De Niro and Pacino Reunite for The Godfather 50th Anniversary at Tribeca Film Fest
Roy Rochlin/Getty for Tribeca Festival
Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are still repping the family business half a century later.
The vet stars reunited Thursday for a 50th anniversary screening of The Godfather at United Palace, hosted by the Tribeca Film Festival, which De Niro, 78, co-founded in 2002 to revive the cultural scene of lower Manhattan in the wake of 9/11.
Pacino, 82, and author Michael Hainey participated in a discussion about the seminal mafia title from director Coppola before Tribeca screened the film’s restoration.
De Niro and Pacino previously joined Coppola, 83, onstage at the 94th Oscars, where the iconic director reflected: “I feel moments like this should be sincere and brief,” he said, turning to De Niro and Pacino. “And I’m so grateful for my wonderful friends to come here to help me celebrate with you.
“This project that we began 50 years ago with really the most extraordinary collaborators, many of them legends and so many of them that I can’t take the time to list them all, but you know them all well. So I’m going to only thank two from the bottom of my heart,” Coppola added.
Pacino told The New York Times that he’s been deeply honored to see the film’s lasting acclaim over the past 50 years, while musing on the anniversary.
“It’s a piece of work that I was so fortunate to be in. But it’s taken me a lifetime to accept it and move on,” Pacino said in March. “It’s not like I played Superman.”
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The Academy Award winner added that he’s “surprised” when people tell him they’ve never seen the movie, adding: “They’ve heard about it. You get that. ‘Oh, I heard — were you in that? That was a film, wasn’t it?'”
The Godfather tells the story of the Italian-American crime family of Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) as his youngest son Michael (Pacino) joins the mafia and tries to juggle the violent family business with his marriage to wife Kay (Diane Keaton).
The film, which is based on screenwriter Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel of the same name, has been widely regarded as one of the best films of all time since it premiered in 1972. It won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, in addition to nominations for Coppola and Pacino.
De Niro starred in 1974’s The Godfather Part II as a younger version of Vito.