rather than just "The Godfather", because his original draft of the screenplay was so faithful to the novel, he thought Puzo deserved the credit for it.
• According to Al Pacino, the tears in Marlon Brando's eyes were real, in the hospital scene when Michael pledges himself to his father.
• Al Pacino boycotted the Academy Awards ceremony, angry that he was nominated for the Best Actor in a Supporting Role Oscar, noting that his character had more screentime than his co-star, Best Actor winner Marlon Brando.
• Don Vito Corleone's distinctive voice was based on real-life mobster Frank Costello. Marlon Brando had seen him on television during the Estes Kefauver hearings in 1951, and imitated his husky whisper in the film.
• The early buzz on this movie was so positive that a sequel was planned before the film was even finished filming.
• Francis Ford Coppola turned in an initial Director's Cut running two hours and six minutes. "Paramount Pictures" production chief Robert Evans rejected this version, and demanded a longer cut with more scenes about the family. The final release version was nearly fifty minutes longer than Coppola's initial cut.
• Al Pacino's maternal grandparents emigrated to America from Corleone, Sicily, just as Vito Corleone had.
• George Lucas put together the "Mattress Sequence" (the montage of crime scene photos and headlines about the war between the five families) as a favor to Francis Ford Coppola for helping him fund American Graffiti (1973). He asked not to be credited. Lucas used photos from real crime scenes. The one pictured is Frank Nitti (aka "The Enforcer"), Al Capone's right-hand man who had not been murdered, but actually shot himself. During the scene, Coppola's father, Carmine, is the piano player.
• According to Francis Ford Coppola, the film took 62 days to shoot.
• Stanley Kubrick thought the film had the best cast ever and could be the best movie ever made.
• According to Mario Puzo, the character of Johnny Fontane was not based on Frank Sinatra. However, it was widely assumed that it was, and Sinatra was furious. When he met Puzo at a restaurant, he screamed vulgar terms and threats at Puzo. Sinatra was also vehemently opposed to the film. Due to this backlash, Fontane's role in the film was scaled down to a couple of scenes.
• Francis Ford Coppola held improvisational rehearsal sessions that simply consisted of the main cast sitting down in character for a family meal. The actors and actresses couldn't break character, which Coppola saw as a way for the cast to organically establish the family roles seen in the final film.
• One of the reasons why Francis Ford Coppola finally agreed to direct the film was because he was in debt to "Warner Brothers," following $400,000 budget overruns on George Lucas's "THX 1138 (1971)." Lucas urged him to take the job.
• For the scene where Clemenza is cooking, Francis Ford Coppola originally wrote in the script, "Clemenza browns some sausage." Upon seeing this, Mario Puzo crossed out "browns" and replaced it with "fries", writing in the margin, "gangsters don't brown."
• Gianni Russo used his organized crime connections to secure the role of Carlo Rizzi, going so far as to get a camera crew to film his own audition and send it to the producers. However, Marlon Brando was initially against having Russo, who had never acted before, in the film. This made Russo furious, and he went to threaten Brando. However, this reckless act proved to be a blessing in disguise, because Brando thought Russo was acting, and was convinced he would be good for the role.
• Al Pacino, James Caan, and Diane Keaton were all paid $35,000 for their work on the film.
• Despite lead billing, Marlon Brando's total screentime is less than one hour.
• The scenes of Michael and Kay at the wedding at the beginning were shot at night. Due to the rushed schedule, Francis Ford Coppola had to get their scenes in the bag. Cinematographer Gordon Willis was furious at having to rig up so many lights.
• Paramount Pictures' original idea was to make this a low-budget gangster film set in the present, rather than a period piece set in the 1940s and 1950s. Francis Ford Coppola rejected Mario Puzo's original script, based on this idea.
• The three-year-old child actor, Anthony Gounaris, responded best when his real name was used while shooting the film. That is why Michael's son's name is Anthony.
• In 1974, the film premiered on NBC over two nights: Saturday, November 16, and Monday, November 18, from 9-11 p.m.. Both nights, at 11 p.m., New York City's Municipal Water Authorities had some overflow problems from all of the toilets flushing around the same time.
• Francis Ford Coppola worked with relatives in this film, (making it a family film in many contexts). In chronological order of appearance: his sister, Talia Shire, portrayed Connie Corleone throughout the saga, his mother, Italia Coppola, served as an extra in the restaurant meeting, his father, Carmine Coppola, was the piano player in the Mattress sequence and, he composed the music, his sons Gian-Carlo Coppola and Roman Coppola, can be seen as extras in the scene where Sonny beats up Carlo, and he is at the funeral, and his daughter, Sofia Coppola, is the baby, Michael Rizzi, in the baptism (she was three weeks old at the time of shooting).
• Francis Ford Coppola was reluctant to let his sister, Talia Shire, audition for the role of Connie. He felt she was too pretty for the part, and did not want to be accused of nepotism. Only at Mario Puzo's request did Shire get a chance to audition.
• Sergio Leone was approached to direct the film, but turned it down since he felt the story, which glorified the Mafia, was not interesting enough. He later regretted refusing the offer, but would go on to direct his own critically acclaimed gangster film, "Once Upon a Time in America (1984)."
• A young Sylvester Stallone auditioned for the roles of Paulie Gatto and Carlo Rizzi, but was not cast for either. Stallone instead decided to try his hand at writing, first completing the screenplay for the modestly successful The Lords of Flatbush (1974). He would later get his break in Rocky (1976), alongside Talia Shire, who portrayed Connie Corleone in this film.
• The Don's wife, Carmella Corleone, is seen singing at the wedding. Morgana King, who played Carmella, was a gifted jazz singer, and portraying Carmella was actually her film debut, as well as her acting debut.
• Francis Ford Coppola originally planned to open the film with the wedding, immediately introducing all the characters. Then a friend pointed out how interestingly he had written the opening scene of Patton (1970). Coppola then re-wrote the opening with the Bonasera scene.
• James Caan originally heard the phrase "bada-bing!" from his acquaintance, the real-life mobster Carmine Persico, and improvised its use in the film.
• During the 45th Anniversary reunion in 2017, Al Pacino, to Diane Keaton's amusement, revealed that during the filming of the wedding scene, they both "got back" as it was "chaos", and he thought that the film would not do so well. He stated: "we started drinking and we were just talking about 'where do we go from here? We're done. It's the worst film ever made.'"
• The very first scene to be shot was the one where Michael and Kay go Christmas shopping.
• Radio personality Howard Stern has said that he would gladly have any cast member of this film as his guest, and they can show up at his studio unannounced. Though over the years, cast members such as Robert Duvall and James Caan were pre-scheduled guests, his "just show up" policy was never taken up until Gianni Russo arrived one day. Stern immediately had him escorted into his studio, even though he was in the midst of other guests at the time, and interviewed him.
• Michael's speech to Apollonia's father was originally written to be in Sicilian, as it was in the novel. Al Pacino, however, did not speak Sicilian fluently, and could not learn such a lengthy speech. Francis Ford Coppola re-wrote the scene at the last minute to have Michael speak English, and have Fabrizio translate for him.
• There was a great deal of mooning on-set, started by James Caan and Robert Duvall. In an effort to break some tension during a rehearsal for the first scene, the pair mooned Francis Ford Coppola, Marlon Brando, and Salvatore Corsitto. Caan told TIME Magazine, "My best moon was on Second Avenue. Bob Duvall and I were in one car and Brando was in another, so we drove up beside him and I pulled down my pants and stuck my ass out the window. Brando fell down in the car with laughter." Richard Bright claimed that it got to the point where every time you turned opened a door, you expected to see someone's behind. Even Al Pacino got in on the act, as he told Ladies' Home Journal, "In a scene where I sit behind a desk, wardrobe made a big fuss about getting me a shirt with a smaller collar. So while everyone was looking at the shirt, I took off my pants. When I came out from behind the desk, I got a laugh, even though we had to do the scene over." The ultimate moon came when Brando and Duvall mooned four hundred cast and crew members during the shooting of the wedding scene. They planned it carefully and Caan, who overheard the plan, started to shout, "No, no, not here!" Everyone working on the production and most of the extras roared with laughter (some of the older ladies didn't appreciate the view). Eventually, Brando was crowned best prankster, designated by a heavyweight-style leather belt with the title, "Moon Champion".
• Gordon Willis was forced to use overhead lighting for Marlon Brando's scenes, because of his make-up. He decided to extend it throughout, which is one reason the movie is so dark.
• While filming the scene in which Carlo beats her, Talia Shire lost a shoe. Not wanting to have to restore the set and wait for the camera to be set up for a second time, she simply continued to play through the scene, even at the risk of cutting her foot on all the ceramics she had just destroyed.
• The film's opening scene, a three-minute zoom-out of Amerigo Bonasera and Don Corleone, was achieved with a computer-controlled zoom lens, which had earlier been used in Silent Running (1972).
• Marlon Brando and James Caan had to wear lifts for the movie.
• During pre-production, Francis Ford Coppola shot his own unofficial screentests with Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Diane Keaton at his house in San Francisco. Robert Evans was unimpressed by them, and insisted that official screentests be held. The studio spent four hundred twenty thousand dollars on the screentests, but in the end, the actors and actresses Coppola originally wanted were hired.
• Mafia crime boss Joe Colombo and his organization, The Italian-American Civil Rights League, started a campaign to stop the film from being made. According to Robert Evans in his autobiography, Colombo called his house and threatened him and his family. Paramount Pictures received many letters during pre-production from Italian-Americans, including politicians, decrying the film as anti-Italian. They threatened to protest and disrupt filming. Producer Al Ruddy met with Colombo, who demanded that the terms "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" not be used in the film. Ruddy gave them the right to review the script and make changes. He also agreed to hire League members (mobsters) as extras and advisers. The angry letters ceased after this agreement was made. Paramount Pictures owner Charlie Bluhdorn read about the agreement in The New York Times, and was so outraged, that he fired Ruddy and shut down production, but Evans convinced Bluhdorn that the agreement was beneficial for the film, and Ruddy was rehired.
• When Marlon Brando won the Best Actor Oscar for this movie, he sent Sacheen Littlefeather (Marie Louise Cruz) to represent him at the awards ceremonies. The presenters of the award were Roger Moore and Liv Ullmann. When Moore offered the statuette to Littlefeather, she snubbed him and proceeded with her speech about the film industry's mistreatment of Native Americans.
• Paramount executive Peter Bart bought the film rights to Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" before it was even finished. It was still only a 20-page outline.
• According to Francis Ford Coppola in the DVD commentary, in the scene where Captain McCluskey confronts Michael in front of the hospital, the officer who balks at arresting Michael ("He's clean, Captain. He's a war hero.") is NYPD Detective Sonny Grosso, one of the detectives made famous by his involvement in breaking the "French Connection" case.
• Mario Puzo modelled the character of Don Vito Corleone on New York City mob bosses Joe Profaci and Vito Genovese. Many of the events in his novel are based on actual incidents that occurred in the lives of Profaci, Genovese, and their families. Puzo based Don Vito's personality on his own mother's.
• According to Al Ruddy's assistant, Bettye McCartt, Ruddy was warned by police that the Mafia was following his car. Ruddy would switch cars with McCartt in an effort to lose them. One night, McCartt found her car with the windows shot out and a note that read, "Shut down the movie or else."
• Marlon Brando based some of his performance on Al Lettieri, who plays Sollozzo. While preparing for On the Waterfront (1954), Brando became friendly with Lettieri, whose relative was a real-life Mafioso. Brando and Lettieri would later co-star in "The Night of the Following Day (1969)." Lettieri also helped Brando prepare for his Godfather role by bringing him to his relative's house for a family dinner.
• The only comment Robert Duvall made about his performance was that he wished "they would have made a better hairpiece" for his character.
• The relationship between Francis Ford Coppola and Gordon Willis was highly combustible. They would often have screaming rows, with a few broken props as a result. After one incident, such a loud noise exploded from Coppola's office that the crew thought that Coppola had shot himself (he had only broken a door). They also conflicted because Willis was very hard on the actors and actresses about hitting their marks, with his low lighting scheme, if they missed, they would be filmed in total darkness. Coppola, on the other hand, considered himself a protector of actors and actresses. He felt that he could get the most out of them by nurturing them.
