Godfather, shmodfather.

Leone, obsessed with Harry Goldberg's autobiographical novel The Hoods since well before The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, spent several years trying to find the author and secure the book's rights. Paramount Pictures, in the interim, offered the great director the chance to adapt Mario Puzo's bestseller, but he balked at the thought -- only to eventually cringe as American critics reverently yet foolishly referred to this classic as 'the Jewish Godfather.'

It is a story of friends and relationships changing over time, explored via Jewish youngbloods rising to varied ranks of infamy in New York's excessively hierarchical structure of organised crime.

What sets this masterwork apart from other crime cinema is the extreme detailing: gangster shootouts are recreated from press photographs, characters are direct parallels of real-life mobsters, and period visuals are based on artists like Norman Rockwell while the protagonist Noodles, played by Robert De Niro, was influenced by F Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby.

It is a film impossible to not be awed by, and the running time of 229 minutes only justifies its epic tag. De Niro is surrounded by a brilliant cast, with Joe Pesci, James Woods and William Forsythe handing in performances of a lifetime.

Oh, and there's a very young Jennifer Connelly as well. In this wonderfully tender scene, she reads to the adolescent Noodles: poetry that gushes about him only to be frequently interrupted by biting sarcasm. Click here for video.

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