Le Parrain, 2ᵉ partie

Francis Coppola and Mario Puzo continue their epic saga into the lives of the infamous Corleone family, which is headed by Michael Corleone (Al Pacino). It is a film which does better than its predessor, "The Godfather". The film flip-flops graciously and beautifully between Michael's struggle over the family business and the life of young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro, in a brilliant, Oscar-winning performance) in his rise to power as well. Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Lee Strassberg, and John Cazale give excellent supporting performances. Carmine Coppola's and Nino Rota's score is a masterpiece of music. The movie is expertly filmed and the cinematography is superb.

Nino Rota's musical score plays an even greater role in this equal but different successor than it did in the predecessor. Yearning, lamenting, stimulating bygone ages, see how infectiously Nino Rota's music affects our sentiments for the savage events on screen. It is the pulse of the films. One cannot imagine them without their Nino Rota music. Against all our realistic deduction, it guides us to how to feel about the films, and condition us to understand the characters within their own world. Throughout the Corleone family's many criminal actions, we understand that one doesn't have to be a monster in order to live with having done them.

In what is both a dual expansion of its predecessor and a masterpiece of juxtaposition in itself, we see Michael Corleone forfeit his remaining shreds of morality and become an empty shell, insecure and merciless. As his father quietly knew in his latter days would be so, Michael has lost sight of those values that made Don Corleone better than he had to be and has become a new godfather every bit as evil as he has to be. The score, with its tonal harmony, its honeyed and emotional aesthetics, is sad, and music can often evoke emotion more surely and subtly than story. Consider several operas with ridiculous stories and lyrics yet contain arias that literally move us to tears.

The devolution of Michael Corleone is adjacent with flashbacks to the youth and young manhood of his father, Vito, played with paternal, home-loving subtlety by Robert De Niro. These scenes, in Sicily and old New York at the turn of the century, follow the conventional pattern of a young man on the rise and show the Mafia code being burned into the Corleone blood. No false romanticism conceals the necessity of murder to do business. We don't look at Vito as a victim of his environment, but a product of the depiction of the resorts to which the Italian culture had turned, initially to both protect their homeland and protect their livelihood as immigrants who came to America to be paid less than the blacks.

The film opens in 1901 Corleone, Sicily, at the funeral procession for young Vito's father, who had been killed by the local Mafia chieftain, Don Ciccio, over an insult. During the procession, Vito's older brother is also murdered because he swore to avenge his father. Vito's mother goes to Ciccio to beg for the life of young Vito. When he refuses, she sacrifices herself to allow Vito to escape. They scour the town for him, warning the sleeping townsfolk against harboring the boy. With the aid of a few of the townspeople, Vito finds his way by ship to Ellis Island, where an immigration agent, mishearing Vito's hometown of Corleone as his name, registers him as Vito Corleone. From this very opening, and the events that gradually follow, we see that Vito's damnable early experiences have enhanced his sense of family, and his experience of revenge as a necessity was passed on to Vito's sons.

The life of young Vito helps to explain the forming of the adult Don Corleone. As his unplanned successor Michael, his youngest child, transforms, we hark back to why, when his true desire is to make the Corleone family completely legitimate, he feels that he must play the game by its old rules. His wife says, "You once told me: 'In five years, the Corleone family will be completely legitimate.' That was seven years ago." What we have are two all-too-real narratives, two superb lead performances and lasting images. There is even a parallel between two elderly dons: Revenge must be had.

I admire the way Coppola and Puzo require us to think along with Michael as he feels out fragile deliberations involving Miami boss Hyman Roth, his older brother Fredo, and the death of Sonny in the previous film. Who is against him? Why? Michael drifts several explanations past several key players, misleading them all, or nearly. It's like a game of blindfolded chess. He has to envision the moves without seeing them. Coppola shows Michael breaking under the burden. We recall that he was a war hero, a successful college student, forging an honest life. Ultimately Michael has no one by whom to swear but his aging mother. Michael's desolation in that scene of dialogue informs the film's closing shot.

So this six-time Oscar-winning three-and-a-half-hour gangster epic is ultimately a dreary experience, a mourning for what could've been. It is a contrast with the earlier film, in which Don Corleone is seen defending old values against modern hungers. Young Vito was a murderer, too, as we more fully understand in the Sicily and New York scenes of Part II. But he was wise and diplomatic. Murder was personal. As Hyman Roth says, "It had nothing to do with business." The crucial difference between the father and son is that Vito is cognizant of and comprehending the needs, feelings, problems, and views of others, and Michael grows in the very opposite direction. Whereas the first movie was a taut ensemble piece, this second part is a more leisurely film that closely studies only these two characters, neither of whom share scenes with each other. Everyone else is periphery.

It must be seen as a piece with the consummate mastership of The Godfather. When the characters in a film truly take on a simulated environmental existence for us, it becomes a film that everyone who cherishes movies to any extent should see at least once.

The Godfather, Part II is one of the most revered sequels of all time, if not the most. While I prefer the original for a few reasons, this sequel is not without more than its fair share of merits. However, it also has one or two flaws that, if I am going to be fair, I have to mention. Since they will take up the least amount of space in my comments, I'll get them out of the way first. The first flaw, in my opinion, is a jumping sense of focus. As the story goes from one part of America to Cuba to Sicily to another part of America, one can get a little giddy with the to and fro. The other problem is that when the screenplay doesn't follow Mario Puzo's original writings, it doesn't quite work. The big conspiracy with a Jewish smuggler and unnamed Italian rivals in the New York or Nevada underworlds doesn't quite seem to gel. Both stories, the historical story of Vito Corleone and the present-day story of Michael's decline, really needed three hours of their own. It is interesting to note that of all the deleted footage that went into the Godfather Legacy miniseries, the majority came from this film.

