The Godfather Part II duplicated its predecessor’s success, garnering six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Many critics regard it as even superior to the first.
Though it mirrored the original in many respects,
it departed from it in relying less on memorable killings (e.g., the toll-booth
murder of Sonny) and one-liners (“leave the gun, take the cannoli”) and more on
narrative structure, characterization, and symbolism.
While Francis Ford Coppola was initially reluctant to
direct Part II (even suggesting Martin Scorsese for the job), he came
around to the idea because of two factors.
First, he insisted on—and won—greater creative
control, largely sidelining his nemesis on the first film, Paramount studio
exec Robert Evans, in the process.
Second, he was so disturbed by the audience’s delight
at a sneak preview for the first film—the final scene, where the door is closed
on Kay Corleone as her husband Michael conducts “business” as the new don—that
he wanted to leave no doubt whatsoever that a fissure had appeared in their
marriage and that the crime boss had endangered his soul.
In other words, he wanted to definitively disprove
critics who thought the first film had romanticized the Mafia by depicting them
as devoted family men rather than as killers. By the end of Part II,
Michael Corleone sits utterly alone, as his focus on “business” has left him
paranoid and questioning how it could have all gone so utterly wrong.
What went wrong for the Corleones, the film suggests,
is also what went wrong with the American empire.
The movie, while covering roughly the years from 1957 to 1960, actually reflects America’s dark post-Vietnam, post-Watergate mood, in which cynicism about government lies and corruption became the order of the day.
Coppola settled on the architecture of this epic with parallel stories of two
fathers of roughly the same age, Vito and Michael Corleone, tracing the rise
and decline of their family—their personal one as well as the criminal one they
head.
I discussed Part II briefly 10 years ago in this post. I had seen bits and pieces over the years, both in The Godfather
Saga (a chronological TV presentation beginning with nine-year-old Vito
Corleone in Italy through the death of his son Michael roughly three-quarters
of a century later) and on AMC (where, over the last few years, Parts I, II and
III have been run as holiday mini-marathons).
But a couple of days ago, for the first time, I saw Part
II as a complete entity in its own right, reel to reel. The richness I
(re)discovered convinced me it was worthwhile exploring in greater depth.
Its nearly half-hour more of running time compared
with Godfather I gave co-screenwriters Coppola and novelist Mario Puzo
more time not only to convey atmosphere, but also to offer hints about
character motivations and relationships.
This time, knowing the major plot points of the movie,
small, seemingly minor moments loom larger, as with the pills that Michael
takes on the way to meet partner Hyman Roth—perhaps a means of alleviating the
tension and anxiety of running a far-flung criminal enterprise and of surviving
an assassination in his own home.
Coppola has likened the film to a saga about a king
and his three sons. The imperial theme resonates most loudly and mournfully when
Corleone consiglieri Tom Hagen and “soldier” Frankie Pentangeli muse on
the Roman Empire:
Hagen: “You were around
the old timers who dreamed up how the Families should be organized, how they
based it on the old Roman Legions, and called them 'Regimes'... with the
'Capos' and 'Soldiers,' and it worked.”
Pentangeli:
“Yeah, it worked. Those were great old days. We was like the Roman Empire. The
Corleone family was like the Roman Empire.”
Hagen (sadly): “Yeah,
it was once.”
While thoroughly of its own time, Part II
anticipated much of the disillusionment in America over the last few decades by
detailing the costs of the intersection of entertainment, politics, business,
and crime.
Perhaps the most vivid example is when Cuban dictator Fulgencio
Batista meets with United Fruit Company, United Telephone and Telegraph
Company, Pan American Mining Corp., South American Sugar—and Michael Corleone and
Hyman Roth.
Visually, it echoes the scene from Part I when a
grief-stricken Vito Corleone calls a summit meeting of the Mafia families to
call a halt to their bloody vendetta—as the inclusion of Corleone and Roth with
the more conventional companies implies that little difference exists between
ostensibly non-criminal and criminal enterprises.
That sense is reinforced when Batista thanks a group member for the Christmas “gift” of a solid gold telephone, and later when Roth confides to colleagues:
“There’s no limit to where we can go from
here. This kind of government knows how to help business, to encourage it…We
can thank our Friends in the Cuban government, which has put up half of the cash
with the Teamsters on a dollar-for-dollar basis and has relaxed restrictions on
imports. What I'm saying is that we have now what we have always needed: real
partnership with the government.”
Roth is voicing the code of businessmen that
has prevailed so often from Adolf Hitler to the wanna-be dictators of today: the
transgressions of government heads matter little so long as they can
forge a “real partnership” that allows them carte blanche to operate.
It has been a devolutionary process even near the
start of the movie, when nine-year-old Vito and other passengers gaze longingly
at the Statue of Liberty, coming just a few scenes after we see what has
happened over 50 years later: Vito’s now-grown son Michael tangling with a
zenophobic U.S. senator over a bribe to secure a Las Vegas casino gambling
license.
