FILM · 1972 · USA
The Godfather
- Directed by
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Runtime
- 175 min
- Studio
- Paramount Pictures, Alfran Productions, Albert S. Ruddy Productions
354 archived facts 8 topics 5 sources Last reviewed Sep 2026
Spanning the years 1945 to 1955, a chronicle of the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. When organized crime family patriarch, Vito Corleone barely survives an attempt on his life, his youngest son, Michael steps in to take care of the would-be killers, launching a campaign of bloody revenge.
Summary: TMDB
34 Facts From Behind the Scenes of The Godfather
- #001
Cinematographer Gordon Willis earned the nickname 'The Prince of Darkness' for lighting his sets extremely dimly. Paramount Pictures executives initially thought the footage was too dark and objected until Willis and Francis Ford Coppola convinced them it was meant to emphasize the shadowy nature of the Corleone family's business.
- #005
The scene in which Sonny beats Carlo (Connie's husband) was shot over four days and featured more than 700 extras. The use of the garbage can lid was improvised by James Caan.
- #007
To bring realism to the wedding scene (and because he had only two days for it), Francis Ford Coppola let the actors play freely and improvise in the background of the wedding scene. He then shot specific short scenes in between the action.
- #012
A fake horse's head was used for the bedroom scene during rehearsals. A real horse's head, obtained from a dog food factory, was used for the shoot. According to John Marley, his scream of terror was genuine because he had not been told a real head would be used.
- #018
Francis Ford Coppola shot Sonny's assassination scene in a single take with different cameras on each shot. This was because 149 squibs had been taped to James Caan's body to simulate rapid machine-gun fire, and no further take was possible.
- #019
There was a great deal of mooning on set, started by James Caan and Robert Duvall. During rehearsal of the first scene, the pair showed their backsides to Francis Ford Coppola, Marlon Brando and Salvatore Corsitto. Caan told TIME Magazine: 'The best mooning was on Second Avenue. Bob Duvall and I were in a car, Brando was in another car, we pulled up alongside, and I pulled down my pants and stuck my ass out the window. Brando collapsed in the car with laughter.' Richard Bright said it reached the point where every time you opened a door you expected to see someone's backside. Even Al Pacino got in on the act, telling Ladies' Home Journal: 'In a scene where I was sitting behind a table, the costume department made a big fuss about finding me a shirt with a smaller collar. While everyone was looking at the shirt, I took off my pants. When I came out from behind the table I burst out laughing, even though we had to reshoot the scene.' The biggest mooning came when Brando and Duvall showed their backsides to four hundred cast and crew members during filming of the wedding scene. They planned it carefully, and Caan, hearing of the plan, started shouting: 'No, no, not here!' Everyone working on the production and most of the extras dissolved into laughter (some elderly ladies did not appreciate the sight). In the end, Brando was voted best prankster with a heavyweight belt reading 'Moon Champion.'.
- #021
Michael and Kay's scenes at the opening wedding were shot at night. Because of the rushed schedule, Francis Ford Coppola had to fit their scenes in. Cinematographer Gordon Willis was very annoyed at having to set up so much light.
- #022
McCluskey's death was achieved by building a false forehead onto Sterling Hayden's head. A gap was cut in the middle and filled with fake blood, then covered with a prosthetic piece of flesh. During the shot, the plug was pulled quickly using monofilament fishing line invisible on film. The effect made a bloody hole appear suddenly in Hayden's head.
- #023
Gordon Willis had to use top lighting in Marlon Brando's scenes because of his makeup. He decided to extend this to the entire film, which is one of the reasons the film is so dark.
- #029
Although Sonny Corleone's death scene at the highway tollbooth takes place at the Jones Beach Causeway, it was shot on a small airport runway at Mitchell Field on Long Island. The scene was the most expensive to set up and shoot; the setup cost over $100,000 and it was completed in a single take with multiple camera angles. The large billboard beside the tollbooth was placed to block a modern high-rise building from appearing in the background. According to Joe Gelmis, 110 squibs and blood bags were placed on James Caan's body. In addition, more than two hundred holes packed with squibs were made in the 1941 Lincoln car to simulate the ambush attack.
- #030
The slow camera movement that opens the film, beginning on a close-up of Bonasera's face and ending behind Vito's head, takes more than two minutes to complete. It was created with a newly invented computer-timed lens that could be programmed to zoom at specific intervals. There are in fact very few zoom shots in the film, because Francis Ford Coppola and Gordon Willis avoided them for dramatic effect.
- #033
While shooting a scene with Marlon Brando, Lenny Montana opened his mouth to speak and stuck out his tongue, on which was a note reading "fuck you." Brando, always open to a good joke, burst into laughter.
- #053
Mount Loretto Church on Staten Island, where the exterior shots of the baptism scene were filmed, burned down in 1973.
- #064
In the exterior scene at the Las Vegas hotel, before Michael Corleone meets Moe Greene, Fredo Corleone, Michael, Tom Hagen and Al Neri are briefly seen getting out of a car at the hotel entrance. The man in the yellow jacket who appears to be Fredo is not actually actor John Cazale. Likewise, a stunt double is visible getting out of the car as Tom, since the man has grey hair and is clearly not Robert Duvall. For some reason, when this exterior scene was to be shot, John Cazale and Robert Duvall were unavailable, or doubles were used to cut costs. Director Francis Ford Coppola or the assistant director cleverly shot the scene by focusing on Al Pacino and avoiding frontal camera views of Fredo and Tom, preserving the illusion that the original actors appear in the scene.
