We examine how shadows help shape the characters in The Godfather.
Works Cited & Consulted:
* Konow, David (Aug 14, 2014). “Filming The Light and Dark Side of The Godfather.” Tested.
* Chiang, James (Jul 23, 2015). “Shot Analysis: The Godfather.” Animated Spirit.
* wolfcrow (Feb 24, 2016). “Understanding the Cinematography of Gordon Willis.” YouTube.
* kolatian (May 27, 2008). “Cinematographer Gordon Willis talks about Godfather.” YouTube.
* Graff, Walter. “Lighting Is All About Chiaroscuro.” North Dakota State University.
* Cruz, Gilbert (Mar 14, 2012). “40 Things You didn’t Know about the Godfather.” Time Magazine.
* crafttruck (Apr 4, 2013). “Gordon Willis – Craft Truck – Through the Lens – S01E09.” YouTube.
* Lebo, Harlan. The Godfather Legacy: The Untold Story of the Making of the Classic Godfather Trilogy. Touchstone, 2005.
* Schaefer, Dennis, and Larry Salvato. Masters of Light: Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers. University of California Press, 2013.
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Transcript provided by Youtube:
00:00
I wanna make them an offer again with
00:04
you if it hadn’t been for the Godfather
00:07
the dark visual worlds of your favorite
00:10
movies and shows today might never exist
00:12
the harsh contrasts of light and dark in
00:15
the shadowy corleone world visually
00:17
embody the battle between good and evil
00:19
within the soul of every man and
00:21
particularly one man our protagonist
00:24
Michael Corleone this is a world of
00:28
duality in which people make tough
00:30
choices it’s a world of hard rules hard
00:33
lines and thus hard light characters are
00:36
lit from above or from the side often
00:39
without the standard fill light to
00:40
illuminate the second side of the face
00:42
the half of the face and dark reinforces
00:45
that every human being hides some
00:47
unknowable piece of himself yes dark had
00:49
been done before The Godfather
00:51
film noir and German Expressionism
00:53
harnessed the power of the shadow in
00:54
black and white photography but the
00:56
Godfather cinematographer Gordon Willis
00:58
earned the nickname Prince of Darkness
01:00
for the way he brought the art of shadow
01:02
and deliberate under exposure to color
01:04
cinematography at the time movies tended
01:09
to be bright verging on over lit so
01:11
they’d be visible at drive-ins The
01:12
Godfather so defiantly floated this
01:15
lighting standard that paramount
01:16
panicked when they first saw the footage
01:18
Willis has said his vision for The
01:20
Godfather was based on evil he saw the
01:23
dark cinematography as a reflection of
01:25
the movies soul the very first shot a
01:27
close-up announces we’re about to see a
01:30
film about the depths of darkness within
01:32
the human soul this slow zoom out
01:34
develops into an over-the-shoulder shot
01:36
our godfather Marlon Brando’s Don Vito
01:40
he’s in control looking down from a
01:42
position of power but our vision of him
01:45
is obscured the need to emphasize
01:47
Brando’s heavy prosthetic makeup led
01:50
willis to light brando from above at
01:52
times willis provides minimal I light
01:54
the dark eyes making Vito a mystery we
01:57
can never fully understand the man or
01:59
his motivations because the lighting
02:01
won’t let us we can’t see inside
02:04
Michael’s face is relatively brightly
02:06
lit for most of the film but as he gets
02:08
mixed up in the family business his face
02:10
intermittently slips into the dark as
02:13
his innocent and villainous sides
02:15
wrestle to dominate him only in the
02:18
romantic looking Sicilian sections does
02:20
Michael break away into a softer subtler
02:23
light that seems to offer the chance of
02:25
a carefree richly coloured happiness but
02:28
the fantasy of escape is quickly
02:30
revealed to be an illusion by the end
02:33
the shadows over his eyes signal that
02:36
his dark has eclipsed his light at last
02:38
he has become the new Godfather here he
02:41
looks like an angel of death his face
02:43
shrouded and dark is more hidden and
02:45
menacing than his father’s ever was the
02:49
brooding consigliere Tom tends to be
02:51
sideling looking half absorbed by his
02:53
thoughts and knowledge of all dark
02:54
goings-on
02:55
he’s a split person half lawyer half
02:58
criminal almost a Corleone but not a
03:00
Sicilian god damn it if I had a wartime
03:03
consigliere a senior I wouldn’t be in a
03:04
shape the face of the hot-headed brother
03:07
Sonny is well lit and shown in bright
03:09
settings even at the moment of his death
03:11
visually reinforcing that he operates
03:14
too much out in the open he doesn’t have
03:16
the interior life and inner shadow Vito
03:18
and Michael possess thus he could never
03:20
be Godfather kay is remarkably bright
03:23
face symbolizes her fresh-faced naivete
03:26
but here after Michael has begun
03:28
shutting her out hints of darkness first
03:30
cross her face and in the last seen her
03:33
face takes shadow as she finally grasps
03:36
the truth of who Michael is and she’s no
03:38
longer innocent
03:39
the duality also represents the outer
03:42
versus inner worlds of appearance versus
03:45
truth at the start the sunny wedding
03:47
which Willis has described as having a
03:49
Kodachrome II 1942 kind of feel unfolds
03:53
outside projecting the rich happy outer
03:55
appearance of a strong family inside the
03:58
puppet master works and the reality the
04:01
negotiation the manipulation all
04:03
happened in the shadows the film is shot
04:06
in a painterly tableau style in which
04:08
every painstaking frame is so artful it
04:11
could hang on the walls of Uffizi
04:12
gallery Willis’s rich refined colors
04:15
resemble oil paints and his controlled
04:17
chiaro-scuro brings to mind DaVinci
04:20
Rembrandt Vermeer and most strikingly
04:23
the harsh tenebra zhem of Caravaggio
04:26
Willis famously lit so precisely that if
04:28
actors missed their marks they’d be
04:30
engulfed in dark invisible to the camera
04:33
the notoriously perfectionist director
04:36
of photography insisted on almost no
04:37
zooms or modern technology like
04:39
helicopters and that every camera
04:41
placement must represent a point of view
04:43
but director Francis Ford Coppola
04:45
persuaded Willis to make a couple of
04:47
exceptions like the haunting opening
04:49
zoom and the overhead aerial shot when
04:51
Vito is attacked as the story goes
04:53
Coppola argued to Willis this was still
04:55
a POV shot my point of view God’s point
04:58
of view Orson Welles is point of view
05:00
while the Prince of Darkness may have
05:02
been stubborn cinema and TV of the last
05:05
half-century are forever indebted to
05:07
Gordon Willis’s inspired point-of-view
05:10
leave the gun take the cannolis
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video