The acting from all concerned is top-notch, especially from Al Pacino, who sells himself beautifully as the dangerous head of a mafia family in spite of needing to be on platforms to appear at the same height as many of his castmates. Robert Duvall gives a workman-like performance, but he has little to do here other than act out the part of the ever-loyal brother. I think the fact that he was almost irrelevant to the storyline here has a lot to do with Duvall's refusal to join the cast of the third film. The real surprise here is John Cazale, who fleshes out Fredo Corleone far beyond anything in either the first film or the novel. It is unsurprising that all of the films Cazale has been in have been nominated for Best Picture. He portrays the rejected brother who just wants what he feels is his fair share with an uncanny grace. But these are just the highlights. The entire cast give top-notch performances, even the extras who appear for less than ten seconds.

The best thing about a Godfather film is how it builds a simple story of a family who, whether they wanted it or not, happen to be in the business of organised crime. The bloodshed of this film, much as was the case in the original, is secondary to the simple premise that these are ordinary people in an extraordinary position. Francis Ford Coppola has previously stated that he saw The Godfather as a (relatively) modern King Lear, and that style is kept up in the sequel. Michael is in essence the new King of the realm, but he learns the hard way that the more he tries to tighten his grip upon what is his, or what is loyal to him, the more it slips away. This is the film in which we learn why this is not what Vito Corleone wanted for his youngest son. Sadly, fate has a way of getting in the path of our best intentions, and nowhere is this more evident than in Diane Keaton's dialogue. Some of her speech to Al Pacino really sounds like it was either written at the last moment, or by someone who didn't have a whole lot of experience in writing films.

Like the other Godfather films, the most satisfying moments are when the opponents of the Corleone family get their hash settled in a big way. The montage shown in Part II is not as graphic as that of the original, but it brings the whole thing to a satisfying climax. Lee Strasberg's speech to the press after his character being deported from Israel is priceless, as is the manner in which it ends. Unfortunately, the etiquette that dictates I cannot reveal what happens at the end of the film means I cannot tell you anything about the most satisfying death in the film. Being one of the most debated and criticised scenes among Godfather fans, I am fairly certain that anyone with an interest in the film is going to hear about it elsewhere anyway. In spite of the fact that it, and the necessary lead-up, takes up most of the second half of Michael's plot segment, it will leave many a viewer stunned. But that is one of the things that detracts slightly from this cinematic tour de force. With the screen time so sharply divided between two stories, sometimes the linking between plot points seems to fall by the wayside.

I gave The Godfather, Part II a nine out of ten. In contrast to the original, I noticed the passage of time on a few occasions in its two hundred minutes. Still, if you're out to see a good drama, and you've already enjoyed the first Godfather, then this is worth a couple of viewings. If every director adaptating the writings of others into a film format took as much care as Francis Ford Coppola had here, then the world would be a better place.

The original Godfather is a brilliant work. It is in a sense a voyeuristic delight, allowing us to see the mafia from the inside - we become part of the family. It single-handedly change the world's view of organized crime, and created a cast of sympathetic characters, none of whom have a shred of common morality. It was the highest grossing movie of its time and Brando created a cultural icon whose influence resonates as strong today as it did in 1972.

As extraordinary an achievement as this is, Part II is even better. It easily receives my nod as the best picture ever made. I have seen it at least 20 times, and each time its 200 minutes fly by.

The movie uses flashbacks to brilliantly weave two tales. The main story is the reign of Michael Corleone as the world's most powerful criminal. Now reaping the benefits of legalized gambling in Las Vegas, Michael is an evident billionaire with an iron fist on a world of treachery.

Behind this, Director Francis Ford Coppola spins the tale of the rise of Michael's father, Vito, to the center of the New York mafia. It is these scenes that make the film a work of art. Without spoiling, I will simply say the Robert DeNiro as the young Vito is the best acting performance of all time, a role for which he won a richly deserved Oscar.

The screenplay is full of delicious little underworld nuggets ("Keep your friends close .....", "I don't want to kill everyone, just my enemies"), while it blows a dense, twisted plot past you at a dizzying and merciless pace. The cinematography is depressing and atmospheric. The score continues in the eerie role of its predecessor, foretelling death and evil.

All of this makes the movie great and infinitely watchable. But it's what's deeper inside this film ... what it is really about ... that is its true genius.

The Godfather Part II is not really a movie about the mafia, it is a movie about a man's life long struggle. Michael controls a vast empire that is constantly slipping out of his hands. He grows increasingly distrustful and paranoid, and even shows signs that he hates his own life. Michael almost seems to resent the fact that he is a natural born crime lord, a man who puts the family business ahead of everything.

The great Don Michael Corleone can never come to terms with one simple fact.... his father's empire was built on love and respect, Michael's empire is built on fear and violent treachery.

See this movie. It's three-and-a-half hours very well spent.

To say that this film is a sequel is a sin. Al Pacino and Robert de Niro win the Oscar for this film, Robert de Niro's performance as Vito Corleone is perfect, every scene in which this one is perfect. Al Pacino as always perfect and unlike the first film, he is much better.

PROS:

EVERYTHING. The script, the direction, the cast, the performance, everything in this film is perfect and its 3 hours are worth it.

CONS:

NOTHING. This movie is perfect.