When the Mafia infiltrated the filming of “The Godfather”

By Samuel Blumenfeld

Posted today at 04:39, updated at 05:15

Al Pacino and Marlon Brando on the set of

Albert S. Ruddy still remembers February 1971 as the most turbulent time of his life. At the age of 40, the inexperienced producer was finalizing the preparation of a new film entitled The Godfather around the head of an Italian-American mafia family. A few weeks before the first clapperboard, scheduled for March 29, 1971 in New York, Ruddy lived in fear of a bullet in the back or an untimely car accident after the police in Los Angeles, where he resided, had come to warn him that he was regularly followed by mysterious strangers. The message was clear: the Mafia did not want a Mafia movie.

Before marking the history of cinema, the first part of the adventures of Corleone released just fifty years ago in the United States – and which comes out in a restored version on February 23 – is a bestseller signed Mario Puzo. Best-selling when it was released in March 1969, the novel describes the trajectory of one of the most important families of the “crime syndicate”, the role of the clan’s leader, Vito, and his passing of the baton to his son. Michael.

Its author, a 48-year-old American from a family of Neapolitan immigrants, wrote it based on real facts and anecdotes gleaned when he was a journalist in the tabloid press. Until then, most fictions about the environment insisted on their violence, the sordid aspect of their way of life, their immorality. But, in his book, Mario Puzo also depicts their wives, children, enemies and friends.

Without ever glorifying them or denying their crime, he shows that, paradoxically, they have values: friendship, loyalty and family. And that they follow a code of honor. Thus, Don Corleone is the object of an assassination attempt because he refuses to get into the drug trade, which he considers immoral. He despises mobsters who don’t spend time with their families.

A high-flying exercise

All of these elements helped Puzo gain recognition from the portrayed criminals. Following the publication of the book, the writer saw his gambling debts mysteriously erased. Occasionally a bottle of champagne would arrive at his restaurant table, a gift from a mysterious individual in sunglasses with a gold signet ring, content to give him a friendly wave from afar. Also, when Paramount, excited by the editorial success of the Godfather, launched, with the help of the author, in its cinematographic adaptation, nobody wondered what the Mafia would think of it.

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