Critical response
Did Salvator Gravano have a nickname?
The Godfather
Since its release, "The Godfather" has received critical acclaim. Rotten Tomatoes reports that all 77 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average score of 9.1/10. Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a perfect weighted average score of 100 (out of 100) based on 14 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be "universal acclaim". Both "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II" were selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1990 and 1993, respectively. International critics routinely list these two among cinema's pinnacle achievements, sometimes considering them as one work. In the decennial 2002 "Sight & Sound" poll of film directors, the pair was ranked as the second best film of all time. The critics poll separately voted it fourth. The American Film Institute has listed it second in U.S. film history behind "Citizen Kane". Other polls and publications have it first, as well, among them "Entertainment Weekly", and "Empire" magazine (November 2008)The soundtrack's main theme by Nino Rota was also critically acclaimed; the main theme ("Speak Softly Love") is well-known and widely used (see Score Controversy for more information). Director Stanley Kubrick believed that "The Godfather" was possibly the greatest movie ever made, and had without question the best cast. Previous Mafia movies had looked at the gangs from the perspective of an outraged outsider. In contrast, "The Godfather" presents the gangster's perspective of the Mafia as a response to corrupt society. Although the Corleone family is presented as immensely rich and powerful, no scenes depict prostitution, gambling, loan sharking or other forms of racketeering. Some critics argue that the setting of a criminal counterculture allows for unapologetic gender stereotyping, and is an important part of the film's appeal ("You can act like a man! ", Don Vito tells a weepy Johnny Fontane). Real-life gangsters responded enthusiastically to the film, with many of them feeling it was a portrayal of how they were supposed to act. Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, the former underboss in the Gambino crime family, stated: "I left the movie stunned ... I mean I floated out of the theater. Maybe it was fiction, but for me, then, that was our life. It was incredible. I remember talking to a multitude of guys, made guys, who felt exactly the same way. " According to Anthony Fiato after seeing the film, Patriarca crime family members Paulie Intiso and Nicky Giso altered their speech patterns closer to that of Vito Corleone's. Intiso would frequently swear and use poor grammar; but after the movie came out, he started to articulate and philosophize more. Remarking on the 40th anniversary of the film's release, film critic John Podhoretz praised "The Godfather" as "arguably "the" great American work of popular art" and "the summa of all great moviemaking before it". Two years before, Roger Ebert wrote in his journal that it "comes closest to being a film everyone agrees... is unquestionably great."