Keeping Score: Why Nino Rota didn’t win an Oscar for ‘The Godfather’
You don’t regularly earn the label of ‘Greatest Movie Ever Made’ without getting a few things right, and The Godfather nails so many key elements.
Its casting is immaculate, especially the genius decision to have Marlon Brando play a puffy-jowled mob boss with a penchant for orange slices. The script, co-penned by original novelist Mario Puzo, won ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ at the Oscars, and Gordon Willis’ beautiful cinematography is something to behold. Then there’s the music.
The music for the first two instalments in Francis Ford Coppola’s crime epic was written by legendary Italian composer Giovanni ‘Nino’ Rota. His other notable contributions include Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, Lucino Visconti’s Rocco and his Brothers, Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, and several other projects that can claim to have musically annotated the Italian experience. As well as penning several operas and ballets, Rota’s contribution to film scores at an average annual of three across a 46-year-long career is remarkable to say the least.
‘Love Theme from The Godfather‘ is a melancholic tune that ties the main characters to their Italian roots as they terrorise the New York streets, enmeshing both their origins of territorial and criminal. Much like a chorus in Greek tragedies, cautioning against hubris that the protagonists never pick up on, the choir performing underneath the main melody catches you off guard in its haze. It speaks as if the Corleone ancestors are singing to their modern counterparts from beyond the grave. His most enduring creation is this soundtrack to the mafia family, boasting a heady mixture of string and woodwind instruments. It is as haunting as it is memorable, perfect for a saga on such a grand scale as this one.
However, on the same night that Brando famously turned down his ‘Best Actor’ accolade, Rota, who was a shoo-in for ‘Best Original Score’ at the 1973 Oscars, was never called to stage. By a strange quirk in the Academy’s regulations, the coveted gold figurine went to Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight, which had actually been released 20 years earlier, yet was a legal entry for a win. As for Rota, in true Godfather style, he had been betrayed by his own.
His nomination for ‘Best Original Score’ was revoked shortly before the ceremony, on the grounds that the melody to ‘Love Theme’ had been used somewhere else. The composer had previously scored a 1958 comedy called Fortunella, for the title track of which, he had employed a tune that, while more upbeat, was essentially the same as the one he’d use for The Godfather almost 15 years later. Nobody knows who alerted the Academy to this fact, but whoever the rat was, it scuppered any chances of the great man winning his first Oscar.
Ultimately, it would be Rota who had the last laugh. ‘Love Theme from The Godfather‘ is one of the most famous pieces of film music of all time, cracking the Billboard Top 100, such was the public’s admiration for the mournful ballad. A version with lyrics by Andy Williams called ‘Speak Softly, Love’ performed, charting in the US, as well as other countries like Spain and the United Kingdom.
Two years later, justice was done at ‘Hollywood’s Biggest Night’, when he finally picked up his ‘Best Original Score’ award, this time for the inscrutable soundtrack to The Godfather Part II.
