The Godfather

(Note: This review refers to the Blu-ray version of the DVD.)

"It's not personal. It's strictly business." Is it overkill to claim that "The Godfather" on Blu-ray is a sign of the format coming to maturity? Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's best-seller remains the great American epic of the immigrant dream turned family business. Al Pacino stars as Michael Corleone in this dark side of the American Dream story, rising from clean-cut son of New York godfather Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando in an Oscar-winning performance) to ruthless mob leader to modern American businessman trying to pull his family's tentacles from the criminal world. "The Godfather" (1972) has become the great evocation of the dark side of the American Dream ("I believe in America," it begins) and "The Godfather: Part II" (1974) is less a sequel than a further exploration of the family business that both reaches back from and looks beyond the story of the first film, contrasting Michael's increasingly ruthless rise with the life of young Vito Corleone (played by Robert De Niro, who won his first Oscar for the role). Both films won multiple Oscars, including Best Picture, and Coppola picked up a Best Director award for "Part II." Separately the films are masterpieces. Together, they are a landmark work of American cinema. Sixteen years later, Coppola returned to the Corleone clan with "The Godfather: Part III" (1990), a somber look at Michael's efforts to find redemption and pass the torch to the next generation.

Coppola oversaw the restorations and remastering of this new DVD special edition, which is sure to incite message board controversies because it embraces the film grain and purposeful "imperfections" of Gordon Willis' photography. The four-disc Blu-ray set also features the new half-hour "The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't" and the restoration overview "Emulsional Rescue" among the new supplements (all high-definition). They make a marvelous complement to the previous supplements from the original landmark special edition: Coppola's commentary on all three films, deleted scenes and other archival goodies, and the beautiful, feature-length documentary "The Godfather Family: A Look Inside" (1991), a combination "making of" and rumination on the "Godfather" films and one of the best behind-the-scenes documentaries ever made. Also available on a five-disc standard DVD set.