I just finished  watching The Godfather films. Believe it or not,  I had never watched them before – they never really cropped up, never really appealed. Yet I kept hearing them mentioned in relation to a few recent releases, so I thought it was time I sat down and gave them a viewing.

I don’t think I  can give them any sort of proper review right now, but I  must say that this strikes me as quite a difficult, problematic trilogy. At the end of the day, the Corleones are a family of gangsters and criminals –  I have trouble empathising with such thugs. The films seem to try to romanticise that kind of violent underworld. This is basically a three film melodrama about a family of Italian-American  immigrants who turn to crime as a source of social power. Having said that, it offers us a  fascinating glimpse of postwar American life, as well as saying things about family, immigration, American urban life, crime, the church, and so on.  I’m not dismissing  it by any means, but I don’t think this sort of film is really my cup of tea.