• The film was set and shot in New York City, at over one hundred locations. Originally, the entire film was to be shot in the Hollywood backlots, in order to save production costs. However, production designer Dean Tavoularis threatened to add two stories to each backlot building in order to replicate the look of New York City, and the studio relented, and allowed for shooting in New York City.
• Paramount Pictures senior management, dissatisfied with the early rushes, considered replacing Francis Ford Coppola with Elia Kazan, with the hope that Kazan would be able to work with the notoriously difficult Marlon Brando. Brando announced that he would quit the film if Coppola was fired, and the studio backed down. Paramount Pictures brass apparently did not know of Brando's dismay with Kazan over his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s.
• Although the dark photography of Gordon Willis was eventually copied by many other films, when the developed film came back from the lab, Paramount Pictures executives thought the look was a mistake. They ordered a different look, but Willis and Francis Ford Coppola refused.
• For the long exterior shots of Tom entering the studio lot, and Tom and Jack Woltz walking around the grounds, the second unit filmed extras with wigs and hats in order to avoid having to pay Robert Duvall and John Marley.
• Martin Sheen and Dean Stockwell auditioned for the role of Michael Corleone. Oscar winner Rod Steiger campaigned hard for the role of Michael, even though he was too old for the part. Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and Dustin Hoffman were all offered the part of Michael Corleone, but all refused. (Beatty was also offered directing and producing duties.) Suggestions of Alain Delon and Burt Reynolds were rejected by Francis Ford Coppola. Paramount Pictures production chief Robert Evans wanted Robert Redford to be cast in the part, but Coppola demurred, as he was too WASP-y. Evans explained that Redford could fit the role, as he could be perceived as "northern Italian". Evans eventually lost the struggle over the actor he derided as "The Midget". The Irish-American Ryan O'Neal then became the front-runner for the part, though it eventually devolved onto James Caan. Before being cast as Michael, Al Pacino was committed to starring in The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (1971). Coppola, in a 2003 "Cigar Aficionado" interview, said that Paramount Pictures pulled some strings and managed to get Pacino released. The Paramount brass, particularly Evans, were adamantly opposed to casting Pacino, who did poorly in screentests, until they saw his excellent performance in The Panic in Needle Park (1971). Caan went back to his original role of Sonny when Pacino came on-board. Robert De Niro tested for Michael and Sonny, and was almost cast as Carlo, before being cast as Paulie. Then, De Niro was offered Pacino's former role in "Gang". With Coppola's blessing, De Niro backed out to take the part. This, in turn, enabled De Niro to star as a young Vito in the sequel, which won him an Oscar, and made his career.
• Mario Puzo was very proud of one particular line from the novel, "A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns". He was adamant that it be used in the film, but Marlon Brando felt it was too preachy, and it was excised.
• To add a sense of reality to the wedding scene (and because he only had two days to shoot it), Francis Ford Coppola had the cast freely act out and improvise in the background of the wedding scene. He then shot specific vignettes amongst the action.
• According to Ardell Sheridan, Mafia Captain (and future boss) Paul Castellano visited the set and spoke with Richard S. Castellano. It was not until after Paul was killed in 1985, did Richard reveal to her that Paul was his uncle.
• During filming, Francis Ford Coppola complained about the station wagon that picked him up, so he and Robert Evans made a bet that if the film made $50 million, "Paramount Pictures" would spring for a new car. As the film's grosses climbed, Coppola and George Lucas went car shopping, and bought a Mercedes Benz 600 stretch limousine, instructing the salesman to send the bill to "Paramount Pictures." The car appears in the opening scene of "American Graffiti (1973)."
• James Caan was at first considered to play first Tom Hagen (for what he actually auditioned), and then Michael Corleone, before being eventually being cast as Sonny Corleone.
• James Caan hung out with various disreputable characters, in order to better understand the underworld lifestyle.
• The studio originally wanted to scrap the now-iconic "puppet strings" logo (which was first created by graphic designer S. Neil Fujita for the novel's release) with Mario Puzo's name above the title for the movie release, but Francis Ford Coppola insisted on keeping it, because Puzo co-wrote the script with him.
• The ribbons on Michael Corleone's Marine Corps uniform are the Silver Star, the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, and the Purple Heart on the top row, and the Asiatic/Pacific Campaign Medal with a service star and an arrowhead, the European/African/Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with a service star, and the World War II Victory Medal on the bottom row. In The Godfather: Part II (1974), however, Michael tells a congressional committee that he was awarded the Navy Cross during the war.
• Originally, Francis Ford Coppola was against directing the film, as he felt it glorified the Mafia and violence, and it would reflect poorly on his Italian-Sicilian heritage. However, he eagerly took the job, once he thought of making it an allegory of American capitalism.
• At one point during filming, Robert Evans felt the film had too little action and considered hiring an action director to finish the job. To satisfy Evans, Francis Ford Coppola and his son Gian-Carlo Coppola developed the scene in which Connie and Carlo have their long fight. As a result, Evans was pleased enough to let Coppola finish the film.
• Real-life gangsters responded enthusiastically to the film, with many of them feeling it was a portrayal of how they were supposed to act. Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, the former underboss in the Gambino crime family, stated: "I left the movie stunned. I mean I floated out of the theater. Maybe it was fiction, but for me, then, that was our life. It was incredible. I remember talking to a multitude of guys, made guys, who felt exactly the same way." According to Anthony Fiato after seeing the film, Patriarca crime family members Paulie Intiso and Nicky Giso altered their speech patterns closer to that of Vito Corleone's. Intiso would frequently swear and use poor grammar, but after the movie came out, he started to articulate and philosophize more.
• The film makes use of a variety of Italian words: Paulie says "sfortunato", which means "unlucky guy". Michael explains that Tom is a "consigliere", or counselor. Vito calls Johnny Fontane a "finocchio", an offensive term for a homosexual. Sonny refers to Paulie as a "stronzo", a term equivalent to "asshole". Carlo and Connie both say "vaffanculo" during their fight, which means "fuck you". Don Zaluchi says the sale of drugs to children is an "infamia", or an infamy. Both Don Corleones use the word "pezzo novanta", which means ".90 caliber", or more accurately, an idiom meaning "big shot".
• Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) and Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) go to see The Bells of St. Mary's (1945). The sequel to Going My Way (1944), it was the first sequel to be nominated for Best Picture. The second was The Godfather: Part II (1974).
• The character of Hollywood mogul Jack Woltz's was patterned after Warner Brothers chief Jack L. Warner. His personality was based on MGM head Louis B. Mayer, who was a great racing aficionado, and owned a racing stable. Mayer abandoned the activity, reportedly after his son-in-law William Goetz, who was his partner in the stable, got involved with the Mafia and fixed a race. Mayer's horse was the favorite to win.
• Frankie Avalon and Vic Damone, both established and experienced singers, auditioned for the role of Johnny Fontane. Francis Ford Coppola was most impressed with Damone, and gave the role to him, but Al Martino was cast by the producers, and used his organized crime connections to ensure he kept the part. Ironically, Fontane sings "I Have But One Heart", which was Damone's first hit song.
• In his 1994 autobiography "Songs My Mother Taught Me", Marlon Brando said he turned the film down repeatedly because he did not want to glamorize the Mafia.
• When Sonny beats up Carlo, a truck in the background and a wooden box on the sidewalk are strategically placed to hide anachronistic objects in the background.
• The slow camera movement that opens the film, which starts with a close-up of Bonasera's face and ends up behind Vito's head, takes more than two minutes to complete. This was created with a recently invented computer-timed lens, which could be programmed to zoom for specific time increments. There are actually very few zoom shots in the picture, as Francis Ford Coppola and Gordon Willis eschewed them for dramatic effect.
• Francis Ford Coppola had a background in theater, and used it to prepare the script. He would take pages out of the book and paste them into a notebook, which gave him enough room to make detailed notes on the scenes he wanted to use, what he had to do to make them work, and what pitfalls to avoid. (One example: "Italians who-a talk-a like-a dis.")
• Robert De Niro was originally cast as Paulie Gatto, while Al Pacino had accepted a role in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973). Francis Ford Coppola wanted Pacino so badly for the role of Michael that he persuaded the producers of the other film to release him from his contract. This meant he had to provide a replacement, so De Niro was released from his contract on this film.
• The name of the traditional Sicilian hat (worn, for instance, by Michael's bodyguards) is "coppola".
• The meeting between the heads of the Mafioso was filmed in the boardroom of the Penn-Central Railroad. This explains the train mural seen behind Don Barzini (Richard Conte).
• Mario Puzo gave Vito's eldest son the nickname of "Sonny" after the nickname given to the son of Al Capone. The similarities end there. Sonny Capone did not enter his father's business.
• After Robert Evans insisted that James Caan be cast as Michael, Carmine Caridi was cast in the role of Sonny. According to Evans, he told Francis Ford Coppola that he could cast Al Pacino as Michael as long as he cast Caan as Sonny. Although Caan had been Coppola's first choice, he decided that Caridi was better for the role, and did not want to re-cast Caan. Evans insisted on Caan because he wanted at least one "name" actor to play one of the brothers, and because the 6'4" Caridi would tower over Pacino on-screen. Caridi was later given a small part in The Godfather: Part II (1974). There is a rumor that Burt Reynolds was originally cast as Sonny Corleone, but Marlon Brando wouldn't act with him, considering him more a television star.
• According to Alex Rocco, he originally auditioned for the role of Al Neri, but Francis Ford Coppola insisted that he play Moe Greene instead. Rocco, an Italian-American, felt that he would not be able to play a person of Jewish descent. According to Rocco, Coppola told him, "'The Italians do this', and he punches his fingers up. 'And the Jews do this", and his hand's extended, the palm flat. Greatest piece of direction I ever got. I've been playing Jews ever since."
• Robert Duvall received $36,000 for eight weeks work.
• Marlon Brando wanted Al Martino replaced, as he felt the singer's acting was wooden.
• While filming a scene with Marlon Brando, Lenny Montana opened his mouth to speak and stuck out his tongue, which had on it a "fuck you" note. Brando, always one for a good joke, laughed uproariously.
• The scene between Tom and Sollozzo was shot in an abandoned diner. The snowstorm when they exit the diner was real.
• After Marlon Brando's death, his own annotated script for the film fetched $12,800 at a New York City auction, the highest amount ever paid for a film script.
• One of Marlon Brando's first scenes was the meeting with Sollozzo at his office. "Paramount Pictures" executives were not impressed with his acting in that scene, and complained to Francis Ford Coppola about it. However, when he asked if they wanted him to re-shoot the scene, they declined. Coppola feared that he was about to be fired, but also knew that he would not be fired until the weekend. It being a Wednesday, he knew he had time to recover. He identified fourteen crew members; including his original assistant director and his original editor, Aram Avakian (who was revealed to be the "ring leader" - this was corroborated by Robert Duvall) , whom he thought might have been reporting on him to the studio, and fired them. With new crew members, he re-shot the scene.
• The baptism scene was filmed in two churches. The interior shots were filmed at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in New York City, and the exterior shots were filmed at the Mount Loretto Church in Pleasant Plains, Staten Island.
• Paramount Pictures wanted the film to appeal to a wide audience, and threatened Francis Ford Coppola with a "violence coach" to make the film more exciting. Coppola added a few more violent scenes to keep the studio happy. The scene in which Connie smashes crockery after finding out Carlo has been cheating was added for this reason.
• The opening wedding celebrations were filmed over a period of a week, and employed over seven hundred fifty extras.
• In the novel, Don Cuneo's first name is Ottileo, but in the film he was known as Carmine Cuneo, an homage to Carmine Coppola.
• Robert Evans apparently screened the films about gangsters that Paramount Pictures had released before he arrived at the studio, including The Brotherhood (1968). He noticed that most of the films were unsuccessful, and also that they had not been written nor directed by Italian-Americans, and said that he hired Francis Ford Coppola in part, because he wanted to "smell the spaghetti".
• Along with Mario Puzo's source novel, Francis Ford Coppola based many of the characters on members of his own family.
• Al Pacino made just $35,000 for starring in the film (the same as James Caan and Diane Keaton and $1,000 less than Robert Duvall). However, having made runaway hits Scarecrow (1973) and Serpico (1973), Pacino managed to command a $600,000 salary for The Godfather: Part II (1974), as well as a 10% cut of the movie's adjusted-gross income.
