The Godfather: Coppola Restoration Owns

For years, I've only owned The Godfather on VHS. I've watched it so many times I've lost count. When the film was first transferred to dvd, I was thrilled with anticipation. Until I saw the actual print. Horrible. Finally, with the Coppola Restoration, The Godfather returns to it's original glory. Whatever that looked like, as the original print was so badly destroyed, the restoration team had to scour the globe for prints in private libraries as well as studio archives in order to create the best possible digital version. What it is not: The Godfather DOES NOT look like a blu ray or DVD of a film released in 2008. There is plenty of grain, and the fine detail you are accustomed to seeing in people's faces from a distance are not quite present. What it is: the colors are lush, vibrant, use whatever term you want. The contrast between dark and light is just astonishing. There is a warm amber tone throughout that is slightly overdone but which with continued viewing, gives the film an antiqued, heirloom-ish look which is astonishingly attractive. Yes, the characters, especially in dark lighting, all wind up looking a bit too much like George Hamil, but overall, the look, the acting, the story, the vintage tone, make this a first rate viewing experience. You might as well buy now, as it won't look better for quite a while. I understand that the original digital master has 4X the resolution of blu ray, but the technology to allow for this level of resolution to be realized on a consumer television is years away. Enjoy the Godfather again. Post your own reviews here.

Disc 4 has a mini-doc on the restoration process. The original print was in bad shape. Even some of the frames from the better quality prints were partially destroyed. As in, half or two thirds of the actual frame is simply absent. Individual frames from different masters are spliced together with tape. A bunch of different prints are used. They were even afraid to play back the the final restored master since it was so old and thin they thought the process of simply playing the tape back would destroy it.

The final, digital restoration looks very good. It looks so good at times, the effect is breathtaking and I've actually had to take breaks as watching the film again in this manner is indeed a revelation.

But I'll be honest. I wish it looked as good and flawless as The Star Wars Trilogy. Actually Star Wars is only a few years younger, yet the restored versions look absolutely flawless. But still, the Coppola Restoration looks fantastic. I'd give it an '8' overall simply considering it's age. Add half a point when you factor in how badly the print has deteriorated over time.

By that standard, Star Wars gets a '10.'

+1. I could not believe how good the restored Star Wars looked. It literally looks as good, if not better, than a film produced in the 21st century. I'm mclovin' the Coppola Restoration, but the Star Wars restoration is just freaky.

Man, even the opening Paramount logo is pimped out. It's gold, and grainy. Waves of amber grain...

There is some high praise for the coppola restoration over on the avs forum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1067894

"The movie looked better than I remember it being in the theater when it first came out and definitely sounded better."

This restoration does not look pristine in the way that Star Wars does. My understanding is that with Star Wars, the print was not only physically cleaned but subject to a noise reduction algorithm (whatever that is) on top of that.

I have to believe that something like this would be possible with The Godfather in a future re-release. Perhaps the grain is part of the original film experience. You could also argue that if a film made just a few years later (Star Wars) could be restored with zero noise and grain, the same could also be done with the godfather. I consider "grain" to be distortion: it's the inclusion of off color elements in an image, which detracts from the accuracy of the image.

Overall, the coppola restoration looks more like "Gimme Shelter" than Star Wars: the image is relatively soft, grainy, dark and lacks the sharp lines and detail that I'd like. Nonetheless, it's the best looking version of the godfather available today.

I hear ya. The restoration team is quite adamant that they recovered ALL the information available from the original negative/s. This includes the grain from the original film, the original black levels, and perhaps a tinge of gold or amber along with it.

Having said that, watching restored films just a few years younger (Star Wars) or even films a few years older (Nutty Professor) with very little grain and ridiculous levels of detail, you just wonder "what if," even though Coppola and others closely involved say that the extremely dark scenes and grain are completely intentional.

Like I said, I'm really ambivalent. I think that in a few years time, The Godfather will be re-released, with greater detail and less grain, to satisfy the techheads. I'll be buying. Again.