"The Godfather" Film Analysis by William Haines

Analysing the first 5 or so minutes of The Godfather (1972). The film starts off with a very slow opening title sequence. The first 20 seconds is dedicated to the Paramount logo. After that, it goes dark for an extended period of time, eventually soft music played on a brass instrument, possibly a trumpet or trombone. At around 48 seconds into the runtime of the movie, text appears saying "Paramount Pictures Presents" After it ends there is more darkness, than around about 57 seconds, the name of the movie 'The Godfather' accompanied by 'Maria Puzo' appears on the screen. Keep in mind that music still accompanies the title sequence. The text uses a fade transition, the text fades in and fades out away slowly.

The music, the slow pacing, long title sequence and long transitions join together to create a calm atmosphere.

Suddenly, a voice starts talking at around 1:17. It made me jump when I first heard it. Especially seeing as you don't know what to expect due to the long drawn out title sequence. Then about 2 seconds later. At around about 1:19. The man who is talking appears in the centre of the frame. He fades in slowly. Low key lighting lights up his face as well as High key lighting in some places. The light casts heavy and soft shadows. His eyes are in the shadow. The light has a warm feeling due to the orange-ish tint. His forehead is lit up with a fairly powerful light, while the lower portions of his face are dark. Perhaps his forehead is a defining feature of his character? Or perhaps the light is artificial and is concentrated downwards from an above light. It would make sense at to why the rest of the room is fairly dark.

The camera slowly moves away from the man, we can assume it was either a zoom or a literal pan. The man talks up until 2:49. At around 2:40 you can just about see a character to the left of the frame. The characters are talking over a table and the camera is placed behind the blurred out man, with this evidence we can assume it was definitely a zoom out and not a pan out. The new character is out of focus. A shallow depth of focus. At around 2:52 of the movie, a man hands the character that was talking a drink. He is off screen and only his arm his showed, which probably means that the third character is not important. At around about 3:46, the second characters name is revealed.

At around 4:05, a man comes in and whispers to Corleone. Then at 4:07 the face of the Mafia leader is shown. He doesn't seem very happy. This shots lasts until 4:17 before Corleone finally speaks again. Which leads to an awkward silence. For the rest of the 5th minute the film uses long shots, and for the last 30 seconds it only uses the same shot which is focused on Corleone. Like I said about the title sequence. The pacing is incredibly slow, shots last more than 10 seconds at least. Dialogue is slow, especially with the Mafia leader. Everything is calm, which is reinforced with the Mafia Leaders soft voice typical of a Mafia member.

Unlike our film, it doesn't contain any action at all, it is paced slowly and does not use jumpcuts.