Marlon Brando pulls idealistic Los Angeles architect Bernard Judge from his ordinary life and persuades him to design the world’s first ecologically perfect retreat on a tiny, inhospitable Tahitian island.
The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.
Marlon Brando enjoys being mysterious. The grandfather of all cool actors becomes the Godfather. Interview by Shana Alexander
There’s nothing fun or funny to be found here. It offers us only the absorption of good acting and good storytelling combined with a plausible anthropology of a strange, terribly relevant culture. What more could we possibly want from a movie? How often, these days, do we get anything like all that?
The following review, one of the most renowned in the history of film criticism, appeared in The New Yorker magazine on October 28, 1972
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