The main menu screen presents an image of Don Corleone's desk from the first film, littered with items including books, notebooks and film cans, with navigation lettering overlaid on them. These options offer access to the disc's separate sections, where you will encounter a huge wealth of extra Godfather-related material.

Behind the Scenes
Two static menu screens feature an older image of Coppola gazing through the lens of a camera, accompanied by some mumbling in the background that turns out to consist of audio recordings from rehearsals for the first film in the trilogy. Several segments (at least four) are played at random each time this menu screen is chosen.

The meatiest extra in this section is the 75-minute documentary 'The Godfather Family: A Look Inside'. This feature dates back to 1991, when it was produced for inclusion on the Laserdisc box set trilogy release. It was also broadcast on TV around the world several times, and used for promoting the third film's home video release. The documentary includes lots of great footage related to all three films, including generous screen test material featuring Pacino, Caan and Keaton. Highlights include James Caan attempting the Michael Corleone role with Diane Keaton, and a rather confused-looking Martin Sheen trying out for the Michael part (complete with long hair and mustache!). Robert de Niro is also seen trying out for the Sonny role for the first film, which would have been quite a different character had he been cast. Some production footage from the first two and generous helpings of on-set production material from the third film add further interest. The editing however could have been better, as it continuously makes seemingly random leaps in time, and cuts back and forth abruptly between shots of Coppola enjoying a nice dinner get-together with the main crew members from the Godfather movies, and various bits of interview and production footage from all the different eras. The documentary also lacks a sense of perspective on the third film, for which it at times sems like a promotional featurette.

A collection of eight featurettes on specific aspects of the trilogy's production are also to be found in this section:

• The Locations of The Godfather: A 6-minute guided tour across the New York City locations of the first two movies by production designer Dean Tavoularis. This segment includes storyboards, set designs and rare footage from a black-and-white documentary film shot on the making of the first sequel.
• Francis Ford Coppola's Notebook: The director, sprawled comfortably on his living room couch, talks for ten minutes about the way he adapted the original novel's pages to a huge binder he would use to accumulate all of his notes on the story. It provides some great insight into Coppola's idiosyncratic working methods and is generously illustrated with pages and inserts from the huge 'Notebook'.
• The Music of The Godfather: This actually consists of two featurettes, one that runs for six minutes on composer Nino Rota, and that includes rare audio recordings of Coppola's visit to Rota during production of the first movie, where the composer plays the major themes for the director and they discuss where in the movie they should use which theme. The other is a shorter, four-minute piece that focuses on Coppola's father Carmine who also played a role in the development of the first film's music.
• Puzo and Coppola on screenwriting: Straightforward interview footage of Coppola and Puzo discussing various elements of the screenplays' development, originally shot for the trilogy's video re-release a few years ago.
• Gordon Willis on cinematography: A four-minute section 'borrowed' uncredited from the outstanding documentary Visions of Light (1993), in which Gordon Willis and a few well-known other cinematographers talk about the first two films' groundbreaking use of lighting.
• Storyboards: Two selections of about twenty original storyboard designs each for the second and third films. They aren't accompanied by any commentary or explanatory notes, nor is there a storyboard-to-screen comparison, making this a rather minimal inclusion.
• Original 1971 Featurette: An eight-minute promotional featurette for the first film, in poor condition and only interesting for historical purposes.

Additional Scenes / Godfather Chronology
This section holds over 55 minutes of deleted scenes, ordered chronologically and each preceded by a text screen with explanatory notes (unskippable). Each scene is presented fullscreen with mono sound, apart from the two scenes from Part III which are in non-anamorphic widescreen. Most of these scenes will be familiar to viewers of the longer, chronologically ordered versions of the Godfather sage that aired on TV and were also available on VHS for some time in a nice boxed set. Most scenes are quite short (there are 35 of them all told), but many are good enough to have been considered for inclusion, and all provide great additional value to the DVD Collection. This section is accompanied by a similarly designed chronology which is basically just static screens in which the major events from the three movies are ordered chronologically. I guess this could be helpful to people who are easily confused by non-linear storytelling ... ;)

The Godfather Family Tree
A classically designed collection of static screens containing an overview of biographical information of all the members of the Corleone family tree, including wives and children, with photo portraits that can be selected to disply the actors' filmography and bio. A pleasant, handsomely designed feature, not quite as media-rich as one would hope, but still a nice addition. Similar screens are available for the five main members of the film's production crew.

Galleries
The final section on this disc of extras houses several different kinds of galleries, in this case not limited to those containing still images. The trailers section houses the three original theatrical trailers for all three movies, each presented in anamorphic widescreen with mono soundtracks. No re-release trailers or TV spots have been included, but I don't consider this much of an absence. Acclaim and Response is a section usually reserved for dull static screens that list all the major awards a film has won, but in this case the DVD producers have filled it up with all kinds of great stuff. The requisite text list 'Awards and Nominations' has of course been included, but so has the original intro to the The Godfather's 1974 network TV airing, and five Academy Award acceptance speeches - the first film's Best Screenplay and Best Picture wins, and The Godfather Part II's Best Director and Best Picture. These are great fun to watch, as the reading of the nominees has also been included, although the actress hired by Marlon Brando to accept his award 'in the name of all Native Americans' is sadly absent.

There's also a still gallery with about twenty behind-the-scenes photographs accompanied by explanatory captions, and something called a 'Rogues Gallery', which is like a pictorial photo album with publicity stills of most major characters from the three films. And if you keep poking around the Galleries section, you'll find two Easter Eggs that are both hilariously funny...

In conclusion
Although most of the material on this Extras disc has actually been recycled from previous productions, the sheer amount of it will certainly satisfy all but the most hardcore Godfather fans. If I was invited to make one single complaint, it would have to be that I would definitely have preferred a more recent documentary looking back at all three films, as the one included on this release holds a lot of strong material, but is in great need of re-editing as well as a better perspective on the third film. But otherwise, this is a sterling selection of material that surely covers all the major bases for this historic trilogy.

Godfather movie DVD reviews:

• The Godfather
• The Godfather Part II
• The Godfather Part III

© 2001 Dan Hassler-Forest