Reviews: "The Godfather," "The Godfather Part II," and Cinematic Inheritances
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The Godfather is a movie so timeless that many of us inherit it. The film was always one of my Dad’s favorites; I remember going with my mom to get him the DVD set when it first came out for his birthday. I don’t quite remember when he first showed it to me, but I know that when he did, it became one of my favorite movies too. The more we watched it together, the more we appreciated it, for we had each other to share it with. Our divide in ages made no difference. It affected us with equal power.
Both of us were, of course, part of the film’s immediate demographic: Male and American. Though The Godfather is not insensitive towards its female characters, it is made from a staunchly male perspective. While people of any nationality could enjoy the film for any number of reasons, it is at its core a distinctly American story. Its laser focus is not a detriment, but a fundamental strength. As Roger Ebert likes to say, “movies made for everybody are really made for nobody.” The Godfather is made for a specific audience, with a thoroughly authoritative voice, and its greatness extends naturally from there.
Men undoubtedly identify with the film on countless levels, most clearly for its stark portrayal of father and son. We may not all be fathers, but we are all sons, and we are familiar with the sense of compassion and responsibility one feels towards one’s father. Those with children know what it is to be a parent, to desire something greater for one’s children than the life one has lived. And the cycle continues. Even if we have never been part of the Italian mafia, the relationship Michael and Vito Corleone share is so well observed, so emotionally resonant and thematically stimulating, that we empathize on instinctual levels.
The Godfather is indeed a family story, and draws much of its staggering entertainment power from the cavalcade of fascinating personalities and performances on display. But in telling the story of one complex, corrupt American family, Coppola achieves something far greater: He tells the definitive story of the ever-elusive American dream.
America was founded, nominally, on principles of freedom, prosperity, and opportunity, and these are the truths Vito – a good and honest man living a paradoxically wicked life – has lived by to provide for his family. For him, the American dream means sacrificing certain personal opportunities to create a foundation for one’s children, to ensure the next generation can live a life better than their forefathers experienced. This is the allegorical thesis The Godfather explores, and as a tale of an immigrant family, it is perfectly positioned to do so.
Despite his career triumphs, Michael’s story is one of immense tragedy. Vito’s actions, intended to give Michael greater opportunity, instead forged a path where his most gifted son would be forever linked to a life of crime, a life much harsher and less forgiving than the one Vito began. “We’ll get there, Pop. We’ll get there,” says Michael when Vito confesses he always wanted more for his son. It is the film’s most powerful, heartbreaking scene, for Vito is defeated, and Michael’s words are platitudes. The American dream does not function the way he or his father intended. Most likely, it never will.
This is a story that resonates intensely with viewers of this country. It could only be told in America, by a uniquely American filmmaker, about an American immigrant family, and it is so expertly and honestly illustrated that it shall touch anyone who can relate to its themes or characters. It stands, therefore, among the greatest of all American films, and shall always be one of my very favorite movies.
I may not remember the first time my Dad showed me the film, but I do remember the last time we watched it together, in the fall of 2012 when the then-recent ‘Coppola Restoration’ of Parts I and II played in theaters a week apart. Those were two of his very last trips to the cinema before he passed away in October of that year. I realized, after he died, that I’d never watched The Godfather without him. It took me a long time to make my way back to the film; there were other movies we shared that were easier to watch on my own, but The Godfather is too much about family, and legacy, and fathers and sons, and fathers knowing they are inevitably going to leave their sons, and sons fearing what they will become without their father’s guiding hand. More than its sequel, which is about some of these things but not others, The Godfather has always been a tough movie for me to write about; the best crack I ever took at it – the basis for the preceding paragraphs – was before my father died. When the Godfather films were eventually released on 4K Blu-ray, I did finally watch them again; I see myself having used the word ‘men’ above, but of course, I had not watched The Godfathersince I was a boy of 19. I had changed a lot; the film had not, but of course I saw it very differently. Perhaps I’ll take another crack at writing about it one day; I will confess continued difficulty in doing so, in part because the film still doesn’t feel like ‘it’s mine.’ It was passed down to me, and I am still figuring out my exact relationship to it, separate from the person who bequeathed it. That’s Michael’s story too; hopefully I will find a less destructive way forward.
The Godfather Part II is an easier movie for me to grapple with now, despite it being a bigger and more complicated film in every direction. Perhaps because we live in an age of such relentless cinematic franchising, the achievement of Coppola’s sequel feels all the more astonishing with each passing day. Because here’s the thing: If, for some reason, The Godfather Part II ended at its Intermission break, leaving the present-day material with Michael in the air and closing on young Vito Corleone returning to his family after killing Don Fanucci, it would still be the greatest film sequel ever made, and it still wouldn’t be a close contest.
