Following the first film's success, Paramount Pictures began developing a follow-up, with many of the cast and crew returning. Coppola, who was given more creative control, had wanted to make both a sequel and a prequel to The Godfather that would tell the story of Vito's rise and Michael's fall. Principal photography began in October 1973 and wrapped up in June 1974. The Godfather Part II premiered in New York City on December 12, 1974, and was released in the United States on December 20, 1974. It grossed $48 million in the United States and Canada and up to $93 million worldwide on a $13 million budget. The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and became the first sequel to win Best Picture. Its six Oscar wins also included Best Director for Coppola, Best Supporting Actor for De Niro, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Coppola and Puzo. Pacino won Best Actor at the BAFTAs and was nominated at the Oscars.
The Godfather Part II is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time, as well as a rare example of a sequel that rivals its predecessor.[4] Like its predecessor, Part II remains a highly influential film, especially in the gangster genre. In 1997, the American Film Institute ranked it as the 32nd-greatest film in American film history and it retained this position 10 years later.[5] It was selected for preservation in the US National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1993, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[6]Pauline Kael wrote: "The Godfather was the greatest gangster picture ever made, and had metaphorical overtones that took it far beyond the gangster genre. In Part II, the wider themes are no longer merely implied. The second film shows the consequences of the actions in the first; it’s all one movie, in two great big pieces, and it comes together in your head while you watch."[7]
The film interweaves timelines from two different generations of the Corleone family saga. In the first timeline, circa early 1900s, nine-year old Vito Andolini flees Corleone, Sicily, after mafia Don Ciccio kills his family. Surviving relatives help Vito escape to the US, where he becomes known as Vito Corleone. Vito grows up in Little Italy, works at a grocery store, and later marries Carmela. They have three sons, Santino "Sonny", Fredo, Michael, and daughter, Connie.
The neighborhood extortionist, Don Fanucci, causes Vito to lose his job. Unable to provide for his family, Vito begins a life of crime, after being introduced to it by his neighbor, Peter Clemenza. Together, they sell stolen dresses door-to-door, and are joined by Sal Tessio. When Fanucci finds out, he demands a cut from the profits. Vito uses the opportunity to seize control. During a busy neighborhood parade, he shoots Don Fanucci in his apartment, then disposes the evidence. His reputation spreads, and Vito and associates open an olive oil business, as a front for their illegal protection activities. In 1922, Vito visits Sicily, where he avenges his family's murder by slicing an elderly Don Ciccio through his stomach.
In the present timeline, in 1958, Michael has moved the Corleone family to Nevada, where he strives to legitimize their operations. After refusing to support New York capo, Frank Pentangeli, against the Rosato brothers, Michael and Kay are victims of an assassination attempt at their Lake Tahoe residence. Michael suspects a traitor, and makes consigliereTom Hagen the acting boss. In New York, Pentangeli survives a hit on his life by the Rosatos, after a police officer unsuspectingly intervenes. Pentangeli is arrested and placed in FBI custody. Meanwhile, Jewish mobster, Hyman Roth, invites Michael to Havana to invest in his activities.
Michael suspects Roth planned the hit on him, and enquires who ordered the Rosatos to kill Pentangeli. Roth is frustrated, reminding Michael he did not question his order to kill his friend, Moe Greene, in the first film's 'baptism shootings'. At a New Year's Eve party, Fredo lets slip that he knows a Roth accomplice. Michael realizes that Fredo was the traitor, and gives him the kiss of death. His assassin fails to kill Roth, and they are all forced to escape Havana after the Cuban Revolution topples the government. Back home, Pentangeli is the star witness of a Senate committee hearing, convened to expose Michael's underworld connections. Michael lies to the Senate about his operations, and dissuades Pentangeli from testifying by showing up to the trial with his brother, Vincenzo. Pentangeli reverses course and the hearing dissolves in an uproar.
Soon afterwards, Kay announes her decision to leave Michael. Michael retains custody of their children, but banishes Kay from their life. Carmela passes away, reuniting Michael with Fredo, now living at the Lake Tahoe compound. Fredo bonds with Michael's son, Anthony, over fishing. After being denied entry to Israel, Roth returns to the US, but is assassinated at the airport by Michael's capo Rocco Lampone. Michael also sends Hagen to meet Pentangeli at the army barracks, where they talk about the Roman practice of conspirators killing themselves to protect their families from the emperor's wrath. Soon after, Pentangeli is found with slit wrists in his bathtub. At the Corleone compound, enforcer Al Neri takes Fredo fishing without Anthony. As Michael watches from his window, Neri executes Fredo on the boat.
