Only 3 Movies Are Better Than ‘The Godfather’

Francis Ford Coppola‘s crime epic The Godfather is a movie so iconic, lauded and ubiquitous that its reputation certainly threatens to overshadow the experience of watching it in present day. Coppola initially, rather famously, didn’t even want to make this adaptation of Mario Puzo‘s pulpy bestseller, but the stars would align for his triumph over an infamously troubled and even dangerous production, curiously reflective the ascent of Michael Corleone‘s fateful ascent to the head of his crime family.

Coppola reluctantly accepted The Godfather in part due to the financial struggles of his company, American Zoetrope. He butted heads with Paramount over the entire production, going to ever-increasing lengths to preserve authenticity in the storytelling. Thanks to Coppola’s extraordinarily unfussy and instinctive direction, this is a film that revolutionized the medium and defines the artist-focused New Hollywood movement. The Godfather ranks at or near the top of virtually every all-time great movies curation that anyone pays any attention to, and that’s obviously justified. There are, however, a select few classic films that are just as pervasive in conversations around the greatest films ever made, movies that pre-date The Godfather, and even outmatch it for innovation and influence. The following three movies, and it’s only these three, are even better than The Godfather.

3

‘Citizen Kane’ (1941)

Dorothy Comingore looking at Orson Welles in Citizen Kane

Though this will likely send many running for the hills, it’s definitely worth mentioning Citizen Kane is, rather famously, the personal favorite movie of the current President of the United States. This is an especially valuable piece of information when contrasting it with the fact that Orson Welles‘ astonishing directorial debut was all but buried by tycoon William Randolph Hearst, the most powerful man in media of that time period. What more proof do you need of Citizen Kane‘s power and vitality? This is the most important movie, not only about the American Dream, but even of the experience of being an American. The Godfather opens with the line, “I believe in America.” Kane opens with a parodic newsreel where various talking heads comment upon the death of Charles Foster Kane, calling the outrageously wealthy industrialist everything from a “communist” to a “fascist.” Kane’s response? “I am, have been, and will be only one thing— and American.”

Citizen Kane has often been saddled with the moniker of greatest film ever made throughout the decades as The Godfather, perhaps even more so (Kane topped the American Film Institute’s original 1998 “100 Years, 100 Movies,” as well as its update that followed a decade later), and such a christening is the kind of thing that scares a lot of casual viewers away. It shouldn’t. Citizen Kane is actually a breezy blast for 120 minutes, constantly moving and often hilarious.

All the more remarkable in that Welles was 26 at the time, Citizen Kane completely revolutionized filmmaking techniques and language like arguably no film since the now-entirely unwatchable silent film The Birth of a Nation. The innovation wouldn’t matter internally without a great narrative, though, and Citizen Kane is still as kinetically enthralling a film as you’ll ever see. Watching it in present day, it’s easy to be blown away by how prescient and socially intelligent it is, in the ways it shows us that history repeats itself.

2

‘Casablanca’ (1942)

Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine in a white tuxedo looking intently off-camera in Casablanca, 1942.

Plenty of Best Picture Oscar wins age atrociously, but the Academy can also get it right. Along with The Godfather, Casablanca is the most classic and essential Best Picture win that virtually no one will ever contest. Released at the perfect time, right as the U.S. entered the Second World War, Michael Curtiz‘ romantic drama endures because of its sparkling and endlessly quoted screenplay, and because of the morality that makes it such a moving experience. The entire quartet of lead characters, played by Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, and even Claude Rains as the police captain Renault, are good people who do the right thing in the end. The love triangle is the center of the film, and there is simply no way that everyone will get everything they want. In the sophisticatedly heart-pounding third act of Casablanca, all these people have acted courageously and selflessly as the threat of the Third Reich reaches a fever pitch. It’s still an extraordinarily affecting film.

This is exactly the movie America and the Allies needed as the world entered their greatest fight. No one making Casablanca was under the pretense that they were crafting a particularly important film, much less an all-timer; it was very much an efficient Hollywood production featuring A-list stars. The character-driven emotion and wit made the film an instant sensation. Bogart’s Rick Blaine, in particular, is widely celebrated as one of the most likable and memorable characters in film. This reluctant hero surely was an influence upon those of the archetype who followed, not least of all Han Solo. Roger Ebert addressed Casablanca‘s universal and timeless appeal in adding the picture to his “Great Movies” anthology:

If we identify strongly with the characters in some movies, then it is no mystery that “Casablanca” is one of the most popular films ever made. It is about a man and a woman who are in love, and who sacrifice love for a higher purpose. This is immensely appealing; the viewer is not only able to imagine winning the love of Humphrey Bogart or Ingrid Bergman, but unselfishly renouncing it, as a contribution to the great cause of defeating the Nazis.

1

‘Vertigo’ (1958)

Kim Novak and James Stewart as Madeline and John standing in the woods in Vertigo

In their 2012 international film critics poll, Sight and Sound named Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo the single greatest film ever made. They had a point. Loosely adapted from the French book D’entre les morts, Vertigo starred James Stewart, cast against type, as a private eye who’s tasked with following a mysterious blonde (Kim Novak). This is an uncommonly grim and downbeat narrative for Alfred Hitchcock, who loved morbid subject matter, but also was known and loved for leaving audiences on a thrilled high rather than drained. Over time, we’ve come to see Vertigo as the confessions of a director that many believe to be the greatest of all time.

Is Vertigo fun to watch, the other two movies on this list? Well, no, not really. Thematically, it’s a depressingly frank look at obsession and guilt. That said, it’s audiovisually such a marvel that the experience of watching Vertigo is exhilarating in a way that no other film quite compares to, at the very least for a cinephile. From the opening credits sequence by which all others are judged, to a groundbreaking dream sequence that combines live-action with animation, to an inevitably despairing ending, Vertigo is thrilling in a dark way that doesn’t age. Bernard Herrmann ties it all together with the most thunderous and beautiful music ever written for film.

This is one of the most emotionally mature films ever released by Hollywood studio, what’s more by a star director at the height of his fame and power. With so many classic movies that are considered among the finest ever made, it’s at least fathomable that kids and younger viewers can appreciate and connect to them to some extent. But Vertigo is about obsession and guilt, two things that people can only feel as they age. And really, all of us will feel these things to some extent. Vertigo captures this universal emotional reality with the most electrifying filmmaking craft imaginable. It’s an objective truth that the arts are subjective, but if there is one greatest film ever made, it’s Hitchcock’s most celebrated and confounding work.