Movie Dads

A selection of role models – and otherwise – from the movies.

HARRY DEAN STANTON in PRETTY IN PINK: A broken man, tries his damnedest, but just can’t do, just can’t say the right thing. But, man alive does he try. Fail again. Fail better. The absolute role model in the business of being Not Too Bad a Dad.

GREGORY PECK in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD: Here’s the only guide to dadding that you’ll ever need: Watch the movie To Kill a Mockingbird. Observe Gregory Peck as the loving, principled, sensitive, morally upright and generally legendary Atticus Finch. If you try to be a tenth of a hundredth of a thousandth as good a dad as him, then you’ll leave all the Not Too Bad Dads in the shade. An unreasonable goal. But worth shooting for.

MARLON BRANDO in THE GODFATHER: Great scene where, in his dotage, Vito Corleone rues his life of crime in almost confessional tones, while handing the mantle to his son Michael. “There just wasn’t enough time, Michael. There just wasn’t enough time.” Poetic, moving, intensely dramatic, tragic on an ancient Greek scale, this is movieland’s finest equivalent of the Empty Nester’s battle cry “Make the most of it: they grow up SO fast!”

ROBERT DE NIRO in GODFATHER PART II: “I have,” says Brando in The Godfather, “a sentimental weakness for my children.” De Niro takes this line and weaves it into the young Vito Corleone’s makeup beautifully. Standing in their coldwater apartment in Little Italy, De Niro’s young Don watches, biting his fist, wracked with anguish, as the womenfolk apply a hot poultice to the infant Fredo. Tears to a glass eye.

AL PACINO in THE GODFATHER PART III: Touching moment when he produces a drawing made by his son Anthony on the day of the boy’s confirmation. He’s kept it for all these years. Awwwww, how surweeet is that? Okay, so he’s killed anyone and everyone who ever got in his way – including his own brother, Fredo – but he still loves his little boy. If that’s not being Not Too Bad a Dad, then I don’t know what is.

JOE PESCI in CASINO: Robs houses. Shoots people. Beats people to death. Has an affair with his best friend’s wife. Swears like a docker with Tourette’s. Puts a guy’s head in a vice and pops his eye out. But always gets home in time to make his son’s breakfast. Not Too Bad a Dad? Who’s gonna argue?

DARTH VADER in STAR WARS: Who knew? Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s dad? V. bad dad role model in the worst movie (and movie franchise) ever made. Once described by Isobella’s Godfather John as “the death of culture”. Indeed this insight was what led us to appoint John as a Godfather in the first place.