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In August 1945, Don Vito Corleone, known as 'Godfather' to the many Italian immigrants in New York dependent upon his help and protection, presides over his daughter Connie's wedding to the young bookmaker Carlo Rizzi. The lavish ceremony at his Long Beach home is attended by crowds of relatives and friends, among them Tom Hagen, the Don's right-hand man and legal adviser, and Johnny Fontane, a popular singer whom the Don has helped on his way to a successful career. As the wedding celebrations proceed, the Don retires periodically to his office and gives audience to visitors seeking his assistance; one of these is Fontane, who says he is being kept from playing the lead in an important new Hollywood production. The Don sends Hagen to Los Angeles to talk with the producer, Jack Woltz. And when Woltz proves difficult, he finds the severed head of his favourite racehorse in his bed and Fontane gets the starring part without further problems. Back in New York, Hagen attends a meeting that has been requested with the Don by Virgil Sollozzo, a leading member of the Tattaglia Family, closest rivals to the Corleones. Sollozzo proposes that the Don participate in a drug-running operation, and although the Don firmly turns the offer down, Sollozzo notices that Sonny, the eldest Corleone son, is interested. A few weeks later, the Godfather is shot down in the street, clearly so that the way will be open for the Tattaglias to do a deal with Sonny. The old man survives, however, and while he slowly recovers, the Corleones take their revenge. Michael, the youngest son, a war hero previously uninvolved in the Family's underworld activities, shoots both Sollozzo and McClusky, the corrupt police chief who has been helping him, and is then exported hurriedly to Sicily to be out of harm's way during the warfare that promptly breaks loose among the Families in New York. He marries a Sicilian girl, Apollonia, and for two years lives happily in an obscure mountain village until the news reaches him that Sonny has been killed and that the Don has resumed command of the Corleones. Shortly afterwards, Apollonia is killed in an explosion intended for Michael and set off by Fabrizio, one of his own bodyguards. Michael returns to New York to find that the Don has made peace with all the rival Families and that an uneasy truce exists; he marries an American girl, Kay, and sets about taking over the reins from the Godfather, now keen to retire. When Don Vito dies suddenly and the other Families start moving in on Corleone territory, the Godfather's long-range planning finds an efficient champion in Michael. With a series of ruthless murders he takes full revenge against the Tattaglias, settles old scores, disposes of the weak members of his own ranks, and restores the Corleones to full supremacy. A new Godfather has arrived, now the most powerful Family chief in the United States.

Although its action begins in the 1940s, Mario Puzo's gargantuan but enthralling novel is said to portray, by recognisable if not direct allusion, many of the Mafia's more recent manoeuvres in the States. Executions, it seems, are still being carried out in barbers' shops and restaurants, and fish wrapped in dead men's clothes continue - in the context of an annual 1,500 killings in New York alone - to be delivered to gang-land bars. With its financial success a matter of history and its sequel already on the way, The Godfather as a film is thus perhaps more of a social phenomenon than a movie, a curious compendium of legend, fantasy, rumour and thinly disguised fact. That the size of its audience has broken all records indicates the same kind of response as was given to the gangster films of the Thirties (the truth looks so much better in make-up). Yet breaking the rules, The Godfather deals not with the wages of sin but with such upright human virtues as honour, loyalty, justice and the exercise of power. Its personalities, far from being social outcasts, are hard-working members of the community, pursuing the decent living conditions that are the right of every United States immigrant; they may be a little boisterous, but they're quick to defend any woman's honour and to repay any debt. The Godfather himself, while he may have been capable of a slight indiscretion in his youth, is now undoubtedly a man of the highest integrity; he could have been played by Henry Fonda or John Wayne (he practically is), so identifiable is he with Establishment elder statesmanship. And in this sense, despite the hangovers from the old gangster movie tradition - the careful period reconstructions, the vintage cars, the lush furnishings - The Godfather is a modern tale about contemporary private enterprise. The really remarkable aspect of the film, of course, is that in terms of style it's so self-effacing - one might unkindly call it the Love Story of gangster cinema. Coppola has played completely safe and, apart from tinkering a little with the death scenes (the Godfather's, for example, takes rather longer) has mostly filmed Puzo's narrative just as it comes. One result is that the film is far too long: although Lucy Mancini's operation has been predictably omitted, obscure chunks of the tedious Johnny Fontane story still remain, doing little beyond establishing Michael Corleone's new-found authority. Another result, inevitably, is confusion; lesser characters arrive and abruptly depart without it being certain whom they belong to or what they've betrayed or whether we should regret their passing. The holocaust at the end, rather too facilely intercut with a new Corleone baptism, needs particularly careful attention if one is keeping score. With due allowance given to the obvious charm of the wedding reception and the seductive landscapes of the Sicilian sequences, The Godfather is primarily borne along by its battery of excellent performances, two of them by Coppola's 'regulars' Robert Duvall and James Caan, who already proved their worth so impressively in The Rain People. But the film's big discovery is Al Pacino, whose transition from gauche outsider to hardened and inevitable successor to the Godfather is portrayed with finely calculated intensity; almost, but not quite, he steals the film from Brando who, sinking with a sinister calm into the network of folds on his face, nevertheless gives an effortless authoritative impersonation of the Don. Despite some curiously unmemorable qualities, The Godfather would be unimaginable without Brando's hypnotic presence – the elegant gestures, the murmuring comments, the unbending poise. Nevermind that Public Enemy or Scarface or The St Valentine's Day Massacre have been over most of the ground before and more excitingly. Brando makes The Godfather into the kind of offer it's difficult to refuse.

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