- #065
Six cameras were used to shoot the wedding scenes, four of them in the garden to film cinema verite footage, along with a roaming sound recordist to capture improvised dialogue. There was also a camera on a helicopter, but most of that footage was too shaky to be used.
- #070
Bill Butler worked uncredited as a cameraman on the scenes shot in Los Angeles while cinematographer Gordon Willis shot at the main locations in New York.
- #086
Francis Ford Coppola held improvisational rehearsal sessions in which the main cast sat down for a family meal while staying in character. The actors could not break character, and Coppola saw this as a way for the family roles seen in the final film to form organically.
- #088
The slap Vito gives Johnny Fontane was not in the script. Marlon Brando improvised the slap, and Al Martino's startled reaction was genuine. According to James Caan, 'Martino didn't know whether to laugh or cry.'.
- #090
James Caan improvised the part where he throws the FBI photographer's camera to the ground. The actor's frightened reaction was genuine. Caan also came up with the idea of throwing money at the man for breaking the camera. In his own words, 'Where I come from, if you break something, you either replace it or pay the owner.'.
- #099
James Caan first heard the expression 'bada-bing!' from the real-life mob boss Carmine Persico, whom he knew, and improvised it for use in the film.
- #117
James Caan denied the rumor that he had come to blows with his co-star Gianni Russo on set. In 2017, Russo claimed that the physical fight between their characters escalated, with Caan allegedly taking out his real-life frustrations. 'Jimmy got a little aggressive,' Russo said in 2017. 'He improvised a few things, like that little baton he threw at me when I came down the steps. He hit me in the head, then threw me over the railing, and when I got outside he was biting my hands, he lifted me with his kicks, none of that was supposed to happen.' Russo continued, 'Jimmy and I are definitely not friends, believe me. The man is crazy.' Now Caan has clarified the fight and told THR that Russo is mistaken. 'He had a fight with somebody else. Not with me,' Caan said. 'I did the fight scene with the stuntman Paul Baxley. He came in and we made up the whole fight. And everything you see there is stuff Paul and I created the day before.'.
- #127
Simonetta Stefanelli, who played Michael Corleone's first wife Apollonia, was only 16 during filming, including her topless scene. 'I had done it in another film too,' she said at the time. 'I don't much like doing it, but if the role requires it, I won't refuse.'.
- #132
Actor Richard S. Castellano (Clemenza) and director Francis Ford Coppola did not get along well during filming. Castellano claimed that for one sequence Coppola maliciously had him do multiple takes of Clemenza running up a staircase, a difficult task for an obese man. The heavy breathing in the take used in the print was not acting.
- #136
While talking about stealing the wedding envelope, John Martino improvised the words 'Madone' (Madonna) and 'sfortunato' (unfortunate).
- #152
Simonetta Stefanelli, who played Apollonia (Michael Corleone's first wife in the Sicily scenes), was only 17 years old during filming.
- #185
According to interviews in the Coppola Restoration DVD set, the film was initially planned to be shown with an intermission because of its three-hour length. The intermission would have come right after Michael kills Sollozzo and McCluskey. This explains the operatic instrumental piece that begins with Michael's escape from the restaurant and the "newspaper" montage that follows, which would have been the first scene after the intermission.
- #203
At the 45th anniversary reunion in 2017, Al Pacino recalled that he made Diane Keaton laugh while describing how both of them were caught up in 'chaos' during the filming of the wedding scene and thought the film would not turn out well: 'We started drinking and we were saying, where are we going with this? We're finished. This is the worst film ever made.'.
- #204
The scene in which Michael visits his father in the hospital was planned to be Marlon Brando's first scene. However, Brando missed his flight and arrived on set at 2 p.m., too late to shoot a scene whose facial makeup preparation alone took two to three hours. According to Robert Evans, when Paramount Pictures sent Brando a $12,000 check to dub the film, Brando called to say they had overpaid him by $4,000 because of the day he missed and asked where to return the money.
- #226
At one point during shooting, Robert Evans felt the film had too little action and considered hiring an action director to finish the job. To please Evans, Francis Ford Coppola and his son Gian-Carlo Coppola developed the long fight scene between Connie and Carlo. As a result, Evans was satisfied enough to let Coppola finish the film.
- #334
While filming The Godfather, Coppola believed he could be fired at any moment, knowing Paramount executives disliked many of his decisions, and he was aware that Evans had approached Elia Kazan to take over directing out of concern that Coppola was too inexperienced for the larger production.
- #335
Coppola suspected editor Aram Avakian and assistant director Steve Kestner of conspiring to have him fired; after Avakian told Evans he lacked enough footage to edit, Evans authorized Coppola to dismiss both, and Coppola described firing people preemptively, as the godfather did. Brando threatened to quit if Coppola was fired.
- #337
To satisfy the studio, Francis Ford Coppola added a few more violent scenes to The Godfather, including the moment when Connie smashes crockery after learning that Carlo has been cheating.
- #339
Coppola assembled a notebook in which he pasted pages from Puzo's novel and noted themes, inclusion decisions and ideas for keeping The Godfather true to Italian culture, and he referred to it while filming.
- #346
To avoid offending Marlon Brando, Francis Ford Coppola said he needed to test equipment so the screen test could be arranged at Brando's California residence.
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