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Masculinity In The Godfather

548 Words3 Pages

Revenge, Masculinity and Glorification of
Violence in the Godfather
Abstract: Crime films have been the most enduringly popular genre since the dawn of sound era in Hollywood.
Mob and gangster films are a sub-genre of crime films and deals with the mafia and their organized crime focusing on rise and fall of power. These films primarily have stacks of money, guns, flashy cars, illegal goods, cluster of goons, crime families, and a plot with a central theme coupled with violence. Hollywood gangster films in the
1930’s had liberally drawn inspiration from the newspapers and books of the era. Films of gangster genre are strongly driven by themes such as power, loyalty, betrayal, rivalry, morality, revenge, masculinity, materialism etc.
Motifs …show more content…

The Godfather, a 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola exposes the dark side of the American dream. Betrayal, revenge, masculinity, morality, and violence are some of the predominant themes which drive the film The Godfather. This paper focuses on the study, portrayal and execution styles …show more content…

They also highlight the crime victim’s life and their struggle to justice. Cinematic plot of these films portray real life situations and characters from true events and past crime records. Money, power, greed, revenge, gambling, drugs, murder, robbery, masculinity, violence, etc., are some of the central themes of crime and gangster films. Characters playing the role of gangsters and the bad guys are often personified with materialistic, immoral, and dishonest traits. “The first gangster film in the history of cinema was The Musketeers of Pig Alley, a 1912 American short drama film directed by D. W. Griffith.”[1]
Early gangster films were produced from a non-criminal point of view or precisely placing it, a law-abiding view, i.e. the story is narrated from the perspective of a character or a system, which is trying to stop the crime.[2][3]
Later writers and directors started exploring the other side of the story. According to Dirks, first film which was shot from a gangster’s point of view was Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927). Several film critics consider this as the

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