Best Picture: #47
Original Release Date: December 18, 1974
Rating: R
Runtime: 3 hour, 22 minutes
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Quick Impressions:
Watching this movie with my daughter made me realize sadly that we will never get to watch Godfather III together and finish out the series. (Well, I mean, I guess there’s no law against it, but that film did not win Best Picture, though it was nominated, despite its not exactly glowing reviews.) Not until this second film was wrapping up did I suddenly remember that the third installment was actually the first Godfather film I saw because I watched it around the time it came out (not in the theater, but either on VHS or HBO a bit later). I can still remember my Grandma’s bubbling excitement every time she saw Andy Garcia’s picture on a magazine cover. “He’s going to be the new Godfather!” she would gush excitedly. When I did watch the movie with her, she explained to me in great detail who all the characters were. I actually really enjoyed that film. For the longest time, it was the Godfather movie I liked best, probably because I was a child and the plot was easiest to follow. And yet I completely forgot all this until I saw Connie approach Michael near the end of Godfather II. Then, in a sudden rush I recalled my early fondness for Godfather III, a film I’m not sure I’ve seen since I was my daughter’s age. (I think I did see it once in high school, too. And for the record, I don’t think Sofia Coppola was as awful as everyone said. I can easily believe that her Mary was raised by Connie and by Kay. Yes, I wish I had seen Winona Ryder in the part, but if you ask me, people went overboard slamming Coppola’s performance. She wasn’t Oscar worthy, but she was adequate. My grandma liked her character.) After watching parts I and II in quick succession, I think the third film’s more serious misstep was not including Tom Hagen. But apparently Robert Duvall wouldn’t do it for the money they offered, and recasting would have been an even worse mistake. (But doesn’t the second film prime you to expect something big from Tom as the story continues?)
I’ve only seen Godfather II once before (that I recall). I watched it at a friend’s house when I was in grad school. I think my now husband was there as well, though he may have had to bow out early because of a scheduling conflict involving our oldest son. (I can’t quite remember. He might have missed dinner, then shown up for the movie afterwards. I asked him, but he can’t remember if he watched the movie with us or not.)
At that time, I disliked the film. I knew that many people liked it even better than the first, but I didn’t really like it at all. I found it depressing, sad, bleak. Kay’s storyline in particular left me feeling awful. The first film makes you want to drink from chilled pitchers of red wine, dine (cautiously) in an Italian restaurant, stuff your face with a plate of assorted wedding cookies. The second makes you want to curl up into a ball and die. At least, that’s how I felt initially.
Now that I’m about sixteen years older and I’ve recently watched the first film and become invested in the characters, I’d say I received Godfather II a bit better. I still find it bleak and disturbing, but I can’t deny that the story is well told, engrossing.
The Plot:
The story of “Godfather” Vito Corleone and his son Michael continues as we alternate between two equally important storylines, flashing back into Vito’s distant youth in Sicily and New York, and following Michael forward into the late 1950s in Nevada, California, and Cuba. Traumatically (and intentionally) orphaned in the film’s opening scenes, Vito gradually discovers the value of family and the useful way violence can be employed to honor and protect them. Michael, meanwhile, tries to build on his father’s principles and learns the opposite lesson as he reaps what he sows, and violence follows him home to tear his family apart.
The Good:
Al Pacino is so terrifying as Michael Corleone. Even in stills used as thumbnails, he looks so scary, like he’s staring into our souls, as if he might leap off the screen and devour the audience like a ravenous wolf. It’s not just me. My daughter felt that way, too. The intensity of his stare is legitimately frightening. We started making jokes about it, but it’s really no laughing matter. With one simple look, Pacino is chilling. I can’t believe he never won an Oscar for playing Michael. He should have. As I mentioned in my other review, I think he’s better than Brando in the first movie. Brando is known for his Method Acting, but I honestly think he’s a bit hammy as Vito. He makes the character memorable, yes, but Pacino plays Michael like a real human, one with a burning gaze and a heart of ice. (The thing is, his heart isn’t ice. He’s just guarded. And every time he lets his guard down, someone close to him dies. In fairness, of course, even when he doesn’t let his guard down, everybody keeps dying, right and left.)
