Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Original Release: December 20, 1974
My Overall Rating: 4 stars out of 5
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| via The Godfather Wiki |
On their last weekend of winter break, the Purple Penguin had a request. They wanted to watch The Godfather, never having seen it before, and asked if either of us would be willing to watch with them. For me, it's one of those films that lives in our collective cultural consciousness whether you've actually watched it or not: The Wizard of Oz, The Shining, Jaws, Star Wars, etc. I'm pretty sure I've only seen it twice all the way through, yet I feel I know it as well as a lot of movies I've seen more. There are lines that everyone knows, even if they don't know the context:
"I'll make him an offer he can't refuse."
"Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me."
If you can manage the lines in Marlon Brando's voice, all the better.
I begged off this viewing but once it was over, they were still up for more. Obviously, we needed to watch Part II...
Godfather Part II is one of the rare sequels that is widely considered to be better than the original. I prefer it myself and for much the same reason that I prefer The Empire Strikes Back to A New Hope. For both franchises, the first movie is, of course, outstanding - each setting the standard for an entire genre. In both cases, the second movie opened up a broader universe, a longer timeline, a wider moral spectrum.
Before I get too deep in the weeds on the comparison, I should focus on the movie at hand...
Like the first movie, Godfather Part II tells the tale of the fictional Corleone family, the most powerful organized crime organization in America. Like the first movie, the second follows the separate though intertwined sagas of Vito Corleone, the original head of the operation, and that of his son Michael, the new godfather. But Part II switches freely between two timelines. We follow the Michael story as proper sequel to the first story. Now that the Corleones have established supremacy over the other New York families, Michael moves the base of operations to Nevada while also trying to "go legit." For Vito, we get the origin story from his early life in Sicily to his rise to power in Little Italy. We also get a new actor in the part: Robert DeNiro.
I mean, is a mob movie even a proper mob movie without Robert DeNiro? Nearly everything I've ever seen him in has left me wanting more. He and Brando were the first actors to win Oscars for playing the same role.
The production budget for the second movie was twice that of the first and most of it must have gone to travel expenses. We visit New York, Lake Tahoe, Los Angeles, Sicily, Miami and Cuba. Witnessing the Cuban Revolution is particularly meaningful.
Like Empire, Part II reveals seemingly endless avenues for further exploration. Every Corleone sibling sitting at the table in the final scene offers his or her own tangent possibilities.
The Purple Penguin liked the first one better for a simple reason: they don't like Michael. That's fair. He's a monster, after all.
I don't know if I'll ever watch Part III. I can't help being curious but the movie is notoriously terrible. I'm 100% certain my wife would never watch with me. She has seen it before and is disinclined to make the same mistake twice. Maybe the kid and I can watch someday.
