Mario Puzo’s 10 favourite movies
Prior to adapting his own novel for the screen, author Mario Puzo had never written a screenplay before, not that it prevented Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather from becoming the highest-grossing movie ever made at the time and winning him an Academy Award for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’.
In fact, after repeating the trick and winning the exact same Oscar for Part II, Puzo decided that now was the perfect time for him to actually learn how to write a screenplay: “It was the first time I’d ever written a screenplay, so I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said.
In a moment that’s long been enshrined in screenwriting folklore, he revealed that “after I had won two Academy Awards for the first two Godfathers, I went out and bought a book on screenwriting, because it was sort of off the top of my head and I figured I’d better learn what it’s about”. In the end, he discovered that “in the first chapter the book said study Godfather I, it’s the model of a screenplay. So I was stuck with the book”.
Puzo would also write a draft of the 1974 disaster epic Earthquake prior to his most famous non-Godfather works, when he received credits for Richard Donner’s Superman and Richard Lester’s Superman II. When naming his ten favourite films in Movies Unlimited Catalog, Puzo was fully aware of his impact on the industry by placing The Godfather in the number one position.
Beyond that, the gangster genre didn’t factor in anywhere near as heavily as you might think, considering his bibliography also featured spiritual bedfellows The Fortunate Pilgrim, The Last Don, Omertà, and the posthumously-published The Family.
Instead, Puzo reveals a kinship with Christopher Nolan by including Chariots of Fire, with all-time greats Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, and Fiddler on the Roof also making the cut. Sydney Pollack’s psychologically-driven literary adaptation They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Billy Wilder’s timeless noir Double Indemnity, and John Ford’s four-time Oscar-winning wartime drama The Informer also take their place among Puzo’s prime picks.
Influential thriller The Third Man and a second Pollack feature through epic romantic drama Out of Africa round out his selection, showing that despite entering the world of cinema as a complete novice – regardless of how quickly he was anointed as the blueprint those following in his footsteps should follow – Puzo more than knew his way around some of the finest films to have ever been made.
Mario Puzo’s 10 favourite movies:
- The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
- They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969, Sydney Pollack)
- Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
- The Informer (1935, John Ford)
- Gone with the Wind (1939, Victor Fleming)
- Chariots of Fire (1981, Hugh Hudson)
- Fiddler on the Roof (1971, Norman Jewison)
- Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)
- The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
- Out of Africa (1985, Sydney Pollack)