Robert De Niro did win an Oscar for his work here as the younger Vito. His storyline is my favorite in the movie. (And he typically speaks Sicilian, which adds some challenge to the role.) Vito is easy to root for. Somehow, he is never scary in the same way that Michael is, not even when he’s committing murder. He has a warmth, a friendliness. Yes, he kills when he has to, but he does everything to protect his family. Half the time, Michael is the one his family needs protection from.
The story in this film is completely engrossing, quite thought provoking. Why can’t Michael be happy? Why do all the people close to him seem to die? (It doesn’t help that he kills half of them, of course. Pacino gets a great line near the end of the film. “I don’t feel like I have to wipe everybody out—just my enemies.” Even on the page, the line is worth remembering. Pacino’s delivery makes it even better. At a certain point we have to ask ourselves, Who isn’t his enemy? The family he claims to be working to protect are largely terrified of him, furious with him, or dead. I’ve been giving Michael’s unhappiness a lot of thought. My daughter kept saying he would have had a happier life with his first wife. Granted, Apollonia would have been more accepting of his line of work than Kay. But then again, look what happened to Apollonia. Part of Michael’s problem seems to be that he’s trying to live by an old system in a changing world. I think the rest of his problem is that when you kill a lot of people, there will always be a lot of people who want to kill you. Try as you might, you can’t kill them all.
Michael is an endlessly fascinating character because the inner workings of his mind seem so mysterious, so complex. Meanwhile, Vito is much easier to figure out. He’s also easier to watch. He’s better at identifying his enemies. The people he kills all seem dangerous, threatening. Michael keeps killing his friends and relatives. Vito is reasonably kind to most people. Michael is scary as the devil incarnate, even when he’s not trying to be.
The trouble is, the reason Michael became godfather in the first place is that the world changed, and Vito’s way of doing things got him murdered. (The fact that he didn’t die right away does not change the diminishing efficacy of his leadership style.) I keep turning the problems of this family over and over in my head. That’s what makes The Godfather films so good. They tell a compelling story.
This second film also has substantially more action. I’m not a huge fan of action, but I realize that most people are. This movie always has you on the edge of your seat because no one is safe. No one is safe from Michael Corleone, but Michael can’t seem to protect anybody, either. Basically, no one is ever safe at all. (Taking Michael to Cuba in 1959 drives home this point.) The Corleone family aren’t even safe in their own home. No matter what Michael does, his children are not safe anywhere, and even with all his power, there is nothing that he can do about it.
Atmosphere continues to be superb in this chapter of The Godfather saga. Godfather II gives us not only Michael and his family in the late 1950s in Nevada and Cuba, but also the young Vito back in Sicily, then in New York, then briefly in Sicily again. Personally, I find Vito’s story the more compelling of the two. Michael’s story seems so sad. It seems odd to put it that way considering that Vito’s entire family is murdered when he is just a child, but Vito’s arc is more encouraging. He seems to be on a hero’s journey, while his poor son Michael is slowly sliding down to Hell.
In addition to the familiar faces of the returning cast (Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Talia Shire, Dianne Keaton, John Cazale), we also get a slew of new, key characters played by seasoned actors like Lee Strasberg, Michael V. Gazzo, G.D. Spradlin, and Bruno Kirby. Danny Aiello even pops up for a quick hello. For a second, it seems like Mama Corleone (who’s like a ghost in the first movie) may get more of a part, but she doesn’t. (I mean, she gets a few more lines, but despite appearing in two separate timelines, the most significant thing the character gets to do here is die.)
As with the first film, the cinematography and score are excellent.
Best Action Sequence:
When I asked my daughter her favorite scene in the movie, she immediately named the part that I had already planned to write about, saying, “I like it when Vito is jumping all over the roof during the Money Jesus Festival.” (That’s what she calls the procession through the streets commemorating the Feast of San Gennaro. If you’ve seen the movie, I’m sure you’ll understand why she refers to the celebration that way.)