Sitting by the lake, Michael remembers Vito's birthday in 1941, on the eve of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Michael announces he has enlisted in the Marines, surprising Tom and angering Sonny. In his reaction, Sonny dismisses Connie and Carlo from the room. Only Fredo congratulates Michael. As Vito arrives for his party, everyone rushes to greet him and Michael is left alone at the table.
Mario Puzo started writing a script for a sequel in December 1971, before The Godfather was even released; its initial title was The Death of Michael Corleone.[8]Francis Ford Coppola's idea for the sequel would be to "juxtapose the ascension of the family under Vito Corleone with the decline of the family under his son Michael... I had always wanted to write a screenplay that told the story of a father and a son at the same age. They were both in their thirties, and I would integrate the two stories... In order not to merely make Godfather I over again, I gave Godfather II this double structure by extending the story in both the past and in the present".[9] Coppola met with Martin Scorsese about directing the film, but Paramount Pictures refused.[10][11][12][13] Coppola also, in his director's commentary on The Godfather Part II, mentioned that the scenes depicting the Senate committee interrogation of Michael Corleone and Frank Pentangeli are based on the Joseph Valachifederal hearings and that Pentangeli is a Valachi-like figure.[14]
Production, however, nearly ended before it began when Al Pacino's lawyers told Coppola that he had grave misgivings with the script and was not coming. Coppola spent an entire night rewriting it before giving it to Pacino for his review. Pacino approved it, and the production went forward.[15] The film's original budget was $6million but costs increased to over $11million, with Variety's review claiming it was over $15million.[16]
Several actors from the first film did not return for the sequel. Marlon Brando initially agreed to return for the birthday flashback sequence, but the actor, feeling mistreated by the board at Paramount, failed to show up for the single day's shooting.[17] Coppola then rewrote the scene that same day.[17]Richard S. Castellano, who portrayed Peter Clemenza in the first film, also declined to return, as he and the producers could not reach an agreement on his demands that he be allowed to write the character's dialogue in the film, though this claim was disputed by Castellano's widow in a 1991 letter to People magazine.[18] The part in the plot originally intended for the latter-day Clemenza was then filled by the character of Frank Pentangeli, played by Michael V. Gazzo.[19]
Coppola offered James Cagney the role of Hyman Roth, but he refused as he had retired from acting.[20][21]James Caan agreed to reprise the role of Sonny in the birthday flashback sequence, demanding he be paid the same amount he received for the entire previous film for the single scene in Part II, which he received.[17] Among the actors depicting Senators in the hearing committee are film producer/director Roger Corman, writer/producer William Bowers, producer Phil Feldman, and actor Peter Donat.[22]
Unlike with the first film, Coppola was given near-complete control over production. In his commentary, he said this resulted in a shoot that ran very smoothly despite multiple locations and two narratives running parallel within one film.[15] Coppola discusses his decision to make this the first major American motion picture to use "Part II" in its title in the director's commentary on the DVD edition of the film released in 2002.[15] Paramount was initially opposed because they believed the audience would not be interested in an addition to a story they had already seen. But the director prevailed, and the film's success began the common practice of numbered sequels. Only three weeks before the release, film critics and journalists pronounced Part II a disaster. The crosscutting between Vito and Michael's parallel stories was judged too frequent, not allowing enough time to leave a lasting impression on the audience. Coppola and the editors returned to the cutting room to change the film's narrative structure, but could not complete the work in time, leaving the final scenes poorly timed at the opening.[25] It was the last major American motion picture to have release prints made with Technicolor's dye imbibition process until the late 1990s.
The Godfather Part II premiered in New York City on December 12, 1974, and was released in the United States on December 20, 1974.
Home media
Coppola created The Godfather Saga expressly for American television in a 1975 release that combined The Godfather and The Godfather Part II with unused footage from those two films in a chronological order that toned down the violent, sexual, and profane material for its NBC debut on November 18, 1977. In 1981, Paramount released the Godfather Epic VHS box set, which also told the story of the first two films in chronological order, again with additional scenes, but not redacted for broadcast sensibilities. Coppola returned to the film again in 1992 when he updated that release with footage from The Godfather Part III and more unreleased material. This home viewing release, under the title The Godfather Trilogy 1901–1980, had a total run time of 583 minutes (9 hours, 43 minutes), not including the set's bonus documentary by Jeff Werner on the making of the films, "The Godfather Family: A Look Inside".