• Despite having his Oscar nomination withdrawn by the Academy upon discovery that he had reused the same theme from his previous score for Fortunella (1958), composer Nino Rota was still awarded the Golden Globe, BAFTA and the Grammy for Best Original Score. Oddly enough, Rota won the Oscar for Best Original Score for the sequel The Godfather: Part II (1974), even though the score used the same love theme from the original film.
• While filming Sonny's tryst with Lucy, Eleanor Coppola went into labor. Francis Ford Coppola went to the hospital after the scene was completed, and Sofia Coppola was born.
• Al Martino had a rough time on-set. Because of his inability to conjure up emotion, his lines were constantly being re-written, and most of his scenes were shot from behind.
• According to Francis Ford Coppola, Marlon Brando considered Salvatore Corsitto's performance to be the best in the film, because it was the most genuine.
• John Martino ad-libbed the words "Madone'" (Madonna) and "sfortunato" (unfortunate), when Paulie talks about stealing the wedding purse.
• James Caan credits the stage persona of "insult comic" Don Rickles for inspiring his characterization of Santino Corleone.
• Before the film was in production, Paramount Pictures had been going through an unsuccessful period. Their latest mafia based movie, The Brotherhood (1968), had been a box-office bomb. In addition, the studio had usurped their budget for their recent films: Darling Lili (1970), Paint Your Wagon (1969), and Waterloo (1970). The budget for the film was originally two and a half million dollars, but as the book grew in popularity, and Coppola argued for a larger budget, the budget was raised to six million dollars.
• The first of four successive years that Al Pacino was nominated for an acting Academy Award. A Best Supporting Actor nomination for this film was followed by Best Actor nominations for Serpico (1973), The Godfather: Part II (1974) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975).
• While filming the hospital scenes, doctors and nurses kept sneaking through for a peek at Marlon Brando.
• According to Francis Ford Coppola, it was George Lucas who helped him solve the lack of filmed empty corridors in the hospital scene by using the ends of shots that had been filmed after Coppola had called, "Cut".
• In the original novel, the sequence of Don Corleone granting people requests on his daughter's wedding day is extended, and has more people asking for favors. Interestingly, one of the people seeking an audience with the Don, looking for money to run a pizza restaurant, has the surname of Coppola.
• Production began on March 29, 1971, but Marlon Brando worked on the film for thirty-five days between April 12 and May 28, so he could honor his commitment to "Last Tango in Paris (1972)."
• In 1990, this film was selected for the National Film Registry, Library of Congress.
• According to an August 1971 article by Nicholas Pileggi in The New York Times, Paramount Pictures planned to release a line of spaghetti sauce bearing the "The Godfather" logo to promote the film. It also planned Godfather restaurant franchises that would sell pizza, hero sandwiches, Italian ices, Italian breads, and pastries. A spin-off television series was also planned, but none of these ideas came to fruition.
• According to associate producer Gary Fredrickson, Lenny Montana (Luca Brasi) had worked as a Mafia bodyguard, and had also bragged to Frederickson about working for the Mafia as an arsonist.
• Abe Vigoda got the part of Tessio by answering an open casting call and beat out hundreds of other actors.
• Francis Ford Coppola cast Diane Keaton for the role of Kay Adams, due to her reputation for being eccentric.
• In April 1972, Paramount Pictures took out an ad in the trade papers which read, "In less than four weeks of national distribution, The Godfather, is already the twelfth highest grossing film, domestically, of all time. No motion picture has grossed so much in such a short period of time."
• The film took seventy-seven days to shoot, six days less than the original schedule of eighty-three days.
• Diane Keaton based much of her portrayal of Kay Adams on Francis Ford Coppola's wife, Eleanor Coppola.
• In the novel, Bonasera (Salvatore Corsitto) is the last person who is allowed to see Don Corleone (Marlon Brando), while Nazorine, The Baker (Vito Scotti), was first. The change to Bonasera being first for the film was to show the way that Nazorine requests a favor is the more appropriate and to suggest that Nazorine heard about Bonasera's lack of respect.
• Though Francis Ford Coppola wanted to portray Italians authentically, he cast many actors in the Corleone family who were not Italian: Marlon Brando was of Dutch ancestry, James Caan is German and Jewish, and Abe Vigoda was Russian-Jewish. Nevertheless, he wanted someone with Sicilian looks to play Michael, which is why he fought for Al Pacino, despite a strong desire on Paramount Pictures' part to cast a "name", like Ryan O'Neal or Robert Redford, and Coppola's own concession that many Italians are blonde-haired and blue eyed, like Redford and O'Neal.
• This was Richard Conte's final American studio film before his death on April 15, 1975 at the age of 65.
• The immortal line: "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse " makes it into each Godfather movie in some way or another.
• Elvis Presley, an avid fan of the book, auditioned for the role of Tom Hagen, though he really wanted to play Vito Corleone.
• Ernest Borgnine, Edward G. Robinson, Orson Welles, Danny Thomas, Richard Conte, Anthony Quinn, Don Ameche, and George C. Scott were considered by Paramount Pictures for the role of Vito Corleone. Burt Lancaster wanted the role, but was never considered. When Paramount considered casting Italian Producer Carlo Ponti, Director Francis Ford Coppola objected, as Vito had lived in America since childhood, and thus wouldn't speak with Ponti's Italian accent. When asked for his opinion by the Paramount brass, Coppola said he wanted to cast either Laurence Olivier or Marlon Brando as the Don. In a September and October 2003 "Cigar Aficionado" Magazine cover story, Coppola said, "I wanted either an Italian-American or an actor who's so great that he can portray an Italian-American. So, they said, 'Who do you suggest?' I said, 'Lookit, I don't know, but who are the two greatest actors in the world? Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando. Well, Laurence Olivier is English. He looked just like Vito Genovese. His face is great.' I said, 'I could see Olivier playing the guy, and putting it on.' Brando is my hero of heroes. I'd do anything to just meet him. But he's forty-seven, he's a young, good-looking guy. So, we first inquired about Olivier and they said, 'Olivier is not taking any jobs. He's very sick. He's gonna die soon and he's not interested.' So, I said, 'Why don't we reach out for Brando?'" Frank Sinatra, despite his reported distaste for the novel and opposition to the film, had discussions with Coppola about playing the role himself and at one point, actually offered his services. Coppola, however, was adamant in his conviction that Brando take the role instead. This would be the third time Brando performed in a part sought by Sinatra, after playing Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954), and Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls (1955). Brando's previous film, Burn! (1969), had been a terrible flop, and he could not get work in American pictures, being considered by many producers as "washed up". Paramount Pictures executives initially would offer Marlon Brando only union scale for the role of Don Corleone. Finally, the studio relented and paid Brando three hundred thousand dollars, according to Coppola's account. In his autobiography The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002), Robert Evans claims that Brando was paid fifty thousand dollars, plus points, and sold back his points to Paramount before the release of the picture for an additional one hundred thousand dollars, because he had female-related money troubles. Realizing the film was going to be a huge hit, Paramount Pictures was happy to oblige. This financial fleecing of Brando, according to Evans, is the reason he refused to do publicity for the picture, or appear in The Godfather: Part II (1974).
• The mansion of Jack Woltz was also used as the mansion of Alan Stanwyk in Fletch (1985).
• Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro are the only two actors to ever win separate Oscars for playing the exact same character. Brando won Best Actor for The Godfather (1972) and De Niro won Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Godfather: Part II (1974), both in the role of Vito Corleone. (Coincidentally, neither actor was present to accept the award.) However, Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix both won Oscars for playing two different versions of the same character in two separate movies. Ledger won Best Actor in a Supporting Role for playing The Joker in The Dark Knight (2008), and Phoenix won Best Actor for playing The Joker in Joker (2019).
• Franco Corsaro filmed a scene as the dying consigliere Genco Abbandando, but it was deleted. In the scene, which takes place after the wedding, Vito Corleone and his sons go to the hospital to pay their respects to Genco, who is dying of cancer. They attempt to console him, and Genco begs Vito to stay with him as he is dying. The scene does appear in some television airings of the film (in place of edited versions of the murder scenes) and is in The Godfather Saga (1977). Genco is still mentioned in the film, when Sonny complains to Tom about not having a wartime consigliere.
• According to Talia Shire, her therapist urged her to start asserting herself in the family, which is why she tried out for the film.
• The casting of Richard Conte was an idea by the mother of Martin Scorsese, who asked Francis Ford Coppola if he could be in the movie.
• Francis Ford Coppola inserted the detail of people eating Chinese food out of white takeout containers, a memory from his childhood.
• This is the fourth of five films as of 2014 in which three actors were competing for the same Oscar for the same film, which were Al Pacino, James Caan, and Robert Duvall. The other films were: Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), in which Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Franchot Tone competed for Best Actor, On the Waterfront (1954), in which Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, and Rod Steiger competed for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Tom Jones (1963), in which Diane Cilento, Edith Evans, and Joyce Redman competed for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and The Godfather: Part II (1974), in which Robert De Niro, Michael V. Gazzo, and Lee Strasberg competed for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (which De Niro won).
• Tommy Lee Jones was considered for the role of Michael Corleone.
• No cannolis are mentioned in the novel or the shooting script. Francis Ford Coppola included this detail from his memories of the particular white boxes of cannolis that his father would bring home from work.
• According to Francis Ford Coppola in his "Cigar Aficionado" Magazine interview, he had a meeting at his house in 1969 with producers Al Ruddy and Gray Frederickson to discuss The Conversation (1974). He had sent the script to Marlon Brando, who called him during the meeting to politely turn it down. Right before the meeting, Coppola took note of a newspaper advertisement for an upcoming novel titled "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo. Just a few months later, all five people would meet to discuss a film version of the novel.
• Screenwriter Robert Towne wrote the scene on the patio between Don Corleone and his son Michael.
• Fred Roos cast John Cazale after seeing him in an off-Broadway play called "Life", which co-starred Richard Dreyfuss (who invited Roos). Roos recalled, "We were looking for a Fredo at that time, and I had no idea who John Cazale was. He knocked me out. First chance I got, I brought him in and I said, 'Francis, this is Fredo, we don't need to look any further, this is him'".
• In the scene where Clemenza, Rocco and Paulie Gato drive through New York, stock footage from the early 1940s is used, as the production staff could not recreate main thoroughfares and skyscrapers from a bygone era. When the shots the script demanded were found, the staff just needed to find a car that matched the model and duplicate its license plate.
• In the novel, when pleading his case to the Don, Johnny explicitly explains why Woltz doesn't like him. Francis Ford Coppola changed this, preferring to have the explanation come from Woltz's tirade.
• The Corleones are based on the Borgias, a Spanish family that emigrated to Rome in fifteenth century Europe. The patriarch, Rodrigo, became Pope Alexander VI. Rome at that time, like New York City in the 1940s, had five powerful families. The other families in Rome were the Colonna family, the Medici family, the Orsini family, and the Sforza family. The real New York City families were the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese families.
• Mia Farrow auditioned for the part of Kay.
• Robert Evans hated Nino Rota's original stab at the score. Francis Ford Coppola threatened to quit over this, until Evans backed down.
• Frank Albanese, who played Uncle Pat Blundetto in The Sopranos (1999) and the smiling lawyer for a young Henry Hill in Goodfellas (1990), was one of the two hitmen (with a machine gun) who jumps into the bedroom, rubbing out one of the Dons with his mistress, while Michael eliminates the other Dons during the baptismal scene.
• The wedding scene, due to its size, was filmed on several locations on the same street that the house used for the exterior shots of the Corleone Family compound, which is located on Longfellow Avenue, Todt Hill, Staten Island, New York. The house had a low stone perimeter fence, which was enlarged to give the impression of a "family compound". The famous gate that marks the entrance to the Corleone compound was built for the film, and was torn down after shooting.
• The series of murders committed during the film starts and ends with a strangulation.
• Producer Al Ruddy later said that "It was the most miserable film I can think of to make. Nobody enjoyed one day of it."
• The Corleone house was constructed for the film to include two stories, complete with a living room, dining room, full kitchen, panelled study, and a foyer with stairs leading to the bedroom.
• Anna Magnani and Anne Bancroft turned down the role of Mama Corleone.
