The Godfather

No, and there is no interesting case to be made otherwise. Start here. What is worth saying instead is what the film is doing, because its reputation as a gangster picture undersells it badly.

It is a conversion story run in the wrong direction. Michael is introduced in uniform at his sister's wedding, sitting apart, telling Kay the story of his father's business and then saying the line the entire trilogy turns on: that is my family, Kay, it is not me. Everything afterwards is the slow falsification of that sentence. He volunteers to kill Sollozzo as a tactical argument, not a moral one. He comes back from Sicily changed. By the end he is lying to his wife about the thing he has just had done, and the door closes on her.

The technical choice that carries it is the light. Gordon Willis shot the interiors so dark that the studio objected, and Brando's eyes are in shadow for most of his scenes. Business happens indoors in amber and black; Sicily and the wedding are outdoors and bright. You are told which world a scene belongs to before anybody speaks.

The baptism sequence is where the two halves finally fuse, and it is the most copied piece of editing in American film: a sacrament and five murders cut together, Michael renouncing Satan aloud while his orders are carried out. It is a complete film with a complete ending, and if you watched only this one you would not be missing a conclusion.