Quote of the Day (Ron Rosenbaum, on Al Pacino’s Godfather)

“Pacino’s Michael Corleone embodies perhaps better than any other character the bitter unraveling of the American dream in the postwar 20th century—heroism and idealism succumbing to the corrupt and murderous undercurrent of bad blood and bad money. Watching it again, the first two parts anyway, it feels almost biblical: each scene virtually carved in stone, a celluloid Sistine Chapel painted with a brush dipped in blood.”—Ron Rosenbaum, “Passion Play: Al Pacino Gets Ready for the Next Act in His High-Wire Career—Bringing Live Theater to the Movie Screen,” Smithsonian, September 2013

I had this quote, waiting to be used for the last year—then forgot to include it for my post yesterday about The Godfather: Part II. But this brief but perfect commentary, by one of my favorite nonfiction writers on one of the essential postwar American films, is way too good to waste.