Nearly every scene in this first installment of the history of the Corleone family organization in America has become iconic. With The Godfather, Mario Puzo proved he could write a hit (even if he had to disguise his mother as Don Vito to do it). Coppola proved he could renovate a hoary genre and make it serve his grand, epic ambitions—ambitions that frequently took the form of fantasies of corporate overthrow. And Paramount proved that auteurism (and strong-armed distribution tactics) might be the studio’s savior.