The Movie: If you have never seen any of these movies, you must, and do it right away. These movies (especially part I and II) are pillars of American cinema and will be required reading some day in the same way that Shakespeare is for us today.

The DVD: This set is great. The video and audio have both been cleaned up quite a bit. The 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfers are spectacular, and the remixed 5.1 surround sound is crisp and clear -- these movies have never looked or sounded better!

But special features... this set has by far the best special features of any DVD I have seen so far, so I'll talk mostly about the three hours of bonus footage.

There are a couple of different sections. First, I will talk about the deleted scenes. At 200 minutes in length, The Godfather: Part II is already a damn freakin' long movie... and most of these deleted scenes came from that movie! I swear if they didn't cut it down, it would have been four hours long! The arrangement of the clips is interesting in that they are arranged not in the order of the three movies, but in chronological order according to the story, starting with the late 1800's going on up into the late 1990's. Many of the deleted scenes are quite enlightening.

There are two documentary-type things on here. One is a recent one, which I enjoyed quite thoroughly, with interviews with many of the stars, and insights into many of the "inside" stuff that went into this trilogy. Particularly interesting was the recounting of how Paramount did not want to use Al Pacino to play Michael... and they auditioned just about everyone they could for that part, including Robert DeNiro, Robert Duvall (who played Tom Hagen) and James Caan (who played Sonny), and of course these numerous screen tests were included! It was great seeing "Sonny" play Michael's character! It was also quite amazing to see just how much work they went into making the 1912 period section from Part II -- the parade scene... that wasn't done on a movie backlot, they actually converted a real section of a New York street! Amazing!

There's also a bunch of production stills, a neat "family tree" feature, a short on the notebook that Francis Ford Coppola used to map out the original Godfather movie, some storyboards, and an old documentary from 1971 about the film. Also, somewhat loosely hidden is a scene from the HBO show The Sopranos where the characters talk about their favorite scenes from The Godfather. All in all, the bonus features disc was one of the best I've seen. Also, the main movie discs contain a second audio track with director's commentary.

The director's commentary on The Godfather is great! It's full of insights and little tidbits of information. Little secrets of how they dealt the relatively modest budget... the constant butting of heads between Coppola and Paramout Pictures... the fact that Francis Ford Coppola almost got fired after the first week of shooting... did you know that the horse's head in that scene was an actual horse's head? They got it from a dog food factory!

It was pretty interesting to see Coppola talk about each scene and talk about the difficulties of shooting it, or why it was good, etc. etc. etc. I loved it! So the next day I decided to try doing the same thing with Part II... but things weren't so peachy keen after that.

You see, Coppola didn't really want to make part II. But the studio really, really wanted to make it. So Coppola said he would make it, but under the condition that there would be no interference from the studio -- he would have full control over every aspect of the production. This made for a really great movie, but very boring commentary. There were no interesting stories of conflict, because there was no conflict in the production.

There were no interesting stories of rigging stuff up to look like a different location because they had a big budget -- if they wanted to show Vegas, they went to Vegas. They wanted to show Florida? They went to Florida... they wanted to show Cuba? Well for that, they went to the Dominican Republic. The point is, there was no conflict between the director and the studio. There was no overcoming challenges of faking a location, because they had enough money to just go there. A lot of what he says is repeated from the commentary in Part I. In other words, the commentary just wasn't that good. I had to force myself to watch it. But I got through it! I haven't seen the commentary from Part III, but I am going to assume that it, like Part II will not be as good as the commentary from Part I.

One (very minor) disappointment was that while the movies themselves were presented in full anamorphic ("enhanced for 16:9 TVs") widescreen format, the bonus features disc was not. But I am definitely satisfied with my purchase and it was definitely well worth the wait! The movies themselves look way better than the versions I have on VHS tape, especially since the DP who worked on these films liked to underexpose a lot of scenes. If you are a Godfather fan, I highly recommend this set!