Should "The Godfather" Have Won More Oscars in 1972?

When The Godfather opened around Easter of 1972, it had almost the whole year to become the biggest grossing movie in film history to that time, and to collect rave reviews that saw it as an almost miraculous transformation of a pulpy sex novel into an esteemed classic of the relationships among family, business, and government.

So by the time the Oscar ceremony rolled around about a year after the release of The Godfather -- in March of 1973 -- it looked to be the big winner of the night.

And then something funny happened.

As the evening rolled on, The Godfather won NOTHING for much of the night. Meanwhile, Cabaret (which had come out later in the year as Oscar bait) started racking up the wins.

But The Godfather managed to come in from behind as the evening drew to a close. Coppola won the Best Adapted Screenplay writing award. Brando won Best Actor(but refused it, sending Sacheen Littlefeather to do the rejecting.) And the movie itself got The Big One -- Best Picture.

Still, when it was all over, The Godfather had won 3 Oscars -- but Cabaret had won 8.

What happened? Should The Godfather have won more?

Well, in some cases, The Godfather simply wasn't in competition. It wasn't up for cinematography(!) Cabaret was. Cabaret won.

The Godfather wasn't up for Art Direction. Cabaret was. It won.

The Godfather wasn't up for Musical Score(in any category.) Cabaret was. It won.

The Godfather wasn't up for Best Actress (Diane Keaton didn't rate). Cabaret was. It won. (Liza Minnelli.)

The Godfather wasn't up for Best Supporting Actress (Talia Shire didn't rate.) But Cabaret didn't win, either -- Eileen Heckart won for Butterflies are Free.

Here is where The Godfather went head-to-head with Cabaret -- and lost:

Film Editing
Sound
Supporting Actor
Best Director

And here is where The Godfather lost to a movie OTHER than Cabaret

Costume Design (Travels With My Aunt won.)

Seems to me that in "a fair Oscar world"(which never exists), The Godfather would get these wins:

Best Picture (it won this)
Best Actor(it won this)
Best Director (it was nominated)
Best Adapted Screenplay(it won this)
Best Cinematography(how famous this is NOW; should have been nominated)
Art Direction(should have been nominated -- much more detailed than Cabaret)
Sound (it was nominated)
Musical Dramatric Score(it wasn't nominated -- Chaplin's LImelight won -- from the 50's)

..and there you go. 8 Oscars for The Godfather. Give it costume design -- those tuxes! -- that's 9.

The Godfather still needed to give up the category of Best Supporting Actor, though. It would have been an insult for Al Pacino to win Best Supporting Actor -- especially with Caan and Duvall nominated in the same category. Rather than giving the win to the ACTUAL winner(Joel Grey doing little in Cabaret except wearing strange makeup), I'd give it to the fifth nominee: Eddie Albert as the father from hell in The Heartbreak Kid.

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As it stands, to have won Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay is to have done well enough for The Godfather. Best Picture covers everything and everybody ,and the screenplay award is where one finds the greatest movies of all time, even when they don't win Best Picture(Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, Fargo, LA Confidential.) Brando's Don Vito was iconic, historic...forever.

The insult of the evening was giving Fosse the Best Director Oscar over Coppola. It should have been Coppola...but he got a unique second chance by winning Best Director for Godfather II only two years later.

(END.)