It was movie critic Judith Crist’s second review in the March 20, 1972, issue (cover line: “Honor Thy Pasta”), a few hundred words stuck at the end of a lengthier analysis of The Sorrow and the Pity, “an extraordinary documentary about Nazi-occupied France.” Coppola’s masterpiece, she wrote, was “you see, as ‘good’ as the novel — as therefore, in its new incarnation and availability to the illiterate, for more dangerous.” Why so dangerous? “[T]he function of the film is to show us that Hitler is a grand sort of family man, gentle with children, daring and ruthless with enemies, implacable in the matter of honor and so loyal to the ties of blood that even a brother-in-law, to a sister’s sorrow, must go (juicily garroted) if he happens to have betrayed a son of the house.” (Um: “Happens to have betrayed”? Carlo set up Sonny to be brutally murdered in a toll booth!) But Crist didn’t hate it entirely: “You can’t say the trash doesn’t get first-class treatment.” No, you can’t.
Truth Unvarnished, Guilt Unguilded [NYM 3/20/72, pdf]
Moving and Brutal ‘Godfather’ Bows [NYT, subscription]
The Godfather [Variety]
