A (partial) list of the great scenes in The Godfather

Watched "The Godfather" last night in the terrific new Blu-ray version, and lest there be any doubt about it the movie stands up to whatever standard you set for it and more - it is clearly one of the great films of all time - from its ambitious and rich story line, the excitement of some of its most dramatic and violent scene, the sharply sketched personalities of the conflicting family members, the evolution of character across the arc of the story, the portrait of a society and a culture and a way of life, one amazing scene after another - the wedding (25 minutes) that opens the movie, the business meetings on the morning of the wedding as supplicants as Godfather for favors, the death of Luka, the ambush of Sonny, the meeting of the 5 families, the assassination in the restaurant, the dinner with the studio exec and the aftermath, the takeover of Las Vegas, the mobsters in the kitchen, the Sicilian interlude and the 2nd wedding, the death and funeral, the startling montage of the baptism and murders - on and on. The color so richly infused that, as M noted, it's like renaissance painting. A film that in its day may have seemed terribly violent is much less so b today's standard, but the violence seems very credible and essential to the story line - and it set the standard, now a trope of all mobster movies, or counterbalancing the violence against domestic tenderness and family loyalty. Like most great art, it's a movie built on conflicts, internal and external, none greater than in the minds of the two Godfathers, Brando and Pacino, as they try to reconcile business with brutality and loyalty with family. A film totally deserving of its place in the pantheon.