The Godfather (1972) by Francis Ford Coppola is one of the best films ever produced. Consistently ranked among the top three films by the American Film Institute, this gangster film ranks among films like Citizen Kane (1941), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and the more recent Schindler's List (1993) (American ). Upon its release, The Godfather was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won three: Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film is an adaptation of the bestselling novel of the same name by Mario Puzo (Mast & Kawin, 332). The film takes place over a period of ten years, between 1945 and 1955. It follows the Sicilian family led by Vito Corleone, played by Marlon Brando; Corleone is also the godfather or leader of the Corleone Crime Family. Coppola's film is not the first big screen version of a gangster film: Scarface (1933), The Public Enemy (1931) and Little Caesar (1931) were all gangster films coded in pre-production, but Tim Dirks of American Movie Classics believes that The Godfather "reinvented the gangster genre" (Dirks). Yet The Godfather bears many similarities to pre-production coded gangster films, particularly in its use of violence and its depiction of the corruption of both gangsters and "good guys." Gangster films of the '30s and '40s had all but disappeared until The Godfather revived the genre. These films were not new to Hollywood: The Public Enemy (1931), Little Caesar (1930), and Scarface (1932), but the Production Code ended the style of the early gangster classics. Two principles of the production code for films made at this time, between 1934 and 1967, were: "No picture should lower the moral standards of those who see it...the audience should never be cast on the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin” and “[t]he law […] must not be demeaned, ridiculed, or create sentiment against it” (The Production Code). These principles, along with the film noir era, essentially ended the way gangster films were made. Following the enforcement of the code, the focus shifted from the gangsters to the “good guys” (Dirks). David Stirritt, film critic for the Christian Science Monitor, states that Coppola's film "revived the gangster genre" (Dirks). This revival helped other gangster films make it to the big screen: Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas (1991) and Casino (1995), and Mike Newell's Donnie Brasco (1997). The similarities between The Godfather and early gangster films are obvious when compared..