Hell, if The Godfather Part II were just three hours of Al Pacino staring at a blank wall, but with the 15-minutecenterpiece sequence of Robert De Niro’s Vito tailing Fanucci through the neighborhood festa still in place, it would still be the best sequel ever made, and still without serious competition for the title, because that sequence is easily one of the most electric pieces of filmmaking in the history of the American cinema.
In its totality, of course, The Godfather Part II is the greatest sequel of all time because the Venn diagram between “movies as good as Godfather II” and “movies that are sequels” is nonexistent – an empty space between two separate circles. It is perhaps the most towering achievement in film structure and editing an American filmmaker has ever accomplished, intertwining two stories to tell a bigger and more profound narrative than either could alone. Many have tried to recreate its success in this regard; none have come close.
The film’s mastery of macro-editing is one of the qualities that fascinates me most about it. By which I mean the film’s high-level structural editing – not the moment-to-moment cuts (which are also plenty accomplished, but less revelatory or influential), but the overall arrangement of scenes and sequences. Coppola shot a lot of material, and earlier edits, before the director settled on what ultimately arrived in theaters, had a higher frequency of exchange between past and present. The final film, while nearly three-and-a-half hours long, is structurally quite simple: We only go to the past five times – just four with De Niro, who is not in the opening when Vito is a child – and the whole movie is arranged in practically symphonic movements. There are two prologues, seven major chapters, and an epilogue. Each of these conveys a full idea, completes an entire narrative movement or expresses a major theme, before transitioning into the next act. Here is how I would map the film out:
Act I Prologue(s) – Brief scene of Michael as The Godfather, followed by the opening action in Sicily, 1901, and Vito’s subsequent emigration to America.
Chapter 1 – Present day (1958), the First Communion party for Michael and Kay’s son at Lake Tahoe, and the subsequent assassination attempt on Michael
Chapter 2 – 1917 New York, with Vito meeting Clemenza and stealing the rug together
Chapter 3 – 1958, the extended sequence with Michael in Havana amidst the Cuban Revolution
Chapter 4 – 1917 New York; Vito, Clemenza, and Tessio have started a criminal enterprise together, drawing ire of Don Fanucci, who Vito then assassinates
Intermission
Act II Prologue(s) – Vignettes with both Michael and Vito, each reacting to/following up on the status quo changes from the end of Act I
Chapter 5 – 1958, the Senate hearings in Washington D.C. and Michael outmaneuvering Hyman Roth
Chapter 6 – 1923, Vito takes his family to Sicily and takes revenge on an aged Don Ciccio
Chapter 7 – 1958, Michael loses his soul through a series of wholly unnecessary killings, culminating in the murder of his brother Fredo
Epilogue – The Corleone family gathers on Vito’s birthday in 1942
It is, in total, a remarkably elegant structure. Each of the main chapters is a perfectly crafted short film unto itself, always finding a meaningful note of culmination before moving on to the next chapter, so that despite the film’s length and narrative complexity, it never feels like Coppola is too busy juggling too many balls. Take Chapter 3, the Havana sequence, which is such a masterful slow-burn pressure cooker of interpersonal tension, framed by the pressure cooker that is Cuba itself on the eve of Revolution. We spend a lot of time watching Michael watch others, slowly getting the read on the Cuban political situation and Fredo’s betrayal. Pacino is mostly silent through this stretch, until his culminating embrace of Fredo with “you broke my heart,” a traumatic climax that is doubled when Michael returns to the United States and Kay, revealing she had an abortion, leaves him.
There are precious few films more valuable to study for cinematic structure than Godfather II. Most movies half its length aren’t nearly as elegantly laid out or well-paced. And of course, its influence is boundless. The second Lord of the Rings film, The Two Towers, works in no small part because it borrows Godfather II’s structure, cutting between its three major centers of action sparingly.
The other fallout of Godfather II’s brilliance is that it may well be the last movie on earth actually in need of a sequel. It finishes the story of the Corleone family as conclusively and fulsomely as one possibly could, and it made The Godfather Part III an inevitably doomed project (which is probably why Coppola resisted making it right up until his finances were dire enough to take the gig). That also makes Godfather III easy to ignore – taken together, Parts I and II are complete unto themselves.
NEXT WEEK: We’ll take a look at The Godfather: Part III anyway, and at the changes Coppola made for the recent ‘Director’s Cut’ known as – deep breath – The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.
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