• In the scene where Carlo is beaten by Sonny, a poster bearing the name "Thomas Dewey" can be seen on a wall. Thomas E. Dewey was first the appointed Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and later elected District Attorney of New York County in 1937. Dewey successfully pursued gangsters in both jobs. He was elected Governor of New York in 1942, and was serving as Governor during the period portrayed in this film. Dewey lost the elections for President of the United States in 1944 and 1948.
• Jerry Van Dyke, Bruce Dern, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and James Caan auditioned for the role of Tom Hagen.
• Burt Reynolds was considered for the part of Sonny Corleone by Coppola, but Marlon Brando refused to work with him, considering him a second-rate actor. Also, there was supposed animosity dating back to when Reynolds did an episode of The Twilight Zone (1959) years earlier, in which he spoofed Brando's persona. Brando reportedly was not amused by the episode, and had never liked Reynolds since.
• Nino Rota composed a piece titled "The Pickup", which was to play during Tom Hagen's arrival in Hollywood. The studio felt the piece did not fit the scene and had it replaced with a jazz standard titled "Manhattan Serenade". Rota's original piece appeared on the soundtrack album.
• Exterior shots of the Woltz estate are actually Harold Lloyd's house. Interior scenes were shot at the Guggenheim estate in Long Island. Guards had to be hired for the priceless art, and the bed was a rental.
• The hospital scenes were filmed in two different locations: the exterior scenes were filmed at a side entrance to the Bellevue Hospital, and the interior shots were filmed at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary in Manhattan, New York.
• The producers offered Burt Reynolds the Michael Corleone role before they offered it to Al Pacino. When Marlon Brando got wind of this he threatened to quit if Burt Reynolds was part of the project. Hearing this made Reynolds back out of the project too. "I was flattered he was upset," said Reynolds, later.
• The scene of Michael and Kay Christmas shopping required 143 extras, in addition to period cars. The streetlights were replaced to match the period at $1,000 a pop, as well as street signs. 60 crew members were present.
• The producers wanted Al Pacino to wear lifts.
• The Mount Loretto Church in Staten Island, where the exteriors for the baptism scene were filmed, burned down in 1973.
• Cinematographer Gordon Willis initially turned down the opportunity to work on the film, because the production seemed "chaotic" to him. After Willis later accepted the offer, he and Francis Ford Coppola agreed to not use any modern filming devices, helicopters, or zoom lenses. Willis chose to use top-light in the majority of the scenes due to Marlon Brando's eye make-up. He made use of shadows throughout the film and applied sepia tones to several scenes. Willis and Coppola agreed to interplay light and dark scenes throughout the film.
• Ardell Sheridan, who plays Mrs. Clemenza, was Richard S. Castellano's girlfriend at the time, and Castellano had lobbied Francis Ford Coppola for her to get the role, which would be Sheridan's film debut. Sheridan and Castellano also portrayed husband and wife in The Super (1972), and they would later marry in real life, too.
• When Mrs. Corleone is being coaxed into singing, for a split second a bald man with a moustache is seen. Michael V. Gazzo, the bald man with the moustache, played Frank Pentangeli in The Godfather: Part II (1974).
• According to an August 1971 article by Nicholas Pileggi in the New York Times, a supporting cast member became so committed to his role that he accompanied a group of Mafia enforcers on a trip to beat up strike breakers during a labor dispute. But the enforcers had the wrong address, and were unable to find the strike breakers. The actor's name was not revealed.
• Anthony Perkins auditioned for the role of Sonny Corleone.
• Richard Conte appears in only four scenes, and only has dialogue in one: the meeting of the Dons.
• Six cameras were used to shoot the wedding sequences, including four in the garden to capture cinema verite shots, as well as a soundman wandering around to record improvised dialogue. There was also a camera in a helicopter, but many of these shots were too jumpy, and weren't used.
• Michael's description of how his father launched Johnny Fontaine's singing career was not in the shooting script, nor was Fredo's introduction.
• In one scene, Sonny makes the expression "Going to the mattresses". This is slang for a war with a rival gang.
• Francis Ford Coppola hired production designer Dean Tavoularis having been impressed with his work on Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Little Big Man (1970).
• Film debut for Joe Spinell, in the uncredited role of Willi Cicci.
• Before the sit-down meeting, and before the journey in the car to "New Jersey", the group meets in front of a restaurant called Dempsey's Manassa Restaurant. Jack Dempsey, the "Manassa Mauler" was born in Manassa, Colorado, lending the town's name and part of his nickname to the restaurant.
• While the novel names Santino as the eldest son of Vito and Carmela, The Godfather trilogy indicates Fredo is the eldest. Edited in chronological order, the first child of the two is shown as Fredo being treated for pneumonia. Santino is later shown once the stolen rug is in the Corleone flat. In addition, Coppola is quoted in The Godfather trilogy as depicting Fredo is the eldest.
• The Lumen Martin Winter mural of Empire Express 999 seen during the meeting of the five families in the old New York Central Rail Road boardroom had been in the possession of The Pennsylvania State Historical and Museum Commission. In the fall of 2014, it was deaccessioned by the commission, and put up for auction. It was purchased by an avid fan of the movie, and is now in his private residence.
• Francis Ford Coppola was hired by Robert Evans to direct the movie after Peter Bogdanovich, among others, turned it down.
• Francis Ford Coppola's mother Italia Coppola had a scene as a Genco Olive Oil Company switchboard operator, but it ended up on the cutting room floor.
• The Woltz International Pictures lot is actually Paramount's lot in Hollywood. This was not production designer Dean Tavoularis' choice, he detested the look of it, and even suggested the Warner Brothers lot as an alternative, but it was used for budgetary reasons. It was also the location for the Paramount Pictures backlot scenes in Sunset Blvd. (1950).
• Many interludes were written, but do not appear in the film:
• Tom Hagen on the plane to California.
• Carlo and Connie's wedding night.
• Sonny visiting Lucy Mancini's apartment.
• A close-up of Vito thinking.
• Michael and Kay on a train to New Hampshire.
• Luca Brasi taking the subway to his meeting with Tattaglia.
• Vito embracing Tom as his new consigliere.
• Frank Sivero appears as an extra in the scene where Sonny beats up Carlo Rizzi. He would later appear in The Godfather: Part II (1974) as Genco Abbandando.
• Francis Ford Coppola wanted to cast Timothy Carey, but Carey turned the part down, so he could film a television pilot.
• A diary about the film's production, "The Godfather Journal" by Ira Zuckerman, was published as a mass market paperback by Manor in 1972.
• Robert Evans told the story that Puzo owed the mob $10,000 or so and he had the beginning of a novel called "Mafia". Evans basically optioned it for the amount of money that Puzo owed the mob.
• This is the second Best Picture Oscar winner in which Marlon Brando won the Academy Award for Best Actor, also in which three of Brando's co-stars were nominated for Best Supporting Actor but none of whom received the award. The first film was On the Waterfront (1954). Coincidentally, the story of both films is about organized crime set in the New York City-Hoboken area. A key difference between the two however is that Brando's character (Terry Malloy) in the earlier film fights against organized crime. Whereas in the latter film, Brando's character (Vito Corleone) is the head of a major organized crime family.
• In the novel and the shooting script, it is Michael who tells Kay about the Sicilian tradition of never refusing a request on a daughter's wedding day.
• According to Francis Ford Coppola, Gordon Willis' favorite shot was an overhead shot of the Sicilian countryside.
• Sir Laurence Olivier was originally offered to play Vito Corleone. Unfortunately, due to his failing health, he had to decline, leading to Marlon Brando being cast.
• Visitors to the set often assumed Abe Vigoda was a Mafioso.
• Marlon Brando had to lose weight in order to play Don Vito Corleone.
• A promotional board game titled "The Godfather Game" was released in 1971.
• Public Enemy sampled the line, "They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls" for their song "1 Million Bottlebags" on their 1991 album "Apocalypse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black".
• Don Corleone's (Marlon Brando) slap on his godson (Al Martino) at Connie Corleone's (Talia Shire) wedding wasn't originally in the script, but Francis Ford Coppola kept it in the film.
• David Carradine and Dean Stockwell screentested for the role of Michael Corleone.
• Contrary to the information in "Filming Locations," the scene where Don Corleone leaves the hospital in the ambulance is not the "new" Lincoln Hospital on 149 St. in the Bronx (opened in 1976). That scene was filmed at the old Lincoln Hospital which was at that time off of Southern Blvd at East 141 Street. The ramp where the ambulance is located was the entrance to the Emergency Room where ambulances would bring the patients (as they were the night they were setting up the shoot). The building is no longer there.
• The first day of shooting was brought forward a week to March 24 due to the weather forcast promising snow flurries but with no sign of snow large snow blowers were brought in to create fake snow in front of Best and Company on Fifth Avenue with the store's windows being suitably dressed with a Xmas look.
• Olivia Hussey was considered by casting director Fred Roos for the role of Apollonia. Francis Ford Coppola originally wanted Stefania Sandrelli, but she turned it down.
• In the wedding scene, when they are singing "C'è la luna mezzo mare" the camera cuts to a man with his arms around two young girls this is Louis Prima, one of the artists who has recorded the song.
• Robert Evans originally wanted Henry Mancini to do the music.
• According to a 1982 interview done for the U.K., Jack Nicholson turned down the role of Michael Corleone because he felt the lead should be Italian and also because the draft of the script given to him did not include scenes with him and Marlon Brando.
• According to a production assistant, between takes of the restaurant scene, Sterling Hayden snacked on fruit and milk, as he only ate natural foods. He read "Dear Theo", a collection of letters from Vincent van Gogh to his brother. He then mysteriously disappeared. He had taken a stroll, fallen asleep down by the river, and was awakened by boys throwing rocks at him.
• Actor Richard S. Castellano (Clemenza) and director Francis Ford Coppola did not get along well during filming. Castellano claimed that for one sequence Coppola maliciously made him do multiple takes of Clemenza running up a flight of stairs, a rough task for an obese man. His heavy breathing in the printed take was not acting.
• William Devane was in the running for the part of Moe Greene.
• Despite the fading light, Francis Ford Coppola was under orders from Paramount Pictures to keep shooting. The shot in which Michael appears to the right of Kay were all shot at night, with lamps blazing down to keep continuity with the bright sunlight of other shots.
• William Reynolds edited the first half of the film, Peter Zinner the second.
• The earliest known Hollywood reference to a mob boss being called a godfather was in Pocketful of Miracles (1961), where Dave the Dude (Glenn Ford) is said to have a lot of experience as a godfather. This reference even predates Joe Valachi's use of the term in his U.S. Senate testimony in 1963.
• Peter Donat, Martin Sheen, Roy Thinnes, Barry Primus, Robert Vaughn, Richard Mulligan, Keir Dullea, Dean Stockwell, Jack Nicholson, and James Caan were considered for the role of Tom Hagen. John Cassavetes and Peter Falk also sought the role. Of those actors, only Donat ultimately appeared in The Godfather: Part II (1974), in the role of Questadt.
• Jill Clayburgh, Susan Blakey, and Michelle Phillips screentested for the role of Kay. Francis Ford Coppola also considered Geneviève Bujold, Jennifer Salt, and Blythe Danner.
• Vic Damone was originally cast as Johnny Fontaine, but dropped out, ostensibly because he couldn't in good conscience play a character so anti-Italian-American. He later revealed it was because of the poor pay.
• Francis Ford Coppola invited Italian superstar singer Mina to play Kay Adams. She turned down the offer as she was not interested in an acting career. The role ultimately went to Diane Keaton.
• Peter Bogdanovich was approached to direct, but he also declined the offer because he was not interested in the Mafia. In addition, Richard Brooks, Sidney J. Furie, Costa-Gavras, Lewis Gilbert, Larry Peerce, Otto Preminger, Franklin J. Schaffner, and Fred Zinnemann were all offered the position, but declined.
• When Paramount Pictures approached Otto Preminger to direct, he wanted Frank Sinatra to play Don Corleone.
• Sidney J. Furie was originally in line to direct. Producer Al Ruddy had just come off Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970) with Furie, and was handed the task of producing after that film had been brought in under budget and under schedule. Ruddy personally requested Furie to direct the picture, but Francis Ford Coppola's Italian heritage won the day.
