THE GODFATHER, PART II (79) (second viewing: 67)

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola (1974)

Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, Lee Strasberg

The Pitch: Michael Corleone consolidates his grip on the Family - becoming increasingly paranoid in the process - alternated with flashbacks showing the rise of Vito Corleone as a young man.

Theo Sez: [NB. Wasn't planning to write anything on this, but the many e-mails I've received asking for my thoughts suggest it's a film with special appeal to my reader(s) - so here goes. Note I'm writing this a week later, without having taken any notes, so it's likely to be (even) less helpful than usual. Thank you.] Most significant motif in this famous movie may be the repeated bit where someone - usually, though not invariably, Michael Corleone - asks some of the people in a room to wait outside for a while so he can talk in secret with the other, more important people : the point is exclusion, different levels of trust and access, leading inevitably to paranoia - and contrasting very markedly with the melting-pot sense of inclusion on which America was founded, glimpsed at Ellis Island and throughout the rise of the young Vito ("The completed work," notes Pauline Kael, "is an epic vision of the corruption of America"). The contrast is between engagement with the world (Vito gradually becoming 'known') and withdrawal from it, as well as between literal light and dark - Gordon Willis applying a soft nostalgic tint to the flashbacks, impenetrable walls of blackness to the Michael story - but also, most courageously, between success and failure : it's an incredibly desultory crime drama when you think about it, built around two failed assassination attempts and a business deal that falls apart. Unlike in the original GODFATHER (a film I suspect I'd like less if I saw it today), and definitely unlike the badass cliché of the tyrannical gangster-as-Stalin wreaking havoc from his dark eyrie (most recently in GANGSTER NO. 1), these Mafiosi turn out to have feet of clay - violence is the great unspoken, the double-edged sword that wins our respect for them, but they can't even get that right (contrast Vito's quick, efficient bursts of killing) till the very end, when it's no longer useful. It's a brave de-glamourisation because it realises paranoia has its own glamour, and goes beyond it - Michael is dangerous, but only in the rather pathetic way of a caged lion. 201 minutes of paralysis and brooding alienation, basically, loosely structured - 'Scenes From the Lives of the Corleones' - and visually more extreme than any other Best Picture winner (scandalously, Willis wasn't even nominated). More a mood-piece than a film where themes develop, looking forward to the free-floating vibe of APOCALYPSE NOW ; could've been shorter, but I'm not complaining. [Second viewing, December 2024 (i.e. >20 years later): I'd still co-sign much of the above, and it's great to see a big Oscar winner that's so slow and deliberate - the laborious process of powerful men conducting business behind closed doors - but the characters are archetypes (i.e. not that interesting), Pacino is memorable but essentially posturing, and the role of violence feels a little off (though e.g. UNFORGIVEN works in much the same way): we're placed in the position of waiting for violence to arrive and solve the problems, Coppola's symphonic cutting making the ending quite satisfying even as it's obviously tragic. Also not convinced the flashbacks - though conceptually important, like I said 20 years ago - work that well, beyond the arrival at Ellis Island which is magical; Coppola's initial plan to have Clemenza in the role that became Frankie Pentangeli (he couldn't get Castellano), contrasting with young Clemenza in Vito's story, would've made them even more on-the-nose.]