Cinema Atlas Connection

Francis Ford Coppola has named Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers as the direct ancestor of The Godfather — an Italian film about a Southern immigrant family slowly destroyed by ambition, loyalty, and violence. The Godfather's structure of family as both the source of love and the mechanism of destruction is pure Visconti. The Leopard gave Coppola his visual grammar: the long table scenes, the sense of a dynasty in its last hours. The Godfather is Italian cinema with an American accent.