• When Marlon Brando openly questioned to Francis Ford Coppola why Gianni Russo was cast in the movie, and then suggested, in front of Russo, re-casting him, Russo quietly pulled Brando aside and said, "If you ever talk to me like that again, or if you ever stand in the way of me getting this role again, I'm going to break you apart and suck on your heart". Marlon was stunned for a moment. Then he said, "That was brilliant!". Brando didn't realize that Russo was infact a former mafioso wise guy, and was infact dead serious. He thought Russo was acting, but he was not! Needless to say Brando didn't mess with Russo again. You can view the interview where Russo admits all this on YouTube.
• Frank Puglia was originally cast as Bonasera, but had to back out due to illness.
• Bill Butler did some uncredited cinematography for the film, namely in the scenes shot in Los Angeles, as director of photography Gordon Willis was busy filming in the main locations in New York City.
• The actual backstage of the Corleone house set served as the set for the backstage of Woltz International Pictures.
• The film that inspired Chris Columbus to become a filmmaker when he first saw it at the age of fifteen.
• Francis Ford Coppola initially offered the part of Don Vito Corleone to retired Maltese actor Joseph Calleia, but the offer was turned down by Calleia due to health reasons.
• Ten percent of the film was shot on soundstages at Filmways Studio lot in New York City.
• Ben Key and Eddy Westcott are both huge fans, and have even said in interviews that they based their characters in The Two Of Us (2018) on Al Pacino and Marlon Brando in this movie, respectively.
• Salvatore Corsitto was hired from an open casting call.
• Aram Avakian was originally hired as the film's editor, but was fired after disagreements with Coppola.
• To keep a veil of secrecy when shooting on some 90% of scenes filmed in the New York suburbs Brando's scenes were shot in a concentrated period of 35 days.
• In a life immitates art moment mob boss Johnny Camino threatened the CEO of Paramount; which is how Gianni Russo got the job in Godfather.
• Charlie Bluhdorn, the President of Gulf + Western, wanted Charles Bronson to play Michael Corleone.
• Franco Nero met with Francis Ford Coppola in London over playing Sollozzo.
• Rudy Vallee coveted the part of Tom Hagen, but was deemed too old.
• Aldo Ray was considered for the role of Sonny Corleone.
• Luis García Berlanga directed the Spanish Castilian dubbing.
• The exterior of Jack Woltz's (John Marley) home in the film used to be that of film comedian Harold Lloyd'
• There's actually four parts to the Godfather: Part I (1972); Part 2 (1974); Part 3 (1990); and then Part 4; which is 2020's "The Death of Michael Corleone". Coppola actually released part 4 as an epilogue to part 3; in a new director's cut that was released that year. There's also yet another iteration of these movies that Coppola released in 1981 called "The Godfather Saga" in which Coppola edited together parts 1 and 2 and added previously unreleased footage; and put it all together for a whole new longer movie which was used for network airings in the 80s. Coppola then released a VHS version of this called Godfather 1902-1959: The Complete Epic, which was available to home viewers for rental.
• Just like in the movie, James Caan (Sonny) is older than Al Pacino (Michael) though it was only for a month ( both actors were born in 1940). Also, Marlon Brando ( born 1924 ) who played their on-screen father is only 16 years older than both of them and only 11 years older than John Cazale, who also played one of his on-screen son Fredo.
• The church baptism scene was filmed in two locations on Staten Island, NY. The interior scenes were filmed inside of St Patrick's church in the Richmond Town section. The exterior scene was shot at The Old Church of St. Joachim and St. Anne on the grounds of Mount Lorretto in the Pleasant Plains section of Staten Island. This church burned down in 1973 and a new church was rebuilt in its place in 1976 using the old facade.
• Al Pacino was called sonny to his friends growing up.just like his fictional brother sonny corleon
• Like the character Michael Corleone, many members of the cast and crew of "The Godfather Trilogy" were military veterans, most of whom served during World War II. Author and screenwriter Mario Puzo and actors Michael V. Gazzo, G.D. Spradlin, William Bowers and Paul Lambert served in the U.S. Army Air Forces. Actor Sterling Hayden was in both the Army and the Marine Corps, serving as an officer in the latter; Hayden was also a secret agent during the War, serving in the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA. Actors Abe Vigoda, John Marley, Richard Conte, Rudy Bond, Hank Robinson, Richard Matheson and Eli Wallach were all in the Army, while Al Martino, Harry Dean Stanton and Roger Corman served in the Navy. Harrison Ressler arranged and performed in USO shows during the War. Other cast and crew members served in the Korean War including cinematographer Gordon Willis who was in the Air Force, while actors Robert Duvall, Danny Aiello, Tony Lip and Randy Jurgensen served in the Army. Actor Gary Kurtz was in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War and Ron Gilbert was drafted into the Army in the summer of 1960.
• The Jack Woltz Mansion was in actuality the former home of William Randolph Hearst, is located in North Hollywood, and was referred to as "the Beverly House". Due to increasing age and medical issues, San Simeon became too remote, and Hearst moved to this home in 1947 with his mistress actress Marion Davies. He lived here until his death at age 88 in 1951.
• Gray Frederickson: The film's associate producer as the cowboy in the studio when Tom Hagen encounters Studio Head Woltz for the first time.
• Because Corleone, Sicily, was too developed, even in the early 1970s, the Sicilian town of Savoca, outside Taormina, was used for shooting the scenes where Michael is in exile in Italy.
• The scene in which Enzo comes to visit Vito Corleone in the hospital was shot in reverse, with the outside sequence shot first. Gabriele Torrei (Enzo) had never acted in front of a camera before, and his nervous shaking, after the car drives away, was real.
• Animal rights activists protested the horse's head scene. Francis Ford Coppola told Variety, "There were many people killed in that movie, but everyone worries about the horse. It was the same on the set. When the head arrived, it upset many crew members who are animal lovers, who like little doggies. What they don't know is that we got the head from a pet food manufacturer who slaughters two hundred horses a day just to feed those little doggies."
• During filming, James Caan and Gianni Russo did not get along, and were frequently at loggerheads. During filming Sonny's beating of Carlo, Caan nearly hit Russo with the stick he threw at him, and broke two of Russo's ribs, and chipped his elbow.
• During rehearsals, a false horse's head was used for the bedroom scene. For the filmed shot, a real horse's head was used, acquired from a dog food factory. According to John Marley, his scream of horror was real, as he was not informed that a real head was going to be used.
• Gordon Willis insisted that every shot represent a point of view, usually setting his camera about four feet off the ground, keeping the angle flat and even. Francis Ford Coppola managed to get him to do one aerial shot in the scene when Don Vito Corleone is gunned down, telling Willis that the overhead shot represented God's point of view.
• According to interviews in the Coppola Restoration DVD set, the film was originally planned with an intermission due to its three-hour length. The intermission would have happened immediately after Michael murders Solozzo and McClusky, which explains the operatic instrumental that begins playing when Michael is shown fleeing the restaurant, as well as the ensuing "newspaper" montage, which would have been the first scene post-intermission.
• At the meeting in the restaurant, Sollozzo speaks to Michael in Sicilian so rapidly that subtitles could not be used. He begins with, "I am sorry. What happened to your father was business. I have much respect for your father. But your father, his thinking is old-fashioned. You must understand why I had to do that. Now let's work through where we go from here." When Michael returns from the bathroom, he continues in Sicilian with, "Everything all right? I respect myself, understand, and cannot allow another man to hold me back. What happened was unavoidable. I had the unspoken support of the other family dons. If your father were in better health, without his eldest son running things, no disrespect intended, we wouldn't have this nonsense. We will stop fighting until your father is well and can resume bargaining. No vengeance will be taken. We will have peace. But your family should interfere no longer."
• James Caan was angry that scenes giving Sonny more depth (such as his reaction to his father's shooting) were cut from the film. He confronted Robert Evans at the premiere and yelled at him, "Hey, you cut my whole fuckin' part out". Caan claimed that forty-five minutes of his character were cut.
• Don Corleone's death scene, while it featured in the novel, was originally not to appear in the film because studio executives felt that the audience would see the funeral and know what had happened. Francis Ford Coppola shot the scene with three cameras in a private residence on Long Island (the makeshift garden itself was created from scratch and torn down immediately after shooting), with Marlon Brando ad-libbing his lines.
• Moe Greene was modelled after Jewish mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, although Siegel was not known for wearing glasses. Both were assassinated with a shot through the eye, with the glasses worn by Greene being necessary in order to accomplish the special effect eye shot.
• Al Pacino wore a foam latex facial appliance that covered his entire left cheek and was made up with colors to match his skin tone and give the effect of bruising, to simulate the effect of having his jaw broken by Captain McCluskey.
• Francis Ford Coppola shot Sonny's assassination scene in one take with different cameras positioned at each shot. This was because there were one hundred forty-nine squibs taped onto James Caan's body to simulate the effect of rapid machine gun fire, and they couldn't shoot another take.
• In many of the Sicily scenes, Michael wipes his nose with a handkerchief. The novel explains that McCluskey's punch did damage to his sinuses.
• During the scene in the study when the family decides Michael Corleone needs to kill Sollozzo and McCluskey, Santino Corleone is seen idly toying with a cane. The cane belonged to Al Pacino, who had badly injured his leg while filming Michael's escape from the restaurant.
• According to Francis Ford Coppola on the DVD commentary, the intercutting of the baptism scene with the gang killings during the movie's climax did not really work until editor Peter Zinner added the organ soundtrack.
• In the infamous horse head scene, an Oscar statue can be seen on Jack Woltz's nightstand. This Oscar was given to Francis Ford Coppola for writing Patton (1970).
• Moe Green's execution by a bullet through his eye was accomplished by a hidden pellet shooter in the glasses' frame that smashed the lens outward.
• Francis Ford Coppola didn't care for the horse head scene in the novel, but recognized that it was too iconic to delete.
• The scene where Michael visits his father in the hospital was scheduled to be Marlon Brando's first. However, he missed his plane, and arrived on-set at 2 p.m., much too late to film a scene, with two or three hours of face make-up prep alone. According to Robert Evans, when Paramount Pictures sent Brando a check for $12,000 for looping the film, Brando called to inform them that they had given him $4,000 too much, because of his missed day, and asked where to send it back.
• According to Al Pacino in The Godfather Family: A Look Inside (1990), he nearly got fired midway through filming. At the time, Paramount Pictures executives only saw the early scenes of Michael at the wedding and were exclaiming, "When is he going to do something?" When they finally saw the scene where Michael shoots Sollozzo and McCluskey in the restaurant, they changed their minds, and Pacino got to keep his job.
• According to Al Ruddy, Marlon Brando "loved the people on Mott Street and they loved him". An enormous crowd gathered to witness the scene of the Don's attempted assassination. When he collapsed, those assembled gasped, then cheered wildly. Reports suggest that the scene had to be re-shot numerous times, as the audience couldn't control their applause at Brando's performance. When it was completed, Brando bowed to a cheering crowd.
• McCluskey's death was achieved by building a fake forehead onto Sterling Hayden's head. A gap was cut in the center and filled with fake blood, then capped off with a plug of prosthetic flesh. When the scene was being filmed, the plug was quickly yanked out using monofilament fishing line which doesn't show up on film. The effect was to make it look like a bloody hole suddenly appeared on Hayden's head.
• Fabrizio, Michael's Sicilian bodyguard who planted the bomb that killed Appolonia, was supposed to be found by Michael at a pizza parlor he opens in America, and subsequently blown away with a shotgun at the end of the movie as per the novel. This scene was filmed, but ultimately cut because the make-up artists plastered Angelo Infanti with so much fake blood that the scene looked ridiculous. Photos of Michael Corleone with a hat, shotgun blazing, appeared in many magazines, despite the scene's eventual excision. Fabrizio's death was filmed again, for The Godfather: Part II (1974), this time by car bomb (as the ultimate form of poetic justice), but that scene was also deleted from the theatrical version. It was restored in The Godfather Saga (1977).
• Francis Ford Coppola's protégé, George Lucas, who also served as co-editor on this film, admits to having paid homage to two scenes in his Star Wars series. First, the garroting death of Luca Brasi was the inspiration for Princess Leia strangling Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983). Secondly, the Baptism scene, in which Michael's vows are inter-cut with the murders of the rival dons, inspired the scene in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005), in which Palpatine declares the formation of his Empire while Darth Vader kills the separatist leaders. The infant in the original scene is Sofia Coppola, who also appeared as a handmaiden in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), and who directed Hayden Christensen in The Virgin Suicides (1999).
