my favorite movies of 1972:

(1) The Godfather

(2) The New Land

favorite of 1972:

The Godfather

(Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Caan, Diane Keaton, John Cazale, Abe Vigoda, Richard Conte, Sterling Hayden, Talia Shire. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.)

Pauline Kael called The Godfather a “startlingly vivid view of a Mafia dynasty, in which organized crime becomes an obscene nightmare image of American free enterprise.”

Ebert:

“The Godfather” is told entirely within a closed world. That’s why we sympathize with characters who are essentially evil. The story by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola is a brilliant conjuring act, inviting us to consider the Mafia entirely on its own terms. Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) emerges as a sympathetic and even admirable character; during the entire film, this lifelong professional criminal does nothing of which we can really disapprove.

During the movie we see not a single actual civilian victim of organized crime. … The story views the Mafia from the inside. That is its secret, its charm, its spell. … The real world is replaced by an authoritarian patriarchy where power and justice flow from the Godfather, and the only villains are traitors. There is one commandment, spoken by Michael (Al Pacino): “Don’t ever take sides against the family.”

My father’s no different than any other powerful man — any man who’s responsible for other people, like a Senator or a president.

You know how naive you sound? Senators and presidents don’t have men killed!

Who’s being naive, Kay?

(How to stream The Godfather.)

UPDATE: The Godfather Part II is one of my favorite movies of 1974.

UPDATE (July 2022): James Caan has died at age 82. He was in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, and he was nominated for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the first movie.

2nd favorite of 1972:

The New Land

[Swedish: Nybyggarna]

(Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg. Directed by Jan Troell.)

The New Land is the sequel to The Emigrants (one of my choices for 1971), and together they form a 6-and-a-half-hour epic about Swedish farmers who start a new life in Minnesota in the mid-19th century. The Criterion essay says:

Subtly, Troell allows us to see that marriage itself is a kind of emigration: a matter of settling into another life, making the necessary accommodations, and gradually — over years, over decades — finding that you think of this person who is not you, or this place that is not the land of your birth, as your home. This idea is particularly important in The New Land, in which terrible things happen to several of the Swedish pilgrims; America gives and it takes away, no blessing unmixed. …

Like that era’s other great saga of the immigrant experience, The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974), this epic is part of how we understand America now — Troell’s movies telling the story of those who settled not in the bustling, violent, darkly glamorous cities but in the vast middle of America, in the dailiness and hard slog of country life. For the taciturn rural toilers no less than for the fast-talking urban wise guys, it was tough to get here and, often, tougher yet to remain and thrive: the New World’s bounty came at a cost.

I don’t know anywhere to stream The Emigrants or The New Land, but you can buy the Criterion blu-ray or DVD set of the two movies through the Barnes & Noble 50% off sale on all Criterion discs every November and July. (Amazon has also been reducing some prices in response.)

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.