An offer we can’t refuse

In the wake of Henry Hill’s death, John Daly reflects on the greatest gangster film of all time, now 40 years old

WHEN The Godfather opened in 1972, 40 years ago, it made cinema audiences around the world an offer they couldn’t refuse as a crime film quite unlike anything that came before it.

Up to then, movie gangsters tended to be one dimensional creations — snarling villains like James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart taking on the cops with a blasting machine gun in classics like White Heat or The Public Enemy. In these stories, the line between good and bad was easily identifiable.