Improved Picture and Sound Plus New Supplementary Materials
The Godfather — The Coppola Restoration is a five-disc DVD set containing all three Godfather movies — The Godfather (1972), The Godfather: Part II (1974) and The Godfather: Part III (1990) — that is an upgrade to The Godfather Collection, the DVD set released in 2001. The picture and sound quality of the first two movies is noticeably better in The Coppola Restoration, and The Godfather: Part II, which was split across two discs in the older edition, is now contained on a single disc. All the bonus materials from the 2001 DVD set are brought over to the new edition and about an hour and 21 minutes of new extras are added.
The Life and Times of Michael Corleone (1920-1997)
The Godfather takes place in 1945-55 and chronicles the last years of Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), who heads up a Mafia organization in New York. Before he dies, Vito transfers power to his son Michael (Al Pacino). About a fourth of The Godfather: Part II recounts how Vito (played as a young adult by Robert De Niro) came to New York from Sicily and gradually built the Corleone family crime business from scratch. But the main story in Part II tells how Michael relocates the family to Nevada and runs casinos in 1958-59. The Godfather: Part III centers on an aging Michael buying a huge real estate holding company from the Vatican in 1979, but in doing so he runs afoul of ruthless European criminals. When Michael's health begins to fail, he turns the Corleone family business over to his nephew (Andy Garcia).
Michael grows up surrounded by a tight-knit family that includes his two brothers (James Caan, John Cazale), his sister (Talia Shire) and his father's ward (Robert Duvall). But Michael fares poorly as a family man. His first wife is killed by a car bomb. After his second wife, Kay (Diane Keaton), divorces him, he never remarries. He and Kay have two children, but his son refuses to work with him and his daughter (Sofia Coppola) is gunned down on the steps of the Palermo opera house. Michael ends up dying alone in Sicily with only a puppy to mourn him.
New Supplementary Materials
The Godfather — The Coppola Restoration provides 81 minutes of new bonus materials. Perhaps the most interesting of these is the 26-minute "The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't," in which various film industry people look back at how around 1971 Paramount wanted to make a movie of Mario Puzo's successful novel, but they were unenthusiastic about Francis Ford Coppola, Brando and Pacino, and they didn't want a period setting.
An extremely informative extra is the 19-minute "Emulsional Rescue Revealing The Godfather." This shows how people used computer tools to restore The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II so that they would look more like they did when they were first released in the 1970s.
The most entertaining supplement is the 11-minute "Godfather World," which shows how the movies have influenced American pop culture, especially TV. Humorous clips are shown from The Sopranos, The Simpsons, South Park and other shows.
In the 14-minute "…when the shooting stopped," we learn a little about the post-production of all three Godfather films. There's also a boring four-minute extra titled "The Godfather on the Red Carpet," where young adults who worked in movies like Cloverfield talk about why they love The Godfather. Finally, there are "Four Short Films on The Godfather," which have a total runtime of a little over seven minutes. In one of these, Coppola discusses killing off the character Clemenza because he was unwilling to meet the demands of actor Richard Castellano.
Supplementary Materials Carried Over From the Older Edition
Included with The Godfather — The Coppola Restoration are all of the bonus materials that were in the 2001 DVD set. The longest of these is the reasonably interesting 73-minute feature "A Look Inside," which consists mainly of Francis Ford Coppola and various actors talking about The Godfather films in 1991. Al Pacino discusses his character Michael Corleone, and we also hear from James Caan, Robert Duvall, Robert De Niro, Talia Shire, Andy Garcia and others.
In addition, the DVDs contain about 51 minutes of other behind-the-scenes information spread over nine featurettes. You can hear Coppola and Mario Puzo discuss screenwriting, Gordon Willis talks a little about cinematography, there's some info on the music, a production designer has a few remarks about shooting in Manhattan's Lower East Side, you can see some storyboards, etc.
For fans of additional scenes, there are 34 of them. The most interesting of these is arguably the alternate opening for Godfather III.
Other extras include the Corleone family tree, text biographies of six key people who worked behind the cameras and footage showing the movies being awarded Oscars.
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