To be honest, this is the one scene I remember most vividly from the first time I watched the film. De Niro is so captivating as he leaps from rooftop to rooftop. And for some reason, no matter how objectively evil his errand, Vito is a character easy to root for, easy to watch. He may make people offers they can’t refuse, but he’s good to his friends (and he’s willing to be the friend of anyone who comes to him). There’s a certain fairness to his behavior. It may not be exactly moral, but it’s as moral as the behavior of any ruler. I like the music in this scene, too. (Maybe you’d call it a series of scenes. De Niro leaps around up there for quite a while. He’s got a big job to do.) In general, I find Vito’s storyline far more compelling and fun to watch than Michael’s.
Best Scene Visually:
At around the same point in the film that De Niro is leaping all over the rooftops, Michael is kissing his brother in Cuba. That is another of the film’s most memorable moments. I’ve never seen such savage energy in a kiss. He looks like he’s going to eat him. Michael is so scary. Pacino throws such energy into this moment that you can’t help but remember it. In fact, from my first viewing of the film until this second watch, I completely forgot that Michael was in Cuba, and why he was in Cuba, and what was going on politically while he was in Cuba. But you can bet I remembered that moment with Fredo.
Best Scene:
The other scene I remembered from my first watch is that awful argument between Michael and Kay near the end of the movie. He is terrifying in this scene. I’m not sure that her solution is very productive (just the opposite, in fact), but I can understand that perhaps she’s trying to think of a way out, a way to end the marriage and get away from Michael. He’s really scary here. She’s kind of scary, too, in her own quiet way. He thinks that as head of the family, he can control everything. He’s wrong.
(Kay is a character I don’t like much, though. I find her unpalatable. She knows what Michael is when she marries him. She looks the other way. Then Connie straight up screams the truth in her face. She allows herself to believe lies. But then the moment she’s inconvenienced and frightened, she suddenly decides to take a stand. Why did she marry Michael? He told her what his family was (clearly, directly) in her first scene in the first movie.)
My daughter really dislikes Kay. She has disliked her from the first. She’s #TeamApollonia. She constantly talks about Apollonia, how she would have been a better wife. I think Michael should have stayed a bachelor. It would have spared him a lot of grief.
Runner-Up Best Scene:
One extremely thought-provoking scene is the moment when Tom swoops in to “help” the senator. This scene is far more disturbing than the bit with Khartoum in the first movie. Watching, I thought, “Tom is always presented so favorably, but he’s every bit as cold-hearted and terrifying as Michael.” They’re a scary family. I wish Tom were in the next movie.
The dinner scene at the end is pretty fantastic, too.
The Negatives:
I still find the movie unpalatably depressing. That’s not something that can be fixed. It’s a sad story. By the end, there’s really no one to root for. (I’ll confess that I’m kind of pulling for Connie who seems to have more sense than most characters.)
I also find that I just don’t care much about Hymen Roth. There’s nothing wrong with Lee Strasberg’s performance. The character just leaves me flat. The most interesting thing he says is the bit about not wanting revenge for a certain act because it was business. I wish this were played up a bit more. (Of course, there is something to be said for subtlety.) My daughter found the voice and demeanor of Michael V. Gazzo as Frankie Pentangeli a bit flustering and grating. “He seems crazy,” she kept saying. “His voice is very annoying. He’s awfully loud.” We could never decide if we liked the performance or not. (Both his conversation with Tom and his final moment are excellent, though. And that big, “crazy” personality serves him well on the witness stand.) I miss Clemenza. I really liked Clemenza. I wish Clemenza were in the movie. (He is as a young man, but that’s not what I mean.)
Also, after the intermission, the movie loses a bit of steam. I understand now why they chose not to put an intermission in the first film. It does slow the pace of the narrative. And the trial scenes are not as engaging as the family-in-peril scenes early in the movie (although I do like how someone examines Michael using the heavily loaded phrase “your nefarious crimes”).
Overall:
Though I prefer the first film, The Godfather II is still a well told story, superbly acted, particularly by Robert De Niro and Al Pacino (whose Michael is officially the scariest person I’ve ever seen). The scenes set in the distant past, following young Vito’s adventures in Sicily and New York are best, but Michael’s part of the story is certainly engrossing, too. It’s just sad.