• Sonny Corleone's death scene at a highway toll booth was to take place on the Jones Beach Causeway, but was filmed on a small airport runway at Mitchell Field on Long Island. The scene was the most expensive in the movie to set up and film, for it cost over $100,000 to set up, and was finished in just one take from four or five different camera angles. The large billboard next to the toll booth was set up to hide the appearance of a modern high-rise building in the background. According to Joe Gelmis, one hundred ten brass casings containing gunpowder squibs and sacks of blood were deployed all over James Caan's body. Plus there were over two hundred drilled holes in his car, a 1941 Lincoln, filled with squibs to simulate the ambush attack.
• The technicians who attached the squibs to James Caan's body told him he had never attached that many squibs to anyone before. Caan replied "You didn't have to tell me that right now."
• Sonny's death scene offers up a clue to the fact that Carlo set him up. When Sonny beat up Carlo, he finished by kicking him in the face. After Sonny has been shot dead, one of his killers kicks him across the face.
• When writing the novel, Mario Puzo either directly or indirectly borrowed ideas from real-life Mafia stories. Specifically, he borrowed a lot of from the life of New York City gangster "Crazy" Joe Gallo, including the dynamics of he and his brothers. In the movie, Sonny is the "hot head" (Like Crazy Joe), Michael is the thoughtful and intelligent one (Like Larry Gallo), and Fredo is the dimwit (Like Michael Gallo). Also, terms like "Sleeping with the fishes" and "Hitting the mattresses" came from the lives of the Gallos. An associate of the Gallos was killed while on a fishing trip with friends, and the Gallos were sent a fish wrapped in a box just as when Sonny gets Luca Brasi's bulletproof vest with a fish. When the Gallos revolted against their boss, Joe Profaci, they went to war and rented apartments stocked with mattresses. In real-life, after Joe Gallo saw the movie, he actually considered suing Mario Puzo and Paramount Pictures for ripping off details of his life for their story. However, this never came to pass, as "Crazy" Joe Gallo was murdered on April 7, 1972, almost a full month after the movie's New York City premiere.
• Each of the weddings guests who makes a request of Vito Corleone is called upon later in the film to return the favor. Nazorine the Baker asks for help arranging for Enzo to stay in America and marry his daughter. Enzo himself later arrives at the hospital, first with flowers, and then helps Michael to bluff McCluskey's assassination attempt. Johnny Fontaine, in return for a film role that revives his career, is signed to appear at Michael's casinos. Bonasera, who comes to avenge the attempted rape and beating of his daughter, is called upon to prepare Sonny's body for his funeral.
• Al Pacino really had his jaw wired shut for the first part of the shoot after Michael is punched in the face.
• Francis Ford Coppola cast Simonetta Stefanelli after skipping away from her screentest like a young girl. She summed up her part, "I met him, I married him, I died."
• There's a well-known story that Coppola ambushed and "punked" actor John Marley by not telling him about the horse's head before he peeled back the covers on his bed and saw it for the first time; and that Marley's screaming in that scene was real. (This story has been perpetuated by John Marley, and various other people on the crew and in the film's PR department. But not Coppola interestingly! ) The problem with that story is that the scene is a series of shots; taken at the same angle but from different distances; a close up; followed by a medium shot, followed by a long shot. Each one of these shots would have had to take a half an hour to an hour to set up and then take. And the scream is recorded echoing through all these shots. Which means the screams could not all have been real. The first one might have been as the urban legend goes; but the next three had to be planned, they could not have been spontaneous. This was likely a story spread mostly by the PR department to generate interest in the movie (kind of like the Omen Curse stories; or the story about the Blair Witch Project being true, which were all equally false and fabricated to generate interest in those movies).
• Sonny's death scene was inspired by the ending of Bonnie and Clyde (1967).
• At Connie's wedding, Sonny is seen in close quarters with Lucy Mancini (Jeannie Linero) Connie's maid of honor at the event (wearing a pink dress). According to the novel, Sonny takes Lucy as his mistress (she is "that young girl" Don Corleone mentions to Sonny. She is also seen before Sonny visits Connie). The novel and film trilogy differ on her fate, though. In the film, she eventually moves on, settling down with a Las Vegas doctor. She is briefly seen in The Godfather: Part III (1990), with her son Vincent playing a major role.
• Michael Corleone continually drinks water in the first two films, hinting that he is diabetic. He later suffers a diabetic coma in the third film.
• Vito's assassination attempt was originally meant to be a flashback. Michael and Kay would see the newspaper announcing the shooting, which would lead to the event.
• In the novel and the shooting script, Luca Brasi's death is a flashback.
• For the Don's funeral, twenty limos and 150 extras were used, with flowers costing over $1,000 each.
• While filming in Little Italy, Marlon Brando developed a taste for the spicy squid with hot sauce from Vincent's. In the scene where Vito leans over Sonny's dead body, Brando is holding a carton of the delicacy out of range.
• In the 2015 documentary, 'Listen to me, Marlon', Brando's own archival tapes tell that when a boy, his Mother would take out her teeth and make faces to make him laugh: in the garden death scene of Corleone - said to have been mostly improvised - note a similarity when he tries to amuse his grandson.
• Moe Greene's death scene was inspired by Battleship Potemkin (1925).
• During the famous restaurant scene in which Michael Corleone shoots Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey, the screeching sound of an elevated train can be heard throughout the sequence. The sound effect was added in post-production by Francis Ford Coppola and film editor Walter Murch in order to heighten the scene's tension. Unbeknownst to them, there is an actual set of elevated train tracks right in front of the filming location, 3531 White Plains Road in the Bronx.
• After Michael does the assassination, they originally planned an intermission, but director Francis Ford Coppola thought that it would just slow down the pace of the film.
• In the novel and the screenplay, Sonny's death was a flashback. Sonny drives to the tollbooth, then Tom calls Bonasera to reclaim the Don's favor, and then the assassination occurs.
• The most troublesome scenes were shot on the very narrow Mott Street with sidewalks jammed with merchant's wares. This was where Don Corleone exits his olive oil factory and is gunned down.

The Godfather Movie Mistakes

• When Michael is arriving in Las Vegas, supposedly set in the very early 1950s, when he, Fredo, Tom and others are getting out of the car in the hotel driveway, two long-haired, bearded "hippie types" from the early '70s can be seen through the window in the lobby. (In the DVD commentary, Francis Ford Coppola admits that he is embarrassed by this oversight, but that the shot was done on the cheap by the second unit.)
• When Capt. Mark McCluskey confronts Michael Corleone outside the hospital, the sound of a conversational, female voice is heard emanating from the police vehicles' radios. At the time, however, the New York Police Department's primary radio system was based solely on one-way broadcasts from headquarters, with male police officers behind the microphone.
• When Michael finds his father without protection in the hospital, he picks up the phone by the bed to alert the family. The receiver has a curly cord which wasn't available until the mid- to late-1950s.
• When Michael moves his father's bed from the hospital room into the hallway, there is a sign on the wall over Michael's shoulder which lists Robert O. Lowery as the Fire Commissioner. He was Commissioner in the 1970s, not the 1940s (it should have been Patrick Walsh).
• 50 star U.S. flag in 1947 (on the building where the "peace conference" is held).
• When the funeral procession drives into the graveyard, 1970s 18-wheelers and vehicles can be seen on the freeway at the top left and top right of the scene. The freeway with these vehicles is visible throughout the scene during various shots.
• At the airport at night, a swept tail Cessna 182 is shown. Production of this airplane didn't start until approximately the mid-1960s.
• In several scenes, wine bottles are shown with the DOC Italian wine classification designation shown on the bottle. DOC designations did not come in effect until 1963.
• In late 1945, the Empire State Building is shown with the 222-foot television antenna mast that it did not acquire until 1950.
• There is a newspaper shown with the article about Don Corleone's discharge from the hospital. In the lower right is a Table Of Contents, with the first item "TV-Radio Listings." If TV listings existed at all in 1946, they would not be noted before radio listings.
• When Vito is taken home in the ambulance, the curbing on the side of the road is painted yellow to indicate "no parking". However, this practice was not incorporated until the 1960s.
• The accordion played in the wedding scene was an "Excelsior" model that was not manufactured until the 1950s. The same goes for the "prop" accordion seen in the shoot-out, where the accordion is on a chair with the bellows open. The older accordions did not have the same features.
• Michael reads a New York Mirror newspaper account of his father's brush with death. The page is fabricated but inserted into an actual newspaper, which appears to be the NY Daily News. The Daily News page on the opposite side shows a story about a Catholic mass celebrated at St. Patrick's Cathedral, written by a reporter with a Hispanic surname. A minority's byline would never have appeared in the News at that time; minorities did not attain the status of reporters at that newspaper until the late 1960s or early 1970s. Also, the barely readable text in the story says the mass was said by Terence Cardinal Cooke, who was then a parish priest and did not become a cardinal until 1969.
• The main gate of Woltz International Pictures shows the rear of a car which is either a 1952 or 1953 Chrysler.
• 50-star flags are visibly seen down the street just before Michael and Kay finish they Christmas shopping.
• When Apollonia drops her nightgown, she has tan lines from a bikini top. Apollonia would not have been allowed to wear a bikini given her family values.
• Tom Hagen flies to California to see the movie producer in a Lockheed Constellation. The first production model of the Lockheed Constellation was not produced until 1947, and did not enter commercial service until even later. Tom's flight was apparently in 1945 ("almost 1946" according to movie dialog).
• As Mama Corleone is singing at Connie's wedding, the pianist above and to our right is wearing glasses with 1970s plastic frames.
• When Vito Corleone is being shot at, one of the thugs is carrying a Beretta model 70 which was not in production until 1958.
• The plots of the first two movies take place from the 1940s to the early 1960s; however, Diane Keaton appears wearing one of the most popular hairdos of the 1970s, the part in the middle of the head that Kate Jackson would make world famous in CHARLIE'S ANGELS.
• In the scene where Vito is being returned home via ambulance, a pale yellow 1947 Lincoln Convertible is also shown. It is supposed to be 1945 "almost 1946" according to Hagan.
• As Vito Corleone comes home from the hospital, a newspaper article is shown that reads "Syndicate Big Shot Corleone Goes Home" the table of contents shows "TV / Radio" listings. It's unlikely TV listings were in the newspaper in the 1940s.
• During Sonny and Carlo's fight, one of Sonny's "movie" punches is shot from the wrong angle and clearly misses, but still produces the sound of an impact.
• When Moe Greene says his line "I talked to Barzini," it's clearly obvious the line was dubbed in.
• When Sollozzo releases the abducted Tom Hagen, he says to him "...and bad luck for you if you don't make that deal!" His lip movements, however, show that he only says "...and bad luck for you!"
• (at around 1h 29 mins) There is blood on the forehead before there is a shot.
• In Vito's brush with death, one hitman's pistol emits a muzzle flash, visible just after a cut to the overhead shot of them running away, but there is no accompanying sound effect for this last gunshot.
• When Don Corleone is heard, off camera, introducing the heads of the other families and where they're from, at the meeting, his voice is noticeably different than it was in scenes before or after.
• During the scene of the meeting between Moe Green and Michael, The boom mic can be seen clearly, as Moe sits down for the first time. A shadow also reflects a hurried movement behind the camera.
• When Tom Hagen is trying to convince Sonny not to go to war after Vito Corleone was almost murdered, he states that the Corleone family will be outcasts and all the five families will go after the Corleone family. However, the Corleone family is one of the five families, so he should have said that the other four families will go after the Corleone family.
• (at around 2h 30 mins) At the Don's funeral one of the participants makes the sign of the cross incorrectly. He does Top, Right, Bottom, Left. It's Top, Bottom, Left, Right.
• When an old man sings "A Luna Mezzo 'O Mare" during the wedding celebration, his dentures can be seen coming loose. He re-sets his teeth without missing a note.
• When Sonny is beating Carlo, the actor Frank Sivero is watching the fight. Frank Sivero played the young Genco Abbandando in the "back in time" scenes in The Godfather 2.
