“If anything in this life is certain - if history has taught us anything - it’s that you can kill anybody.”

        

Plot Summary: Sequel to The Godfather compares and contrasts the two Corleone dons, flashing back and forth between Michael’s (Al Pacino) consolidation of power in Las Vegas, Miami and Cuba in the 1950’s and Vito’s (Robert De Niro) rise to power in NYC near the turn of the century.
 

Review:

The traditional arch of the gangster film, beginning with Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, charts the rise of fall of the gangster protagonist. Interestingly, The Godfather: Part II  also follows a rise and fall curve, but instead of happening to a single protagonist over a relatively short period of time as in earlier gangster films, the rise and fall in The Godfather: Part II  occurs between father and son over the course of two generations. Whereas Vito labored to build a Mafia empire for the sake of his family, Michael, sadly lacking his father’s knack for balancing business and personal affairs, destroys the family with his ruthless pursuit of wealth and power. During the course of the film, Michael alienates his sister Connie, physically abuses his wife Kay, and, most egregious of all, murders his brother Fredo - behavior that the comparatively noble Vito surely would have considered beyond the pale. The Godfather: Part II , then, is not about the rise and fall of a single person, or even of two people, but of an entire family and its attendant traditions and values, a theme which enables Coppola to transcend the particulars of the gangster genre and give his film universal significance. And whereas the traditional gangster’s downfall inevitably resulted in his physical death, Michael’s is a spiritual/moral death; in the course of consolidating his immense wealth and power, Michael loses everything that mattered to Vito - his honor, his religion, his family, his very soul.

                 

Interestingly, the contrast between Vito and Michael also extends to the film’s visual design. Gordon Willis’ stunning photography (which somehow went unnominated even though the film garnered 12 other deserved Oscar nominations) bathes the Vito flashbacks in a warm, amber glow, not only evoking nostalgia for times past but also reflecting Vito’s hope for a bright future, while Michael always seems to be operating in the shadows of a dark, wintry environment, reflecting his moral and spiritual disintegration. Some misguided critics, including one Roger Ebert, have suggested that Coppola should have dropped Vito’s part, but in fact it is crucial to the film’s greatness. Just imagine the film sans flashbacks. For one thing, De Niro’s excellent, Oscar-winning performance as the younger incarnation of Vito, which brilliantly evokes Brando’s original characterization through the subtle use of similar mannerisms, gestures, vocal inflections and, of course, one very well known catchphrase, would be totally eliminated. Even worse, jettisoning Coppola’s carefully integrated flashbacks, and thus the contrasts they create between Michael and Vito, would ruin the film’s very reason for being. Simply put, without the Vito flashbacks, The Godfather: Part II would have been little more than a conventional genre movie; with the flashbacks, the film gains immeasurably in thematic sophistication, visual beauty, and emotional resonance.

                           

Even as Coppola contrast’s Vito’s rise with Michael’s fall, he also draws numerous parallels between Part 2 and Part 1. For example, both films begin with a celebration at which the current Don Corleone conducts business in private. In Part 1 Don Vito considers requests from guests during Connie’s wedding reception, while Part 2 shows Don Michael engaging in shady business deals with a corrupt senator during his son Anthony’s confirmation. Likewise, both films conclude with a cross-cut series of murders ordered by the Don. But again the parallels are most striking in their contrast: whereas Vito eliminates only rivals and sworn enemies, Michael eliminates everyone - rivals, friends and family alike. Vito shoots the heads of the other families; Michael shoots family in the head. The parallels that reverberate between Parts 1 and 2 (as well as between both sections of Part 2) create a stunning synthesis of thematic and emotional content, ensuring that the whole of The Godfather becomes greater than the sum of its splendid parts. Learning about Vito’s immigrant experiences in Part 2 expands our understanding of and appreciation for Part 1, while knowing how and why Michael entered the “business” in Part 1 greatly deepens our emotional response to his moral fall in Part 2. While each part is a significant achievement in its own right, together they constitute nothing less than the cinematic equivalent of Shakespearean tragedy.
 

Trivia:

De Niro and Brando are the only actors to both win Academy Awards for playing the same fictional character.

Vittorio Storaro declined an offer to be Part 2’s cinematographer because he “didn’t think the sequel could be as good.”

Coppola assembled a seven-hour-plus version of the Godfather saga, featuring scenes cut from 1 and 2, which aired on NBC in 1977.

Coppola wanted Marlon Brando to appear in the concluding dinner scene, but his asking price was more than the Paramount brass was prepared to pay.

Michael V. Gazzo, so memorable as the sly, raspy-voiced Pentangeli, was a fairly distinguished playwright whose credits include A Hatful of Rain (which was adapted to the screen in 1957).

As Hyman Roth, Actors Studio director Lee Strasberg made his film debut at age 71.

The Godfather: Part II  was the only sequel ever to win an Oscar for Best Picture until The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King pulled it off in 2003.

Posted on April 4th, 2009 by Mat Viola
Filed under: Reviews