“He may, like Zapata, be that ultimate contradiction — a man 'of the peo­ple' who towers above them, a man in constant tension with his own myth.”

“Bertolucci and Brando conspire magnificently, some­times awkwardly, to create not just a film about an affair, but the affair itself — an affair which we have the option of resisting or ac­cepting on a gut level, and which like most affairs (and unlike most current films) is better experi­enced than written about.”

“Since 'The Godfather' is about as unkind to the Mafia as 'Mein Kampf' is to Adolf Hitler, it is hard to understand why the local little Caesars didn’t pay a commission for all the free publicity.”

“Suddenly moviegoers of both sexes have encountered ... Marlon Brando’s pseudo-sensitive stud’s swagger, Burt Reynolds’s coy centerfold swagger, and Norman Mailer’s ballsy literary swagger.”