March 11, 20222:04 PM ET, Heard on All Things Considered, by Bob Mondello
Allstar Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo
When The Godfather premiered 50 years ago, people knew it was sensational, controversial, precedent-shattering, a masterpiece even.
But they couldn’t know what we know now: It was a bridge between old Hollywood and new.
The film industry had been struggling all through the 1960s, a rough decade for big-screen entertainment as color television siphoned off much of what was left of the moviegoing audience.
Cinemas had tried everything they could think of to compete. They’d widened screens, adopted stereophonic sound, even experimented with 3-D glasses, but American moviegoing, having peaked in the 1930s, had dropped precipitously with the advent of home viewing.
Source: The Godfather rewrote the rules for Mafia movies : NPR
Editor’s Note: Some additional articles on The Godfather recently, via Google News: https://news.google.com/topics/CAAqIggKIhxDQkFTRHdvSkwyMHZNRGRuTVhOdEVnSmxiaWdBUAE?ceid=US:en&oc=3