business as usual

 

Gordon Willis; Woody Allen

On You Tube, I listened to a video:

The Real Story Behind The Making Of The Godfather Mafia Epic Masterpiece

uploader / channel:  RadioClassics

It was very good.

One thing:  one of the people in this documentary said The Godfather (1972) was the first movie to make more money than Gone With The Wind (1939).  But I thought The Sound Of Music (1965) was the first movie to out-do Gone with the wind.... (Wikipedia says I'm right -- uhhm.)

        ----------------------- [excerpt from Vincent Canby's 1972 review, New York Times] ----------------- "The Godfather" plays havoc with the emotions as the sweet things of life -- marriages, baptisms, family feasts -- become an inextricable part of the background for explicitly depicted murders by shotgun, garrote, machine gun and booby-trapped automobile.  

The film is about an empire run from a dark, suburban Tudor palace where people, in siege, eat out of cardboard containers while babies cry and get under foot.  

It is also more than a little disturbing to realize that characters, who are so moving one minute, are likely, in the next scene, to be blowing out the brains of a competitor over a white tablecloth.  

        It's nothing personal, just their way of doing business as usual. ---------------- [end / excerpt]

I re-read that end part:  "over a white tablecloth."  The first time, skimming it quickly, it seemed like someone killed somebody else in an argument "over" -- pertaining to -- a white tablecloth.  Like -- "This tablecloth is mine!" -- BOOM, gunshot.

        Then I read it again and interpreted it to mean someone shot somebody and killed them, they happened to be next to a table with a white tablecloth on it, and the blood showed up on that... The blood flew out and got all over the white tablecloth.

        Makes more sense than killing someone because of a conflict over whose tablecloth it is.

        Different ways of using the word "over."

        Gordon Willis (1931 - 2014) was director of photography for The Godfather, and also for Annie Hall (1977) and All The President's Men (1976).

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