Da ich nie jemanden überzeugen konnte, fasst es Richard Brody nochmal zusammen:
There’s a sort of mental dividing line between those who see the first two „Godfathers“ as the great movies of the time and those who consider Cassavetes‘ films to be the era’s supreme creations. And I’d bet that, if the former were to be sounded, they’d also turn out, by and large, to be partisans of the modern serious television series, starting, in all likelihood, with „The Sopranos“. The very mode of analysis invoked by a series—in which the parsing of character and study of intention take precedence—is the one for which „The Godfather“ seems to have been created, and which, for that matter, those films may have created. Francis Ford Coppola should properly be considered the founder of modern television. What Cassavetes has inspired are the strongest currents of the independent cinema.
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A Kiss in the Dreamhouse