• When Vito Corleone shows Johnny Fontane out of his office, we see an extra walk onto the frame from the left, but as soon as she sees Vito, she quickly lets out a little smile and backs away, as if she was in the wrong place.
• In a scene in a kitchen, gun shots are heard. Sonny's wife goes to Sonny, but she yells "Jimmy", the nickname of the actor playing Sonny Corleone, James Caan.
• Vito is referred to in newspaper headlines as an "Underworld Chief" and "Syndicate Big-Shot." The Corleones present themselves as olive oil importers, and Michael points out that they have newspaper reporters on their payroll. As neither Vito nor his associates have ever been convicted of a crime, surely they could get the newspapers to go along with their olive oil cover story.
• When Michael Corleone is leaving the safe-house in Sicily by car to meet Apollonia, the driver clips the gate on the way out causing the hanging decoration to fall off.
• When Don Corleone is talking to the pastry shop owner during the wedding scene, the man is holding a small shot glass. As he is getting up to grab Don Corleone's hands, the glass is still in his hand but in the next shot it is gone.
• Fredo removes his sunglasses twice during Michael's meeting with Moe Green.
• The waiter fills Tom Hagen's glass twice within seconds during his dinner with Woltz.
• Enzo (the baker) visits Don Corleone in the hospital after he is critically wounded. Enzo is holding a large bouquet of pink carnations and baby's breath. Later, when he is standing outside the hospital with Michael, the bouquet has been changed to a much smaller one with orange carnations.
• In the wedding scene, immediately after Kay Adams meets Tom Hagen, the cigarette in her hand disappears and then re-appears.
• When the Godfather is talking to Johnny Fontaine in his office, Sonny Corleone is also present. Then, the scene cuts to the entrance of the wedding cake outside. Sonny can be seen with the white flower in his lapel standing by the cake. Then, the scene goes back to the office where Sonny is still present with the Godfather.
• The blood on the bed in the "horse head" scene. First it's there, then it disappears.
• While Michael is talking to Apollonia's father after he has given her the necklace. The same two people pass by twice - once in a close-up of Apollonia and the other in a wider shot.
• When Sonny talks to Paulie in the meeting room and tells him to get some brandy for his cold, his right hand is between his legs. In the next shot, Sonny's right hand is on top of the couch.
• When Michael is telling Kay about Luca Brasi, she has a cigarette in her left hand which disappears and re-appears between shots. A few seconds later, the cigarette is gone and Kay has a fork in her left hand which then jumps to her right hand.
• After Vito Corleone's brush with death, Fredo sits next to the front of the car on the pavement and next to Vito's head. But following that, when pedestrians walk towards Vito, Fredo is gone, then he is back in the same place in the next shot.
• When the dons meet, one of them sits back twice: once before and once after an edit.
• After his brush with death, Don Corleone lays on his back with his right arm folded on his chest. Thereafter he appears turned to his left side, with his right arm stretched-out on his right side.
• When Salvatore 'Sal' Tessio brings the package of dead fish to the meeting in Vito Corleone's study, the paper is disarranged and a little open. But when Sonny Corleone takes it, it is tidy.
• When Michael gets in the car with Virgil 'The Turk' Sollozzo and Capt. Mark McCluskey, we see that there is a long distance between the two men on the back seat and Michael on the front seat. However, in the next shot, with Michael in close-up, the two others appear just behind him.
• When Michael meets Moe Green in Vegas to buy him out, he gets out a pack of cigarettes, then we cut to another angle and he does it again.
• After leaving the 'peace conference' the interior camera in their car shows Don Corleone and Tom Hagan discuss various aspects of the meeting, While this discussion is going on, the headlights of a tailing car is observed the whole time, right up close to their own car. However, the scene cuts immediately to a roadside camera, showing the Don's car speed off into the distance, but the tailing car is nowhere to be seen.
• In the closing scene when Michael allows Kay to "ask about his business," the knot in his necktie goes from crooked to straight during the course of the scene, but we never see him straighten it.
• While Michael is telling Kay the story of Luca Brasi, the gun and the contract, Michael is leaning back in his chair, but we cut to Kay on the other side of the table and Michael is leaning forward.
• In the first scene of the film, Bonasera approaches Don Corleone to whisper to him. He keeps his left arm by his side. In the next shot he takes his left hand from Don Corleone's chair back.
• When Capt. Mark McCluskey harasses Michael Corleone at the hospital, Michael's jacket changes. Michael's jacket is open a few inches near his tie as McCluskey pulls back his arm to hit Michael. After the cut, his jacket is closed and straight when he gets punched.
• As Luca Brasi is sitting outside Don Corleone's office talking to himself, practicing his little tribute, he is clearly wearing a rectangular-faced watch with 'solid' strap on his left wrist. A few moments later as he gives his thanks to Don Corleone, the watch has become round-faced with chain link strap.
• When Luca Brasi is killed in the bar scene, the knife is clearly thrust thru his left hand. However in the subsequent shot showing him sinking down as he is being strangled the knife appears thru his right hand.
• As Sonny Corleone receives the fish, the pillow on his lap changes positions in between shots.
• Before Vito is shot, he looks down the street and sees the two assassins turn a corner. They turn left to face towards him, indicating they were on the same side of the street as Vito. When they start running towards him, however, they step to the left to get on to the street. That would mean they had to be on the opposite side of the street.
• The gun that Sonny Corleone gets from the drawer in the dining room when Peter Clemenza comes to the house following the attempt on the Don's life, is in his belt, disappears when he throws Clemenza against the counters and re-appears as he turns around after talking to his wife.
• When Michael reads the paper about his father's brush with death, he crumples it and then starts to run across the street. The paper is crumpled in his hand as a car passes in front of him on the street. After the car passes, Michael throws the paper down. When he does this, the paper is very smooth and neatly folded.
• Walking down a hill immediately following the wedding ceremony in Sicily, Fabrizio loosens his tie, the camera cuts away, then back, to show him loosening his already loosened tie.
• The coffee-cup that Virgil 'The Turk' Sollozzo drinks from in the scene where Tom Hagen is held hostage is seen again at the hospital when Michael Corleone visits his father. When Michael looks into one of the staff rooms, the coffee cup is there next to the half-eaten sandwich.
• After Fredo yells at Michael for trying to negotiate with Moe Greene, we see a shot of Michael smoking. As Michael exhales, we see a cloud of smoke quickly disappear from his mouth as the camera splices to another take of the shot.
• Level of wine in the glasses while Michael and Kay are having dinner following the attempted assassination of Vito Corleone.
• The level of wine in Vito Corleone's glass when he is discussing Barzini's move to kill Michael.
• When Tom Hagen is talking to Jack Woltz about putting Johnny Fontane into is new film, when they are standing by the door, then the right side of Jack Woltz and the left side of Tom Hagen are in light, but in a close up the same sides are completely in shadow.
• During the Sallazzo/McCluskey assassination, then Michael Corleone's revolver changes from a blued finish, to a nickel plate finish, then back to blued finish.
• When Don Corleone is shot 5 times and he falls down, there is no blood on his coat. The next camera shot shows bullet holes and blood on his coat.
• When Michael returns to New York from meeting Moe Green in Vegas, two black sedans pull into the Corleone compound, with Michael and Kay apparently in the second sedan. The cut to the interior of the vehicle shows Michael, Kay and their son in the back seat of a two-door vehicle, not a four door.
• When Tom Hagen is having dinner at film producer Jack Woltz's home, the butler fills Tom Hagen's half-empty wine glass. In the next shot, Hagen's glass is one-third filled and the butler is filling it again.
• When Tom Hagen is seen walking down the Woltz Studios backlot street, he is carrying a suitcase or large duffel bag in his left hand. However, as he turns into the sound stage to meet Mr. Woltz, he is suddenly carrying a standard briefcase in his right hand, and the suitcase is gone.
• When the package of dead fish is placed in Sonny's lap, the position of his hands changes in close-up.
• After Sonny Corleone tells 'Mama' Corleone that 'Pop' is hurt; he tears off a piece of bread, opens it, and grabs some peppers and onions. While Sonny eats in his father's den, he calls Salvatore 'Sal' Tessio for back-up and opens his father's safe. The sandwich is seen finished as Sonny dials and it re-appears while he says "Come on, Luca".
• When Tom addresses Woltz studio, he is carrying the suitcase in his left hand. But indoors he appears with the suitcase in his right hand.
• The placement of Moe Green's drink during his meeting with Michael Corleone.
• Kay's hands when she asks Michael when she will see him again.
• A glass of wine in the wedding scene.
• After shooting Virgil 'The Turk' Sollozzo and Capt. Mark McCluskey, Michael Corleone walks into the camera.
• When Sollozzo is taking Michael to the restaurant for their conference, his car drives onto a bridge, where Michael sees a sign reading "To New Jersey", and he asks, "We're going to Jersey?", just before the car U-turns in mid-span. In fact, the only bridge between Manhattan (where they picked Michael up) and New Jersey is the George Washington Bridge, and the bridge on which the car is shown is definitely not the GWB. (It may be the Williamsburg or 59th Street bridge.)
• The use of the title 'Don' is incorrect as the proper use of this term of respect is always attached to the individual's first name, not surname. Marlon Brando's character should have been addressed as Don Vito, not Don Corleone. Same rule would apply to the other 'Dons'... Barzini, Fanucci, etc.
• The typefaces shown in the headlines of the various New York City newspapers depicted are almost all incorrect for the newspapers shown.
• If McClosky had broken Michael's jaw, then Michael shouldn't have been able to talk so soon afterward, when he is discussing the hit on Solazzo and McClosky in the restaurant. His jaw would have been wired.
• When seen in uniform at the wedding, Michael's shirt collars are missing his captain's bars. Marine Corps officers wear their rank insignia on their shirt collar points as well as on the epaulets of their coats.
• When Sonny beats up Carlo, James Caan can be clearly seen in profile faking a punch so badly that he misses Gianni Russo by a foot and a half, with his fist passing within eight inches of his own chest.
• When Michael is at his father's funeral he says he will meet with the heads of the 5 families. But since he is the head of one of the families he should have said he would meet with the other 4 heads of the families. Moe Greene was not a family head.
• Kay's hair style when she and Mike are having dinner just before he goes to the hospital to see his father is more suitable to the 1970s or later not the 1940s.
• During the hospital scene, as Michael and the nurse are wheeling Vito's bed into the storage room, they almost pinch Vito's hand in the door frame. He jerks his hand out of the way.
• Michael Corleone supposedly won the Navy Cross during World War II, but the ribbon for the Navy Cross does not appear on his Marine uniform at the wedding party scene in The Godfather.
• When Vito Corleone learns that Santino 'Sonny' Corleone is dead, he tells Tom Hagen to call the undertaker Amerigo Bonasera, because "He'll need his services". However, at this point, Tom Hagen has only told him that Sonny is shot, he has not told him that Sonny's body is bullet-ridden head to toe. "They shot Sonny" could very well mean a clean shot in the chest or the belly, which would not show in any open-casket funeral. So there is no reason for Vito Corleone to call for Bonasera's services yet.
• When the two hit men try to kill Vito, they fire a total of nine shots from very close, almost point blank. We see that both guns are aligned perfectly to hit him on the back during all nine shots. But he only receives five wounds.
• The exterior set-up shot for the summit meeting of all families is of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. While this seems like an unlikely place for a "family" meeting, it's an indication of how high their influence reaches.
• The car Michael and Apollonia drive is a right-hand drive, whereas Italy drives on the right and you would expect vehicles to be left-hand drive. However Italian car manufacturers Alfa-Romeo and Lancia continued to produce cars with right hand drive for sale in Italy until the 1950s.
• The punch to Michael's face broke his cheek bone which gave him a permanent black eye (and caused his sinuses to continually run - hence the use of a handkerchief all the time) until he got back to America and had surgery to fix it (Freddie says, "that doctor did a good job.")
• When Michael is moving Vito to a different room in the hospital with the help of the nurse, we can see that Marlon Brando instinctively moves his hand when it hits the door post. However he is conscious, hence his crying while Michael is holding his hand, just heavily sedated due to the pain inflicted by his gunshot wounds.
