The Godfather Part II does not repeat the first film. It splits it in two and dares you to hold both halves at once.
Francis Ford Coppola produced and directed the 1974 film, and co-wrote the screenplay with Mario Puzo. It runs 202 minutes. It is both a sequel and a prequel: one story follows Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in 1958 as the new Don, protecting the family business after an attempt on his life; the other follows his father, Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro), from a Sicilian childhood to the founding of the family enterprise in New York City. The tagline reads: “The rise and fall of the Corleone empire.” That is the whole design in one line.
Trailer, via Paramount Movies.
Two Corleones, Two Eras
The parallel structure is the film’s engine, and it never stalls. De Niro’s Vito builds. Pacino’s Michael spends, and then spends more. The 1910s New York sections carry the warmth the 1950s sections have lost, and the contrast does the work that dialogue would do in a lesser film.
Michael wants to expand into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba. That ambition is the plot’s spine, and it is also the trap. Every room he enters, he owns a little more and trusts a little less.
The ensemble is deep: Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen, Diane Keaton as Kay Corleone, John Cazale as Fredo, Talia Shire as Connie, Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth, Michael V. Gazzo as Frank Pentangeli, G.D. Spradlin as Senator Pat Geary, Richard Bright as Al Neri, Gastone Moschin as Don Fanucci, Tom Rosqui as Rocco Lampone.
Cazale’s Fredo is the performance the film cannot survive without. He is the wound in the middle of the family, and the film knows it.
What It Cost and What It Earned
- Runtime: 202 minutes
- Budget: $13 million
- US and Canada gross: $48 million
- Worldwide gross: up to $93 million
- Academy Awards: 11 nominations; won Best Picture
- Metacritic: 90/100
The film premiered in New York City on December 12, 1974, and opened in the United States on December 20, 1974. It became the first sequel to win Best Picture. That fact still stands alone in the award’s history.
The Casting That Shaped the Film
Several actors from the first film did not return, and the gaps changed the script.
Marlon Brando initially agreed to return for the birthday flashback sequence. He felt mistreated by the board at Paramount and failed to show for the single day’s shooting. Coppola rewrote the scene that same day.
Richard S. Castellano, who played Peter Clemenza in the first film, also declined. He and the producers could not agree on his demand that he write the character’s dialogue. His widow disputed that account in a 1991 letter to People magazine. The plot function meant for Clemenza went to Frank Pentangeli, played by Michael V. Gazzo.
Coppola offered James Cagney the role of Hyman Roth. Cagney refused; he had retired from acting. James Caan agreed to reprise Sonny for the birthday flashback, on the condition he be paid for that single scene what he received for the entire previous film. He got it.
Among the actors playing Senators on the hearing committee are Roger Corman, William Bowers, Phil Feldman and Peter Donat.
Where This Lands
Here is the part worth arguing about. The Godfather Part II is not better than The Godfather because it is bigger. It is better because it is colder. The first film made the family seductive. This one shows what the seduction costs, and it refuses to look away.
The Cuba sequence and the Senate hearings are the two halves of the same verdict: the business has outgrown the family that built it, and Michael is the last man who cannot see it. Strasberg’s Hyman Roth is the film’s best piece of casting after De Niro, a man who talks like a retiree and moves like a creditor.
The 202 minutes are not a flaw. They are the point. You are meant to feel the years pass and the rooms empty out. The film’s structure, cutting between a father building and a son dismantling, is the cleanest argument in the whole series.
Its critical standing has held for more than five decades, and the score reflects that: a 90 on Metacritic, a 9.0 by our measure. Nothing in the sequel era has matched it, and the reason is simple. Most sequels repeat the first film’s pleasures. This one takes them away.
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