Year: 1974
Cast: Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, Talia Shire, Morgana King, John Cazale, Marianna Hill, Lee Strasberg, Michael V. Gazzo, GD Spradlin, Richard Bright, Gaston Moschin, Tom Rosqui, Bruno Kirby, Frank Sivero, Francesca De Sapio, Leopoldo Trieste, Dominic Chianese, Troy Donahue, John Aprea, Joe Spinell, Carmine Caridi, Danny Aiello, Harry Dean Stanton
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Pacino), Best Supporting Actor (De Niro, Gazzi, Strasberg), Best Supporting Actress (Shire), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Dramatic Score, Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Costume Design
It's a bit weird to talk about a film's sequel before we talk about the main film itself, but such is the nature of how I choose my years and categories.
The Godfather, Part II was the first, and for nearly 30 years the only, sequel to win Best Picture. It's still the only sequel to a film that won Best Picture to also win Best Picture and part of the first of only two trilogies to have all their installments nominated. Of course I'm speaking of The Lord of the Rings series, which, like The Godfather's three films, had all three of its chapters nominated for Best Picture, but whereas The Lord of the Rings won the big prize for its final chapter (many feel it was granted for the three films in total), The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II both won Best Picture their respective years, and Part II is frequently brought up as an example of a sequel that not only lives up to but may very well surpass its original.
It does so by not just being a continuation of the story but also, through a series of flashbacks, showing us how a young boy named Vito Andolini came to America and grew up to become the founder of the Corleone crime family. This is juxtaposed with the continuing tale of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), who has now been the Don of the Corleone family for about a decade (counting the final years covered in the first film), and is even more deeply mired in criminal activity than he was when we saw him last. "Remember when you told me the Corleone family would be completely legitimate in five years?" asks his wife Kay (Diane Keaton). "That was seven years ago." He brushes that away with a promise that he's still working on it, but we certainly don't see that here. In fact, he's become a great deal more ruthless and brutal in the ensuing years between this film and its predecessor.
Part of the biggest issues Michael has at this point is that there are so few men left that he can trust. A majority of them are dead or have proven that perhaps they weren't as trustworthy as he believed. Clemenza is now dead of a heart attack, and the new caporegime looking after the family's interests in New York is the volatile Frankie Pentangeli (Michael V. Gazzo), whose loyalty is definitely in question. Frankie is eager for permission to take out the Rosato brothers (Carmine Caridi and Danny Aiello), who are taking over his territory, but the problem is they work for
On the night of his son's birthday party, Michael, who has relocated to Nevada, meets with the corrupt Senator Geary (GD Spradlin) who's willing to take a payoff to ignore the criminal element in the Corleone business dealings, but only for a substantial kickback that he wants mainly because he hates having to work with Italians. He also meets with Frankie, who threatens to become violently angry at Michael's refusal to let him move against the Rosatos, but eventually settles down. Overshadowing all these meetings is the acknowledgement that Michael is getting into bed with Roth, a man the old Don Corleone did occasional business with but never trusted, because he truly is dangerous.
Later that night, Michael and Kay barely survive an assassination attempt, and Michael suspects that the assassins were able to get that close to him due to having a man on the inside. Who sent the assassins, though? Roth? Pentangeli? Maybe even Senator Geary? Who's the man they have in Michael's inner circle?
Michael plays them all; setting up Roth to believe Michael's ready to take out Pentangeli, but telling Pentangeli that it was Roth who sent the assassins. A series of botched hit jobs on all sides winds up with Michael subjected to a Senate hearing where he denies being involved in organized crime...not knowing Pentangeli is the surprise witness.
In the 1910's, a much younger Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro), named so in America because he gets named after the city he comes from, has married, made friends with local Italians Clemenza (Bruno Kirby) and Tessio (John Aprea) and learns most of his neighborhood is under the tight fist of Don Fanucci (Gaston Moschin), known as the "Black Hand". Fanucci causes Vito to lose his job at a grocer due to Fanucci needing a place for his nephew to work. After getting involved in smaller crimes with Clemenza and Tessio, earning notice from Fanucci, who demands a percentage, Vito realizes he needs to take Fanucci out, beginning his rise to power in Brooklyn.
I could keep going but there's a lot happening in this movie, and I'm purposefully leaving a lot out. Likely you already know the story, with all the various twists and turns, so let's talk about the movie as a movie.
