Like most books, Mario Puzo’s novel is much more in-depth than its visual companion. Every thought, every doubt, every trait, every significant action, every insignificant action, basically everything that could have conceivably been mentioned was mentioned in the book. No single movie could ever possibly include every aspect of a work of such detail; could any studio budget possibly pay for enough rolls of film?
The
movie focuses more on the lives of the Corleone family and the Corleone “family”
than on its outside characters such as Amerigo Bonasera, Nino Valenti, and
Johnny Fontane (for more interesting information on Johnny
Fontane, click on his name). For example, the movie managed to leave out an
extremely pivotal criminal moment that the book discussed in great detail,
that of the Godfather’s rigging of the Academy Awards
in Johnny Fontane’s favor. While the book goes into great detail on the Academy
Awards scheme and many other trials and tribulations that
Bonasera, Valenti, Fontane and many more characters
experience, they all only appear briefly in the film. Perhaps when Puzo was
making the screenplay version of his book, he didn’t want to focus too much
on the lives of these characters, as their respective stories may have seemed
inconsequential in comparison to that of the epic saga of the Corleone’s. Furthermore,
just the first film is nearly three hours. Including even one more storyline
would have pushed the film beyond acceptable length.
The novel contained all
of the material seen in the first movie, as well as the young Vito Corleone’s
entrance and rise in the crime underworld that was seen in its sequel. Since
there was such a wealth of rich history of Vito Corleone and his family that
was written in the novel, but not included in the first film, it seems natural
that a sequel would follow, provided that there was enough public interest
(which of course there was).
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