Fifty Years of “The Godfather”

It has been 50 years since The Godfather was widely released in the United States on March 24, 1972.

What makes The Godfather and The Godfather Part II such revered films that are regularly considered the greatest films ever made? In his Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful, Edmund Burke charted a dualistic tension in the aesthetic nature of man. Likewise, in On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Friedrich Schiller argued that humans found freedom and joy in aesthetic experience. No one can doubt that the first two Godfather films are pristine aesthetic experiences, two tours de force in the indulgence of man’s aesthetic ecstasy and euphoric catharsis.

Romanticism, the Sublime, and the Beautiful

While the sublime was a consideration of Longinus and Saint Augustine, the definitive philosophical exposé into the sublime—paired with its dialectical contrast, the beautiful—was written by Edmund Burke. Burke’s Enquiry, in many ways, laid the groundwork for the romantic movement that was soon to emerge. While Burke’s philosophical investigation also had antecedents in the passionate lyricism of Augustan age poetry, foremost among them Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, Burke’s outlining of the sublime and the beautiful had consequential effects on the future aesthetic movements that blossomed in the late 18th century and into the 19th century, culminating in the Sturm und Drang movement and romanticism.

Burke’s famous aesthetic treatise argued that man’s nature is divided between two aesthetic desires: one for the beautiful and the other for the sublime. Contrary to public perception, while Burke preferred the beautiful, he did not wish to eradicate the sublime. Instead, he sought to preserve the experience of the sublime because it is innate to human desire. Humans need a space, in other words, for the sublime experience that otherwise did not result in the destruction of the beautiful, gentle society in which we live and love.