To start off with, I'll mention that it not only won Best Picture, but also Best Director (The Godfather can't even claim that!), Best Supporting Actor (De Niro), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction/Set Decoration and Best Original Dramatic Score. That's seven wins to The Godfather's mere three. Al Pacino, nominated for Best Actor this time because he has no Brando to contend with, lost his prize to Art Carney in Harry and Tonto, a loss many believe was due to Pacino splitting his vote with Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. Having seen both movies, I don't know which one I would have voted for between Nicholson and Pacino, but I can say that I think I like Pacino's performance in the original film a bit better than this one, due to watching Michael's slow but inevitable shift from a guy trying to live a clean life who gets drawn into his family's world of crime and death. Here he's deep into it, and while he says he's trying to get out, he doesn't seem to be putting much effort into it. It's a solid, quietly intense performance, and it deservedly made Pacino one of the more viable leading men in Hollywood, but I'll reserve judgement on whether he was robbed of an Oscar win (for either this or The Godfather) until I've seen all his competition in both years. I can say for sure that of the three men nominated for the original film (Pacino, who should have been nominated for Best Actor, James Caan and Robert Duvall) he's the clear winner there, but I haven't seen Cabaret yet.
This film, like its predecessor, managed the rare Triple Crown; three performances from the same film nominated in the same category, and it also beat the odds, as a Triple Crown has always resulted in a three-way loss, but not this time. Robert De Niro, Michael V. Gazzo and Lee Strasberg all received nominations for this film, but it was De Niro who took it home. I was impressed to some degree how easily he convinced me that his character could grow to become the old man we met in The Godfather, including adding a bit of a rasp to his voice and using Brando's affected manner of speaking, while not descending into copycat or parody. My only question is when did Vito have that trademark mole removed. Gazzo, a playwright by trade, gobbles down scenery like mad here, but doesn't come off as over the top or trying too hard. You can believe his mobster just behaves like this. Strasberg, meanwhile, is primarily remembered as an acting teacher to the stars, whose students include Pacino himself, as well as Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda, Julie Harris, Paul Newman, Ellen Burstyn, Geraldine Page, Eli Wallach, and directors Frank Perry and Elia Kazan, among others. They say those that can do, and those that can't teach, but it doesn't hold true here. Strasberg, who primarily acted on the stage, here plays Hyman Roth as a seemingly congenial old man, the sort of guy you might run into at the grocery store who'd ask how your day is going and pat your children on the head, but there's an underlying threat in nearly every word he says, and he's able to sell the danger while still smiling and seeming totally friendly. Between the three nominated performances, I think I actually like his the best.
Talia Shire returns in this film as the youngest child of Vito Corleone, and the only daughter, Connie. The first film memorably opens on her wedding, and throughout the first film we learn she's regularly being cheated on and beaten by Carlo, her first husband, leading him to be threatened by oldest Corleone child Sonny (Caan), which in turn leads Carlo to sell out Sonny to the Tattaglias. Michael, once he's taken over, realizes this and kills Carlo. Since then, Connie has apparently gotten married again, and is currently in the process of a divorce, and has already moved on to another man, a non-Italian named Merle (Troy Donahue) whom none in her family approve of. Since being widowed by her brother, Connie has taken to drugs, drinking and men, and Michael considers her a disgrace to the family, only showing up when she needs money, and never seeing her children. What makes Shire's nomination for this role interesting is that this is her second time out as Connie, and the first time got her no notice at all, but here her role is smaller and yet got more notice. Think the nomination was meant to honor both performances? That's very likely. She was nearly entirely sympathetic in the first film (if there was any part of her that wasn't, it was her seeming willingness to stay with and protect her abusive husband) to being the family shame in this one, but in this one she seems like a real actress. That's probably not fair, because Shire (Coppola's little sister) was very much a real actress even before being cast in The Godfather, and she would go on to earn an Oscar nod for another film her brother had nothing to do with, but that hasn't stopped people from suggesting she was only cast in this series thanks to nepotism and that Coppola pulled some strings to get her nominated. I don't agree (apparently Coppola considered firing her because she was too glamorous), and I thought she did a great job here, transforming from cringing housewife to well-dressed lush, going from "aww, poor thing" to "what a bitch" in just two films, and with a slight change of hairdo and poise. Yeah, I'm on board with her nomination.
As for the other wins, it's almost like the Academy was awarding this film to make up for how scant the awards were for its predecessor; we tend to remember The Godfather as the dominant film of its year, but it actually won only three Oscars (Picture, Actor, Screenplay) while Cabaret swept with eight wins, making it still to this day the film that won the most Oscars without winning Best Picture. Sure, all this film's wins were deserved (aside from two of its three Supporting Actor nods, as well as Pacino and Shire, the only loss was for Costume Design), but I don't see much of a difference between the writing, score and cinematography between the two films, and the directorial job is absolutely the same, so it's almost like Coppola's win, as well as composer Nino Rota's, was for both films. Shire's nod absolutely was, though I agree she should have been nominated, while I still don't know how I feel about Pacino's double losses. He absolutely gave a winning performance the first time around. Did he deserve it for both? Would a win for him have been just a make-up Oscar for losing his first round? I feel like I'll be better equipped to say once I've seen Cabaret, Harry and Tonto, The Heartbreak Kid and Lenny. He definitely deserved to win over Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express, a performance that, as I'll detail in the next post, was totally competent but not a winner. He and Nicholson, though...a lot of thought will have to go into this before I decide which of the two was more deserving.
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