Ballroom Marfa and the Marfa Public Library presented the second installment of Book and a Movie, a program highlighting novels that have been adapted for the cinema. The novel and film selected for November was The Godfather, written by Mario Puzo in 1969 and adapted by director Francis Ford Coppola in 1972.

A searing novel of the Mafia underworld, The Godfather introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones, and the powerful legacy of tradition, blood and honor that was passed on from father to son. It resonated with millions of readers across the world—and became the definitive novel of the Mafia subculture that remains an essential component of  our collective consciousness.

But what happens when an adaptation consumes its source material? Such is the case with Coppola’s vision, a blockbuster piece of cinema that transformed Puzo’s well-received book into one of the most financially successful and critically acclaimed films of all time. As The Guardian wrote in Puzo’s 1999 obituary, “For Puzo, the characters so vividly presented in The Godfather had, in the end, been swallowed by Brando, Pacino and Duval. It was no longer his Mamma’s voice that he heard, but Brando’s rasp, mandolins, sepia tints, and Coppola’s soundtrack.”

Puzo went on to write two more novels in the universe that he’d created on his own — The Sicilian and Omertà — but it was his shared vision with Coppola and the cinematic trilogy that followed the original Godfather film that would define his legacy. The two went on to collaborate on the screenplays for The Godfather II and III, an epic narrative that built on the one crucial difference between the texts — a decision by one of the main characters at the end of story.

All of this is a testament to the expanded pleasures The Godfather has to offer when experienced both as original novel and adapted film. 

This program was made possible by the Friends of the Marfa Public Library and PEARL — two organizations striving to bolster the public library as an essential and engaging establishment in rural Texas communities.