I have written about the credit music Don
@Wraith chose for his edit in the recent past. Like the extended cuts that were modelled after The Godfather Saga (The Complete Novel For Television, The Complete Epic, The Godfather Epic, The Godfather Trilogy, etc.) it is Part II's cue, named
End Title. Today, I instead want to share my findings on the first film's credits.
The last music
in the movie we hear starts to play as Kay confronts Michael about Connie's accusation. It finishes with Al Neri closing the door on her. This cue is called
Finale and is a short re-imagination of the
Godfather Waltz or
Main Title, stripped down. After having been unreleased for over half a century, it was finally put on the 2022 50th anniversary soundtrack for us to enjoy. The screen fades to black and the credits begin to roll. Now there is music
after the movie. It's a montage of the most important themes of the film. This is an individual recording, not pieced together from the cues as heard in the movie or later on the soundtrack. But more about that further down.
Franco Sciannameo was granted insight into the composer's notes by Nino Rota's estate. He wrote a book about this:
Nino Rota's The Godfather Trilogy - A Film Score Guide. Which he made digitally available for free, recently. In it, he reveals how the cue that plays in the credit roll was called
The Godfather Finale. As if it wasn't confusing enough already that we have Finale and The Godfather Finale, it gets worse! There is another piece named exactly that, The Godfather Finale. That is track no. 12 on the 1972 official soundtrack. Since CD 2 of the 2022 re-issue is the old album remastered, it is track no 12 on there as well. This remastered audio would soon become crucial in my findings. I'll quote Franco:
"THE GODFATHER FINALE (19M3) [02:52:26-02:54:56]
Scored for 2 flutes, 1 obe, 1 English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 3 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, 1 tuba, 1 harp, 1 piano, 1 guitar, 1 accordion, 2 mandolins, strings (10-8-6-6-4). Recorded on 1/17/72. CD 1–Track 12 The Godfather Finale [Extended Version with Dubbed Chorus]".
He is telling us here, is that the soundtrack version of The Godfather Finale is just the music recorded for the credit roll with a mixed male and female vocal choir added to it. So what is this extended version, then?
What I have found out, is that there are multiple recordings. I would have not dared to make this judgement from my old vinyl of the soundtrack, with how tempo and pitch are susceptible to the moods of the equipment. And said that the other versions were probably just shortened from a master cue or mother track. With the remastered CD, however... This 2022 re-issue has two interesting things on CD 1. Track no. 29
End Credits and track no. 36
End Credits (Alternate).
As ever so often, at least without any context provided, this isn't correct, either. Neither are the credit music edit. First thing's first, these two are separate recordings, not different edits of the same one. Which I can say 100% safely as the tempo starts to faintly diverge at around the 12 second mark and some ornamentations are ever so slightly different. I put this in my digital audio work station to measure. The Godfather Finale from the soundtrack was not just End Credits (Alternate) + a choir added later. The credit roll music also wasn't just cut down. The credit music has been shortened, but also edited together from different parts of both tracks End Credits and End Credits (Alternate).
Why is any of this important? Well, it really isn't. It started with writing out the mandolin parts years ago, just for myself. But I soon wanted to transpose the entire thing. For love of my mental health, especially with the confusion the soundtrack re-issue provided, I needed to confirm whether there really were any additional versions of the credits. Because in my little companion notebook I used when transcribing/transposing the score and making time stamps, I some time last year wrote down having found an aditional credit roll that comes after the usual one. I wasn't able to identify this version though before Wraith lent me his resources. I got confused because it appeared during the "The Godfather was scanned, digitally restored and film recorded in 4K resolution" title card, thanking the people who worked on the restoration. I thus had frantically been going through the newest DVD, Blu-Ray and streaming versions - To no avail.
Now I know that this is because it's exclusively part of The Coppola Restoration, which is actually the HD version. This reminded me of a convo I had with Wraith some months ago about how they have been sitting on the 4K edition for very many years. Before then making some unfortunate edits and releasing what many of us agreed to be a visual and atmospheric downgrade. Either way: You'll know you got the right version when the golden Paramount screen has the "A Viacom Company" sub logo. The oldest and newest versions of the movie have a blue screen and "A Gulf + Western Company" sub.
In a long line of batshit insane editing decisions this trilogy had to endure, the now longer running credits were given additional music. So far, so good. But rather than now putting in one of the longer uncut versions of the, you know, music made for the credits... They instead retained the old, shortened cut and then, after one second of silence, for the restoration roll added
Sicilian Pastorale from when Michael is walking with Calò and Frabrizio in Sicily in the movie, which was track no. 6 on the 1972/2022 soundtracks. Which though would have been too long in it's entirety at 3:01, as they took the pre-recorded cue this time. And so they shortened that as well, to 1:29. Sigh!
In terms of tempo, The Godfather Finale, End Credits and the credit roll all run at the same speed. End Credits (Alternate) is the slowest paced. While the credit roll has always been the shortest of these versions because of how many elements have been cut out in the middle, the HD version then funnily still made them the longest. Anyway, here is an edited overview of what I wrote down in my notebook. I removed the timestamps and note/volume differences for the sake of everybody's sanity, just to give you guys a quick overview of how things were edited:
The Godfather Finale - 1972/2022 soundtrack
Michael's Theme / The New Godfather + vocal choir
Apollonia with long guitar outro
Love Theme + vocal choir
Main Title as viola solo
Main Title with orchestra + vocal choir
The Godfather Waltz
- 3:53 length
End Credits (Alternate) - 2022 soundtrack
Michael's Theme / The New Godfather
Apollonia with short guitar outro
Love Theme
Main Title as viola solo
Main Title with orchestra
The Godfather Waltz
- 3:53 length
End Credits - 2022 soundtrack
Michael's Theme / The New Godfather
Apollonia with short guitar outro
Main Title as viola solo
Main Title with orchestra
The Godfather Waltz
- 3:19 length
Credit roll - 1972 theater release/ VHS / 2001 SD DVD The Godfather Collection / 2022 4K DVD & Blu-Ray 50th Anniversary (blue logo, Gulf + Western)
Michael's Theme / The New Godfather
Apollonia with long guitar outro
Main Title with orchestra
The Godfather Waltz
- 2:30 length
Credit roll - 2008 The Coppola Restoration HD DVD & Blu-Ray (gold screen, Viacom)
Michael's Theme / The New Godfather
Apollonia with long guitar outro
Main Title with orchestra
The Godfather Waltz
Sicilian Pastorale shortened after the oboe intro
- 4:01 length