The Godfather DVD Collection was released on October 9, 2001, in a package[26] that contained all three films—each with a commentary track by Coppola—and a bonus disc that featured a 73-minute documentary from 1991 entitled The Godfather Family: A Look Inside and other miscellany about the film: the additional scenes originally contained in The Godfather Saga; Francis Coppola's Notebook (a look inside a notebook the director kept with him at all times during the production of the film); rehearsal footage; a promotional featurette from 1971; and video segments on Gordon Willis's cinematography, Nino Rota's and Carmine Coppola's music, the director, the locations and Mario Puzo's screenplays. The DVD also held a Corleone family tree, a "Godfather" timeline, and footage of the Academy Award acceptance speeches.[27] The restoration was confirmed by Francis Ford Coppola during a question-and-answer session for The Godfather Part III, when he said that he had just seen the new transfer and it was "terrific".
Restoration
After a careful restoration by Robert A. Harris of Film Preserve, the first two Godfather films were released on DVD and Blu-ray on September 23, 2008, under the title The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration. The Blu-ray Disc box set (four discs) includes high-definition extra features on the restoration and film. They are included on Disc 5 of the DVD box set (five discs).
Other extras are ported over from Paramount's 2001 DVD release. There are slight differences between the repurposed extras on the DVD and Blu-ray Disc sets, with the HD box having more content.[28]
Paramount Pictures restored and remastered The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (a re-edited cut of the third film) for a limited theatrical run and home media release on Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the premiere of The Godfather. The disc editions were released on March 22, 2022.[29]
A video game based on the film was released for Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 in April 2009 by Electronic Arts. It received mixed or average reviews and sold poorly, leading Electronic Arts to cancel plans for a game based on The Godfather Part III.[30]
Reception
Box office
Although The Godfather Part II did not surpass the original film commercially, it grossed $47.5 million in the United States and Canada.[2] and was Paramount Pictures' highest-grossing film of 1974, and the seventh-highest-grossing picture in the United States. According to its international distributor, the film had grossed $45.3 million internationally by 1994,[31] for a worldwide total of $93 million.[N 1]
Critical response
Pauline Kael in The New Yorker was an early champion of the film, writing that it was visually "far more complexly beautiful than the first, just as it's thematically richer, more shadowed, more full." She writes: "Twice I almost cried out at the acts of violence that De Niro's Vito committed. I didn't look away from the images, as I sometimes do in routine action pictures. I wanted to see the worst; there is a powerful need to see it. You need these moments as you need the terrible climaxes in a Tolstoy novel. A great novelist does not spare our feelings (as the historical romancer does); he intensifies them, and so does Coppola."[7] However, while the film's cinematography and acting were immediately acclaimed, many criticized it as overly slow-paced and convoluted.[35]Vincent Canby of The New York Times viewed the film unfavorably, describing it as "stitched together from leftover parts. It talks. It moves in fits and starts, but it has no mind of its own... The plot defies any rational synopsis."[19]Variety noted that Canby had been downbeat on the original too and claimed that he was in a minority of one and reported that the film had drawn mostly strongly admiring reviews.[36] In A.D. Murphy's review in Variety he described it as a "masterful sequel" and "outstanding in all respects".[37]
William Pechter of Commentary, while admiring the movie, regretted what he saw as its archness and self-importance, calling it an "overly deliberate and self-conscious attempt to make a film that's unmistakably a serious work of art," and professing to "know of no one except movie critics who likes Part II as much as part one."[38]Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic cited what he called "gaps and distentions" in the story.[39]
Roger Ebert awarded three out of four[40] and wrote that the flashbacks "give Coppola the greatest difficulty in maintaining his pace and narrative force. The story of Michael, told chronologically and without the other material, would have had really substantial impact, but Coppola prevents our complete involvement by breaking the tension." Though praising Pacino's performance and lauding Coppola as "a master of mood, atmosphere, and period", Ebert considered the chronological shifts of its narrative "a structural weakness from which the film never recovers".[35]Gene Siskel gave the film three-and-a-half out of four, writing that it was at times "as beautiful, as harrowing, and as exciting as the original. In fact, The Godfather, Part II may be the second best gangster movie ever made. But it's not the same. Sequels can never be the same. It's like being forced to go to a funeral the second time—the tears just don't flow as easily."[41]
