The Godfather II (1972)
Another film colossus falls. As regular readers will attest I finally saw the first installment of Coppola’s classic crime drama during a limited re-release last year and some twenty years ago I saw the slightly unfairly maligned third and concluding episode to the finest criminal odyssey to ever grace the silver screen. This was the first film I’d seen in weeks back in September and it has certainly been far too long since I luxuriated in a three-hour epic at the National Film Theatre, I can’t imagine a purer fix to my celluloid itch . Any suspicions that this wasn’t my favourite picture of the three were swiftly dispelled, I have an enormous amount of admiration for The Godfather but I do prefer the wider grandeur of Part II with its transitions between the time frames, the mirroring of the rise of the Corleone empire with its final moral plunge into the abyss , an organic expansion from the previous films compact criminality. As for the third one, yeah it pales in comparison to the first two but which crime films of this epic variety don’t? Well, apart from Once Upon A Time In America anyway? Then again, I haven’t actually seen Part III in quite a few years, maybe its really bad. Anyway, enough of these delays, its time to revisit Francis Ford Coppola’s 1975 masterpiece….
In a lyrical swoon The Godfather II moves between the story of the young Vito Corleone at the turn of the century and his son Michael’s final consolidation of power in the 1950’s and 1960’s, a graceful symmetry that also charts the omnipotent rise and saturnalian fall of the Corleone empire, as their influence and power proliferates their souls are utterly destroyed, a fall that culminates in a murder within their most precious and prized commodity, the family and the blood ties of kith and kin. Newly decanted from New York to Nevada with Michael ensconced as godfather (Al Pacino, never better), the family is looking to move into the lucrative Las Vegas casino business with the influence and assistance of the corrupt Senator Pat Geary (a fantastic G.D Spradlin* whom you may recall is the mission instigator of Apocalypse Now) and in a pincer movement the family is also looking to extend its tendrils to foreign climes, to move into Cuba with the patronage of a certain Hyman Roth, an ancient ally of the Corleone family, a duplicitous snake performed with a beguiling intensity by Lee Strasberg, the legendary Actors Studio teacher. Against these strands the film also looks backward to chart the rise of the young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro, also never better) and his escape from Sicily to New York in 1903, an abandonment of his homeland due to a blood feud that has left his brother, father and mother dead. Amongst the swirling immigrant communities of New York during the infancy of a new century the young Vito comes of age and questions the validity of the local criminal gangs who shake down and exploit their own local communities, and in partnership with his young countrymen plots to usurp their power as his own brood are born.
The projection was of a fairly scratchy print but this did not detract from my enjoyment, in fact this was proof that the screening was of a genuine nature, of an original splice from 1974 and not a digitally rendered facsimile, as seems to increasingly be the case in London. This does give a sense of authenticity to us film weirdos and a more fulfilling experience as although some groans were emitted when reel changes resulted in fragments of dialogue being obscured (and some quite important pieces of dialogue as it happens) this was a film I’m sure the majority of the audience had seen before. On the big screen you can really appreciate its operatic, epic sweep, those lyrical dissolves from father to son refracting and reflecting upon each other, as they both carve out a bloody existence amongst the American dream.
The cast, from the principles to the supporting players are impeccable. To bang the drum again I would argue the case that Pacino’s achievement is one of the all-time great screen performances, he instinctively knows screen acting – as opposed to stage acting – when entire reams of information and subtlety can be encapsulated in the movement of the eyes or his stalking movements within the frame. De Niro equals his finest moments in Taxi Driver or The King of Comedy or Heat or The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (one of those might be a joke) and if you squint you can also see the likes of Roger Corman, Dominic Chianese (Uncle Junior in The Sopranos) Robert Duvall and Harry Dean Stanton floating around as supporting players. Perhaps the films most quietly brilliant performance is that of John Cazele however, a man whose every screen appearance was in a best picture nominated film (Both Godfathers, The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter) before his untimely death at the tragically young age of 42 . A new documentary on his career has just been released in the states with contributions from the likes of Streep, Pacino and De Niro whom actually worked with him and contemporary admirers such as Sam Rockwell and Philip Seymour Hoffman – you can see the connection I think so that’s one Blu-Ray for the Christmas list.
Being an early fan of Coppola I picked up some of the names that repeatedly cropped up in the credits of his films – Fred Roos, his father Carmine Coppola, editor Barry Malkin but its production design Dean Tavoularis who really excels himself here, in tandem with Gordon Willis ground-breaking lighting schemes they craft a murky stage for the Machiavellian maneuvering, beautifully creating a heaving, sepia tinged New York of the 1900’s and a ruthless clutch of hematic amphitheatres around the middle of the century in which the drama unfolds. That Nino Rota score is a bona fide classic, up there with Jaws, and Gone With The Wind or The Good The Bad & The Ugly as immediately identifying the picture, a tempo that has burrowed itself into the cultural consciousness. The rituals of family provide the spine for the film – the weddings, the christenings, the funerals – and an emphasis on food prefiguring death, whether its Vito breaking bread with his potential allies in the opening catenations of the film, or Michael munching on a quartered orange as he plots the assassination of his surviving adversaries during the final denouements. But it’s the script and plot that are most celebrated (at least by me), the interweaving libretto and the labyrinthine plots of Michael’s empire that build to their brilliant apex as he slowly unveils the traitor within, compelling him to issue orders that leave him all-powerful but spiritually wretched, eternally and forever damned.
There is a whole host of deleted scenes on youtube which is something of a surprise, I’m sure they were not included in the DVD box set I got a few years ago so I assume they are culled from the horrific re-cut for TV version of the saga which moves through the odyssey historically and therefore removes all of the mirroring qualities that I mentioned beforehand. You know, I might give part 3 a spin this weekend and see how it pans out, it could be good right? Well? No, I’ve just remembered the scene with the pastry, and the stupidly over-cooked machine gun attacks, and lets face it, Joe Mantegna is no Virgil Sollozzo or Hyman Roth is he? Oh well, anyway, a little bit of a fun to finish on – if you call an infuriating brain scrambler fun – here is a fiendishly difficult film quiz set by the great David Thompson, its one of those where you have to really think about the questions before assembling an answer, at a first glance I’ve got perhaps fourteen or fifteen out of fifty which isn’t a bad start as man, those questions are nasty. I’ve posted it here as one of them is coincidently answered up-post, how many others can you solve? So that’s me all caught up, this leaves the field clear for my 500th post extravaganza, although I do have a plan for the weekend to catch another restored classic. EDIT – damn, just caught this and to keep with the classic and Italian themes ciao Dino, and thanks for Danger Diabolik, Dune, Blue Velvet, Manhunter, Evil Dead 2, The Dead Zone and La Strada just to name my favourites out of a epic career.
* God I hate that new IMDB design, it’s terrible and removes the opportunity to easily scroll through a figures entire CV. I think there’s a petition to change it back somewhere….
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