THE GODFATHER FAMILY ALBUM
Photographs by Steve Schapiro
Taschen




THIS silk-and-leather large format art book offers homage to one of the greatest movie franchises of all time: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather series.

The numbered books (1200 copies plus 126 artist proofs—the first 200 featuring an original print by Steve Schapiro) are both diary and memento. Filled with interviews, screen shots, behind-the-scenes and candid photography, and so much more, this tome is a treasure.

The beautifully presented book is lovingly and masterfully crafted from the first page. The forward by Schapiro—the photographer commissioned by Life magazine to shoot the making of the film for an exclusive pre-release editorial feature—is informative, nostalgic and humorous. Schapiro took two of the movie’s most iconic photographs (as well as all interior photography): Brando as Don Corleone holding the cat (a stray found on set by Coppola), and Bonasera (Salvatore Corsitto) whispering into the Don’s ear. His eye behind the lens is undeniable.

Author of The Godfather novels, Mario Puzo, presents an 11-page examination of what it was like to write the book and the process of having it translated to film; this is no fluff piece, the many interviews discusses internal struggles, the financial strains, the personality clashes, intimidation by the real New York City Mafia and Frank Sinatra’s attempts to stop the film from being made, delivering new understanding of the process of producing movies.

Numerous exceptionally enlightening interviews with Brando, Pacino and Coppola, paired with varied, detailed on-set reports, anecdotes (the studio resisted Al Pacino in the role of Michael Corleone, so Francis Ford Coppola made him get a preppie hair cut, telling the barber he was to play Michael Corleone in The Godfather—which caused the barber to have a heart attack), unforgettable photography and memorable quotes from the films’ characters may read, on this page, as barely here nor there. How wrong such an assumption would be.

The Godfather Family Album is the cinematic love-note of a lifetime, an heirloom that is as much high-end gallery book as it is deeply personal and intimate diary. The albums are made-to-order and are numbered for posterity. Priced at AU$1300 for the standard version, as the enigmatic Marlon Brando says, this is an offer you can’t refuse.

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