Critical re-assessment
The film quickly became the subject of a critical re-evaluation.[42] Whether considered separately or with its predecessor as one work, The Godfather Part II is now widely regarded as one of the greatest films in world cinema. Many critics compare it favorably with the original–although it is rarely ranked higher on lists of "greatest" films. On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 96% approval rating based on 126 reviews, with an average rating of 9.7/10. The consensus reads, "Drawing on strong performances by Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola's continuation of Mario Puzo's Mafia saga set new standards for sequels that have yet to be matched or broken."[43]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 90 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[44]
Michael Sragow's conclusion in his 2002 essay, selected for the National Film Registry website, is that "[a]lthough The Godfather and The Godfather Part II depict an American family's moral defeat, as a mammoth, pioneering work of art it remains a national creative triumph."[45] In his 2014 review of the film, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote "Francis Coppola's breathtakingly ambitious prequel-sequel to his first Godfather movie is as gripping as ever. It is even better than the first film, and has the greatest single final scene in Hollywood history, a real coup de cinéma."[46]
The Godfather Part II was featured on Sight & Sound's Director's list of the ten greatest films of all time in 1992 (ranked at No. 9)[47] and 2002 (where it was ranked at No. 2. The critics ranked it at No. 4)[48][49][50] On the 2012 list by the same magazine the film was ranked at No. 31 by critics and at No. 30 by directors.[51][52][53] In 2006, Writers Guild of America ranked the film's screenplay (Written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola) the 10th greatest ever.[54] It ranked No. 7 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "100 Greatest Movies of All Time", and #1 on TV Guide's 1999 list of the "50 Greatest Movies of All Time on TV and Video".[55]The Village Voice ranked The Godfather Part II at No. 31 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics.[56] In January 2002, the film (along with The Godfather) made the list of the "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" by the National Society of Film Critics.[57][58] In 2017, it ranked No. 12 on Empire magazine's reader's poll of The 100 Greatest Movies.[59] In an earlier poll held by the same magazine in 2008, it was voted 19th on the list of 'The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time'.[60] In 2015, it was tenth in the BBC's list of the 100 greatest American films.[61]
Many believe Pacino's performance in The Godfather Part II is his finest acting work. It is now regarded as one of the greatest performances in film history. In 2006, Premiere issued its list of "The 100 Greatest Performances of all Time", putting Pacino's performance at #20.[62] Later in 2009, Total Film issued "The 150 Greatest Performances of All Time", ranking Pacino's performance fourth place.[63]
Ebert added the film to his Great Movies canon, noting he "would not change a word" of his original review but praising the work as "grippingly written, directed with confidence and artistry, photographed by Gordon Willis... in rich, warm tones." He praises the score: "More than ever, I am convinced it is instrumental to the power and emotional effect of the films. I cannot imagine them without their Nino Rota scores. Against all our objective reason, they instruct us how to feel about the films. Now listen very carefully to the first notes as the big car drives into Miami. You will hear an evocative echo of Bernard Hermann’s score for Citizen Kane, another film about a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it."[64]
Accolades
This film is the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.[65]The Godfather and The Godfather Part II remain the only original/sequel combination both to win Best Picture.[66] Along with The Lord of the Rings, The Godfather Trilogy shares the distinction that all of its installments were nominated for Best Picture; additionally, The Godfather Part II and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King are so far the only sequels to win Best Picture. Al Pacino became the third actor to be Oscar-nominated twice for playing the same character.
↑Eagan, Daniel (2010). America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry. New York: Continuum. p.711. ISBN978-0-8264-2977-3.
12"The 'Godfather Part II' Sequel Syndrome". Newsweek. December 25, 2016. Archived from the original on March 7, 2017. Retrieved March 8, 2017. But when the movie arrived in theaters at the end of 1974, it was met with a critical reception that, compared with today's exuberant embrace, felt more like a slap in the face... Most professional tastemakers, even those exasperated by what they felt was the movie's sometimes plodding-pace, recognized the creative crowning achievements of the film's direction, cinematography and acting.
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