IN 1972 Hollywood was m trouble with a combination of television and a dearth of decent movies leading to alarming falls in cinema audiences.
The release of The Godfather that year changed everything, heralding, in director Francis Ford Coppola, a new breed of film-maker who could produce blockbuster hits while retaining a certain artistic integrity. But for various reasons, not all of them creative, the film nearly did not get made at all.
was originally a novel by Mario Puzo, a hard-bitten gambler whose first two books had flopped badly. One of them, featured an ageing Mafia don and, with the mob in the headlines following a series of high-profile FBI investigations, Puzo realised this
