Thought, Feeling, and The Cinema of Francis Ford Coppola: The Rain People As Exemplum

Abstract

The Coppolas, Francis Ford and his daughter, Sophia, both have the same artistic problem: neither is a thinker. The father has always been short on thought; indeed, he stumbles when he thinks, when he thinks he’s thinking. The Godfather (1972, 1974, 1990) was strongest in its execution—also its executions—not in its adolescent implications of analogy between the Mafia and corporate capitalism (an analogy that ignores, among other things, the origins of the Mafia and its blood bonds of loyalty, which have nothing to do with capitalism).