The Godfather (1972) by Francis Ford Coppola is among the best films ever produced. Consistently ranked as one of the top three films by the American Film Institute, this gangster film ranks among the likes of Citizen Kane (1941), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and the more recent Schindler's List (1993) (American) . When it was released, The Godfather was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won three: Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was adapted from the best-selling novel of the same name by Mario Puzo (Mast & Kawin, 332). The film is set over a ten-year span between 1945 and 1955. It follows the Sicilian family led by Vito Corleone, played by Marlon Brando; Corleone is also the godfather or boss 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) are all gangster films in pre-production, but Tim Dirks of American Movie Classics believes The Godfather "reinvented the gangster genre" (Dirks). However, The Godfather bears many similarities to pre-production gangster films, especially in its use of violence and depiction of the corruption of both gangsters and "good guys". The gangster films of the 1930s and 1940s 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 put an end to the style of early gangster classics. Two principles of the Production Code for films made at the time, from 1934 to 1967, were that "No picture should lower the moral standards of those who see it... the public should never be taken on the side of crime, evil, evil or sin" and "[l]aw [...] shall not be belittled, ridiculed, nor shall adverse sentiment be created" (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 gangsters to “good guys” (Dirks). David Stirritt, film critic for the Christian Science Monitor, says 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 evident when compared..