Story, story, story. That's what keeps people coming back time and time again to The Godfather. While Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece has many technical elements in its favour, it all comes back to the engrossing saga playing out on screen.

Coppola's friction with Paramount Studios is well-documented: from the casting of a notoriously difficult Marlon Brando and a then-unknown Al Pacino to the cinematography (Paramount had issues with Gordon Willis' extreme use of shadows - take a look at the poster as an example), and even the studio's insistence on including more violence to give the film greater appeal. What I find most surprising though is that Coppola, who wasn't Paramount's first choice to direct, wasn't interested in the film either until he began to think of it as a metaphor for American capitalism. This is interesting because the gangster genre has always existed at the intersection between American economics and culture, so it should be no surprise that this lifestyle, or this genre, flourished.

Coppola highlights that intersection, makes the metaphor more overt. The Godfather isn't about the cops catching the bad guys, it's about lifestyle. It's about the American Dream of living better, richer and happier than your parents. The desire and opportunity to do so must have been enormous when you were one of the thousands of immigrants coming to America circa 1901 (see The Godfather Part II). As an audience, we're just not interested in the other side of the coin, in following the police investigation and how they might bring these gangsters to justice. How can we be, when their lifestyle is so captivating, when they're living the fantasy we'd like our lives to be, doing what we want, when we want with little regard for the consequences.

The film is just complex enough to reward repeat viewings, but not so confusing as to lose its audience. It doesn't mind dropping major characters for extended periods in order to develop story threads, and brings those threads together in a magnificent, bravura conclusion as Michael Corleone solidifies his position as the Corleone family's new Godfather. It's Michael whose development as a character holds the film together, gives it its narrative and thematic focus, and as such is an entirely convincing piece of writing. His moral descent from decorated war hero to ruthless murderer covers a wide trajectory; love, revenge, loyalty to family. All the while the presence of Brando's Vito Corleone is felt, despite having very little screen time. The character's influence on the other's is palpable, and his death scene is, well, really sad.

There's so many other stand out scenes: Michael's hit on police captain McCluskey and rival gangster Sollozzo, Carlo beating Connie, and Connie's retaliation and Sonny's intervention, Sonny's violent death, Fredo naively hosting Michael at the casino and, of course, the baptism sequence. Coppola stuck to his artistic guns and came out on top. His sensibilities were spot on and he created a truly classic piece of cinema. While Part II is, of course, not very far behind at all, my preference is for this first film. Its story is more cohesive, the world more self-contained; the result being that the whole has a greater overall focus than Part II manages (though I have to admit this is a fairly arbitrary criticism and both movies really need to be considered as a whole). The Godfather remains the quintessential gangster movie. It took the best elements of what had gone before in the genre, while paving the way for all future mob movies.