• Clemenza's house has an A/C hanging out the window. However, window air conditioners were first marketed in the mid-1930's - and, even though they were expensive, Clemenza would have been able to afford one.
• The Corleones discover where the meeting will take place from an informer at the police station. However, Virgil 'The Turk' Sollozzo would surely have known that the police captain had to remain on call 24 hours a day, and in any case, Capt. Mark McCluskey would have given a false location.
• How Salvatore 'Sal' Tessio knew that the Sicilian message meant that Luca Brasi was dead, and not someone else. The bulletproof vest could be anyone's.
• During the sequences filmed in Sicily, Michael's broken-jaw make-up does not match the make-up used during the sequences filmed in New York. This is because Paramount Pictures would not pay the costs of sending makeup artist Dick Smith to Italy with the rest of the crew.
• Outside the hospital, as Capt. Mark McCluskey prepares to punch Michael Corleone, as the shot changes showing McCluskey (Sterling Hayden) punching Michael, it is clearly not Sterling Hayden throwing the punch as evidenced by the longer, brown hair of the man doing the punching (vs. Hayden's short, grey hair).
• Watch closely during the fight between Sonny and Carlo and you can see Carlo slightly jumping as Sonny throws him over the little fence.
• When Michael gets out of the car in front of the hotel in Las Vegas, he is with his brother, Fredo. However, it is clearly not John Cazale (Fredo) getting out of the car, but someone else (notice the hairstyle in the scene).
• When Cuneo is killed in the revolving door, the bullet holes appear too late after each shot. The holes also appear nowhere near where the gum was aiming when shot.
• When Sonny is beating up Carlo, the actor is momentarily changed to a stuntman who doesn't look much like Gianni Russo.
• In the scene when MIchael confronts Carlo about setting up Sonny, you can see a stand-in for Robert Duvall playing Tom Hagen in the background. He is kept in the background, off camera, and then blocked by Michael to obscure the fact that it is not Robert Duvall.
• When Sonny is beating up Carlo in the street, you can clearly see that one of the punches does not get anywhere near Carlo's face, but Carlo still shows a reaction to the "punch".
• When Michael Corleone shoots Capt. Mark McCluskey in the restaurant, he shoots him twice. The first shoot is to the neck, and McCluskey grabs his throat and starts gasping. For a brief second, before the second shot, you can see the mark on his forehead where the head shot will be, revealing where the fake blood will come from.
• When Michael Corleone calls home after his father's brush with death, the dial on the pay phone is clearly out of alignment.
• The goof items below may give away important plot points.
• Just before he is shot, Don Corleone shops for fruit at a shop. Cardboard boxes of Sunkist oranges in that shot feature graphics that weren't introduced until the 1970s. In 1945 most oranges were still shipped in wooden crates.
• The stop sign in New England when Michael returns from Sicily (before his father dies in 1953) is red and white. Stop signs were yellow and black at that time and did not change to red and white until the mid/late-1950s.
• Shortly before Paulie is killed the car is shown driving past a run of guardrail with steel posts, first used in the mid 1960s.
• (1:53:44) After Sonny is shot, When the shot is on the toll booth a yellow 1970s car can be visibly seen driven past out the window.
• Sonny dies in late 1948 or early 1949; however, he was listening to the 3 October 1951 radio broadcast of Russ Hodges calling the Dodgers-Giants playoff, a half-inning before Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World," two years later.
• After Michael Corleone kills Virgil 'The Turk' Sollozzo and Capt. Mark McCluskey, there is a series of newspaper headlines. The last one is an article entitled "Syndicate Big Shot Vito Corleone Returns Home". In the corner of that paper is an "Index", which has a line beginning "TV/Radio". In 1945 or 46, there would not be TV-listings, even in New York newspapers, as so few people owned TV at that time.
• A building reflected in the window of the police car during the assassination of Barzini was built more than ten years after the scene takes place.
• When Sonny is driving up to the fatal toll booths, the camera shot has a microwave tower in the background.
• At the Don's funeral, the other crime family heads arrive in Cadillac models from the mid-1950s, several years after their own murders, which are said throughout the series to take place in either 1950 or 1953.
• The revolver Michael uses to murder Sollozzo and McCluskey is a recently manufactured Smith and Wesson Chiefs Special.
• When Connie is yelling at MIchael because he had Carlo killed, she also yells at Kay, "That's your husband, that's your husband." Her lips do not match what she is saying.
• When Al Neri (dressed as a police officer) kills Barzini and his bodyguards, he clearly fires all six rounds from his pistol. However, only five shots are heard on the soundtrack.
• During the baptism, when two of Michael's assassins burst into a room, the sound of a large and unwieldy 50 cal machine gun can be heard, but both of them are holding much smaller submachine guns.
• When Don Corleone is talking to Michael, just before the Godfather dies in the garden, he asks Michael if he's happy with his wife and his children. Michael & Kay only had 3-year-old Antony at that time.
• When Tom Hagen tells Don Corleone about Sonny's death, Corleone says "Consigliere of mine, I think you should tell your Don what everyone seems to know." Marlon Brando pronounces the G in Consigliere. Any Sicilian would know that the G in this word is silent.
• When Carlo Rizzi is garroted, if one looks through the rear window, it is apparent that the driver started the car and pulled into traffic, all while Carlo is struggling and kicking out the windshield. That means the driver is now driving down a city street in broad daylight, all while a dead man is in the front seat with his feet sticking through a broken windshield. It would have been far better to have killed Carlo in seclusion.
• Sonny's windshield is shattered by machine-gun fire, but is whole again by the time his bodyguards arrive.
• When Tom Hagen is abducted by Virgil 'The Turk' Sollozzo after Christmas shopping, it is clearly night-time. In the next scene, then Don Vito Corleone is gunned down and it is clearly day-time. Later, Sollozzo tells Hagen that they hit the Don about an hour after they abducted Hagen.
• The death of Barzini: During the string of shootings during the baptism, Don Barzini (Richard Conte) is shot on the courthouse steps. In the medium close shot, the squib bullet-hits are clearly visible. In the long shot, however, Conte's stunt double tumbles down the stairs without any bullet holes on the back of his jacket.
• Michael Corleone fires his gun twice at Capt. Mark McCluskey in the scene. The camera is on Michael for the first gunshot. The cut to McCluskey after the first gunshot shows him to reaching for his throat and making gurgling noises , indicating he's been shot in the throat. In that same long shot, the bullet-wound to the head appears after the throat reaction. For the second gunshot, the camera cuts back to Michael firing the gun, then cuts to McCluskey, where the forehead's gunshot-wound appears after and in response to the second gunshot.
• When Sonny is machine-gunned on the causeway, bullet holes appear at the roof line of his car, then disappear, then appear again.
• When Woltz first sees Khartoum's head lying on his bed, the blanket is covering part of the neck stump. In the next shot, the blanket has been completely removed from the stump.
• During Vito's death scene, he removes the orange peel from his mouth before start coughing. The camera then cuts to Anthony and back to Vito, and the peel is back in his mouth.
• When Don Corleone is shot at the fruit stand, Fredo stumbles out of the car, fumbling with a gun and lurching, nearly falling forward. The next shot, from overhead, shows Fredo walking steadily around the car toward the Don. The third shot, back at ground level, shows Fredo stumbling again.
• During the string of shootings during the baptism, the guy in the bed with the woman falls down twice. Just before and after the cut from far to close.
• When Al Neri shoots Barzini's chauffeur, he is apparently shot in the chest. In the next shot, the chauffeur is lying on the ground with a small pool of blood coming from the back of his head.
• While he instructs Michael Corleone how to behave after to kill Virgil 'The Turk' Sollozzo and Capt. Mark McCluskey, then Peter Clemenza has a cigarette in the mouth. From one shot to another, when Michael passes in front of him, the cigarette jumps to his left hand.
• The amount of blood on Sonny after he is murdered on the causeway.
• The death of Carlo Rizzi. As Carlo's suitcase is packed, Michael Corleone, Tom Hagen, and Al Neri walk out of the house and then pause as they look on while a fourth man is locking the front door. Once Carlo sits in the front seat, through the windows in the background, Michael, Tom, and Al are no longer standing there - they're still walking out of the house and haven't yet reached the spot where they were standing in the previous shot.
• During Vito's funeral, when Michael stands up to talk to Tessio, the face of Mama can be briefly seen under his arm, tinted orange-red and chewing gum. After Roger Ebert reported this in his "Movie Answer Man" column in 2001, Francis Ford Coppola and Kim Aubry investigated: they confirmed that Morgana King was not supposed to be in the shot, but had gotten into it by an accidental reflection in the optics, probably off a filter (hence the tint) in the matte box.
• After Michael shoots Sollozzo and McCluskey, he bumps into the camera as he passes it exiting the restaurant
• When Peter Clemenza goes for a pee, crew reflected in side window of car in which Rocco Lampone has just shot Paulie Gatto.
• The opening cemetery shot of Vito Corleone's funeral procession shows two towers side by side in the distance which are incorrectly thought to be the World Trade Center towers. They are in fact smokestacks, complete with smoke, and are in nearly the opposite direction as Lower Manhattan and WTC.
• The thoroughbred racehorse Khartoum has a white "star" emblazoned on his forehead. On his severed head in the bed there is no white star.
• The dead Capt. Mark McCluskey blinks.
• The eyes in Khartoum's severed head have obvious cataracts (which are typically caused by old age and/or degenerative diseases such as diabetes). That is hardly what you'd expect to find in a champion stallion in the prime of his life.
• After Sonny is gunned down, when his bodyguards arrive you can see shallow breathing from his chest.
• When Cuneo is killed in the revolving door of the hotel the first shot breaks the glass in front of him but no blood squib appears on his shirt. It is not until the second shot goes off does blood appear.

FAQ on The Godfather Movie

Was Tom Hagen the one who put the horse's severed head in Jack Woltz's bed?

It was in fact Luca Brasi that did it but certain sections of this scene, and also the following scene where Tom, Vito, and Sonny are meeting in the living room, that indicate this were cut from the final edit of the film. Tom left Woltz's home then returned to New York where he was meeting with Sonny and Vito. At the end of this meeting, Vito asks Tom more info about Woltz, and then finally says "All right - send Luca Brasi to me. I think we're going to find a way to reason with this Mr. Jack Woltz." A cross-fade then occurs to the beginning of the horse head scene outside Woltz's home, as opposed to where this scene is placed in the final film.

What is the piano composition played during the "mattresses" montage?

"This Loneliness" by Carmine Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola's father. Mr. Coppola is playing the song live in the scene. The song is not on the soundtrack album but was on the LP "The Godfather Wedding Album" which is out of print and not available on CD. It also is not the same as the one on the Godfather Wedding Album LP. The version in the film is piano only, whereas the version on the album lasts a little longer and has other instruments.

Why did Sollozzo and Bruno kill Luca Brasi?

Don Vito was suspicious of Sollozzo. So he asked Luca to pretend to be unhappy with the Corleone family and go to the Tattaglias to find out what he could about their deal with Sollozzo. When meeting with Bruno Tattaglia and Sollozzo, Sollozo offers Luca $50,000 to come and work for him instead. When Sollozzo offers his hand to make the deal, Luca doesn't accept it. This may be because Luca thinks of himself as honourable, knowing he wasn't actually betraying the Corleones, he couldn't in good conscience shake Sollozzo's hand to make the deal. Which tipped Sollozzo that Luca was trying to spy (or he simply took offense to the snub) which is why he stabs Luca in his right hand while one of Tattaglia's men strangled Luca. He may have also become suspicious that someone like Luca, who had a reputation for being a fiercely loyal Corleone enforcer would so easily betray them for some money. Michael may have become aware of this; as in The Godfather Part III, he tells Vincent to go to Don Altobello and act displeased with Michael, but if Altobello asked him to betray Michael, to act offended. Because that would be his trap to determine his loyalty. Alternatively, Sollozzo needed Luca out of the way because he was already planning the hit on Vito and even if he hoped Luca's defection was real, Luca likely wouldn't be happy about them killing Vito. So Luca had to die. As Tom says, "Not even Sonny will be able to call off Luca Brasi", to which Sollozo replied, "Yeah, well let me worry about Luca", as he already had him taken care of.

Useful External Links

The Godfather Movie on Wikipedia 

The Godfather Movie on IMDB