Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. Based on Mario Puzo’s best-selling 1969 novel, The Godfather depicts the rise and legacy of the Corleone family, a fictional Italian-American organized crime family led by Vito Corleone and the transformation of his son Michael from a reluctant outsider to a ruthless mafia boss. The film, which features an ensemble cast of American film icons, including Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duval, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, and John Cazale, explores themes of family, power, and the American Dream. It also provides a window into the relationship between law and culture while offering complex perspectives on the meaning of justice.

Timestamps:

0:00 Introduction

3:08 “I believe in America”

12:27 Business and the personal

14:07 Competing views of law and justice in America

16:57 The legitimate and illegitimate, the sacred and the profane

20:52 Narratives about the mafia

26:59 The consigliere

33:59 Tensions between tradition and modernity

39:37 Ritual

44:41 Performance and power

49:11 Retribution

55:18 The mafia and The Godfather

56:48 Codes of loyalty

102:39 The immigrant experience

Further reading:

Barber, Nicholas, “The Godfather: Have we misunderstood America's greatest film?”, BBC (Mar. 13, 2022)

Coppola, Francis Ford, The Godfather Notebook (2016)

Denvir, John, “The Slotting Function: How Movies Influence Political Decision,” 28 Vermont L. Rev. 799 (2003-04)

Gambrell, Brian C., “Leave the Representation, Take the Cannoli: The Crime Fraud Exception to the Attorney-Client Privilege and ‘The Godfather,’” 23 South Carolina Lawyer (2011-12)

Papke, David, “Myth and Meaning: Francis Ford Coppola and Popular Response to The Godfather Trilogy,” in Legal Reelism: Movies as Legal Text (John Denvir ed., 1996)

Puzo, Mario, The Godfather (1969)

Seal, Mark, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather (2021)

Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember.
For more information about Jonathan, here's a link to his bio: https://law.shu.edu/profiles/hafetzjo.html
You can contact him at jonathanhafetz@gmail.com
You can follow him on X (Twitter) @jonathanhafetz
You can follow the podcast on X (Twitter) @LawOnFilm
You can follow the podcast on Instagram @lawonfilmpodcast

No Other Land (2024) is the Oscar-winning documentary that shows the brutal destruction of a Palestinian community in the occupied West Bank. Recorded between 2019 to 2023, the film tells the story of Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist, who has been protesting the Israeli army’s destruction of homes and eviction of villagers. Adra is assisted by Yuval Abraham, a Jewish Israeli journalist. (They are also two of the film’s four directors). To Adra and other Palestinians, the Israeli army is destroying their homeland. The Israeli army, however, maintains that the inhabitants are on land that the military needs for live-fire military training and that the evictions have been duly authorized by Israeli courts. The situation turns violent—Adra’s cousin is shot by Israeli soldiers in the days after the Oct 7 attacks—and Adra himself is endangered by his efforts to record the evictions and protests. The film provides a penetrating look not only at a Palestinian community in the West Bank but also at the plight of those being forced off their land--with literally nowhere else to go. [Editor's Note: Since the recording of this episode, Odeh Hathalin, a Palestinian activist and contributor to the film, was shot and killed in a village in Masafer Yatta by an Israeli settler.]

Timestamps:

0:00 Introduction

3:42 Masafar Yatta and the Occupied West Bank

7:43 The legal apparatus of illegal occupation

13:14 The “Gazafication” of the West Bank

20:08 The meaning of “No Other Land”

23:21 Israel and the international community

31:24 The crackdown on free speech in the United States and in Israel

34:41 A complex story of an Israeli-Palestinian friendship

41:18 The power of images

43:07 Growing Israeli indifference to Gaza and the West Bank after Oct. 7

48:30 The film’s reception in Israel

49:53 Law-based criticism of Israel and antisemitism

Further reading:

Bartov, Omer, “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It,” New York Times (July 15, 2025)

Beinart, Peter, Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (2025)

Caplan, Neil, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories (2010)

Hajjar, Lisa, “International Humanitarian Law and ‘Wars on Terror’: A Comparative Analysis of Israeli and American Doctrines and Policies,” 36 Journal of Palestine Studies 36 (Autumn 2006)

Kaufman, Anthony, "No Other Distribution: How Film Industry Economics and Politics Are Suppressing Docs Sympathetic to Palestine and Critical of Israel," Int’l Documentary Ass’n (Jan 15, 2025)

Khalidi, Rashid, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (2020)

Lukenville, Mackenzie, “The Only Path Forward: ‘No Other Land,’” Int’l Documentary Ass’n (Dec. 5, 2024)

Sfard, Michael, Occupation from Within: A Journey to the Roots of the Constitutional Coup (2025)

Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember.
For more information about Jonathan, here's a link to his bio: https://law.shu.edu/profiles/hafetzjo.html
You can contact him at jonathanhafetz@gmail.com
You can follow him on X (Twitter) @jonathanhafetz
You can follow the podcast on X (Twitter) @LawOnFilm
You can follow the podcast on Instagram @lawonfilmpodcast

The Return of Martin Guerre is a 1982 French historical drama directed by Daniel Vigne and staring Gerard Depardieu. The film describes the historical case of Martin Guerre who leaves his young wife Bertrande (Nathalie Baye) in the small French village of Artigat to fight in a war and travel. Around eight years later, the false Martin (played by Depardieu) returns to the village to resume his life. The false Martin (whose real name is Arnaud du Tilh) persuades the people in the village that he is in fact Martin Guerre. This includes Bertrande, who goes on to have two children with the false Martin and who seems happy to finally have a husband who loves her, as opposed to the real Martin, with whom she was trapped in an arranged and loveless marriage. But when the imposter Martin presses his uncle for the money he is owed for his land, the uncle denounces him as a fraud. An investigation and trial follow to determine if the Depardieu character is the real Martin. The imposter Martin is on the verge of winning until the real Martin shows up at the last minute, exposing the imposter Martin, who then confesses. The imposter (i.e., Arnaud) is then led to the gallows and hanged, and the real Martin resumes his place in the village.

Timestamps:

0:00 Introduction

2:56 Teaching comparative law through film

4:18 A quick primer on French legal history

7:33 Jean de Coras and the Parliament of Toulouse

11:28 How the false Martin Guerre becomes Martin Guerre

16:12 The allegations against Martin and Bertrande

21:01 The trial of Martin Guerre

25:16 How the false Martin almost pulls it off

27:26 The execution

31:29 Religious conflict in 16th century Europe

34:59 The difficulty of proving identity at the time

Further reading:

Bienen, Leigh Buchanan, Book Review, “The Law as Storyteller,” 98 Harv. L. Rev. 494 (1984)

Davis, Natalie Zemon, The Return of Martin Guerre (1983)

Dellapenna, Joseph, “Peasants, Tanners, and Psychiatrists: Using Films to Teach Comparative Law,” 36 (1) Int’l J. Legal Information 156 (2008)

Finlay, Robert, “The Refashioning of Martin Guerre,” 93(3) Am. Hist. Rev. 553 (1988)

Hall, Phyllis A., “Teaching Analytical Thinking through the AHR Forum and ‘The Return of Martin Guerre’” Perspectives on History (Jan. 1, 1990)

Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember.
For more information about Jonathan, here's a link to his bio: https://law.shu.edu/profiles/hafetzjo.html
You can contact him at jonathanhafetz@gmail.com
You can follow him on X (Twitter) @jonathanhafetz
You can follow the podcast on X (Twitter) @LawOnFilm
You can follow the podcast on Instagram @lawonfilmpodcast