The Godfather

IMDB.com rates "The Godfather" as the number one movie of all time. I agree with that assessment. I love "Moonstruck," and it's my personal favorite movie, but "The Godfather" is simply a striking piece of movie-making. Some have said that "Godfather II" is, technically, a better movie. Okay. But the first Godfather movie is mesmerizing; it's a flawlessly told story that captivates the imagination, and leaves images hanging in the mind forever.

Or is it flawless?

The IMDB.com website has a long list of various technical gaffes and anachronisms. I'll let those be. What I'm interested in are things about the movie that detract from the story, the movie, the experience.

I'm trying to come up with something about that movie I don't like -- some aspect of it I could argue with. It's hard ... but here's what I've come up:

• I think the casting of James Caan as "Sonny" is not quite right. The tempestuous nature of Sonny just doesn't seem to align itself with the controlled manner of Vito Corleone or, for that matter, Michael Corleone. I know that the hot-headedness of Sonny is central to the storyline, but still ... I can't quite shake the sense that it's a dissonant aspect of the movie.
• The scene at the tollbooth where Sonny is gunned down crossed the line of believable. I can't imagine that many bullets would allow a man to continue to get out of the car and continue to stand on two feet. It seemed somewhat cartoonish to me.
  

Let's balance that ... here's what I think is the finest aspect of the movie ... in fact, in my opinion the finest moment of film making ever: the scene where Connie's child is being baptized, with Michael serving as godfather. Intercut with that is the slow and deliciously dramatic preparations for and conducting of the killing of the heads of the five families. The organ music, the latin incantations, the sudden silences ... exquisite.