So I came into this one expecting to hate it, because it’s this big long movie about mobsters, and I am basically never a fan of crimy shit. But… dang, it’s actually pretty good.

I think to some extent, there’s a degree to which it’s because this isn’t really about mobsters. It’s pretty universally acknowledged that Mario Puzo had no idea what the Mafia was like, and invented tons of stuff out of whole cloth, and that real Mafia guys are in fact what you’d think: thuggish criminals. But Vito Corleone in this movie isn’t that; he’s more like the ruler of a noble house in Game of Thrones (or even more directly, like one of the clan heads in Fonda Lee’s excellent Jade City novels). He’ll do violence if needed, but it’s more of a realpolitik kind of thing.

This comes through right away in the opening monologue, where a supplicant to Corleone is telling the tale of how he tried to live as an American but was let down by American justice being corrupted by the rich and powerful, so now he’s going to Corleone with his hat out. Right away, you see the role as a kind of competing power structure, not just a band of thugs. And it plays out over the course of the movie, with Corleone refusing to get involved with drugs, sticking to the barely-illegal areas of gambling and unions and maybe some light prostitution. He’s more feudal lord than criminal mastermind.

But so of course, this is really a movie about Michael Corleone, and I think that’s where you get that transition happening. Michael never saw it that way, and he did view the Mafia stuff as pure crimy shit, and so when he ends up having to take over… that’s what he becomes. He decides he needs to shut down his existing life and ditches his girlfriend, and then proceeds to rule as a tough-minded crime boss. All the softness and sentiment that Vito had — the playing with cats and little kids and all that — Michael burns out of himself, because he views what he’s become as an evil thing in a way that Vito never did.

Visually, the movie sets an atmosphere — one of dark shadows and warm light and almost a kind of texture of polished wood — that is basically genre-defining. And of course, it’s chock full of so many iconic lines and moments, ones that you can practically quote along with the movie even if you’ve never seen it.

I am annoyed by how much influence this movie had on pop culture — I think we’d all be better off if there weren’t so much mob-glorification stuff out there — but taken solely as a movie and not being blamed for the sins of its successors, yeah, it’s solid. There’s no question at all that this one needs to be on the AFI list.