It is the best sequel ever made and this year it turns 50, come and celebrate with me this amazing piece of cinema right here. Hello, and be welcome to my new movie post and the third of this 2024.
“I don’t feel that I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my enemies, that’s all.” – Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather: Part II (1974)
It was in the first part of 1997 when I finally watched The Godfather. The story of a family with an Italian immigrant as patriarch and his son who succeeds him in the mafia business blew me away. The whole production, the fine script, the cinematography, costumes, cars, wonderful locations, an amazing score, terrific acting and direction, all combined to create an enduring classic for the ages, and the best movie ever made.
Then, weeks later, I rented at my local video club the second part and it immediately became, perhaps, my favorite movie ever. I was hesitant about watching the third part and when I finally watched, I hated it. But then, as time went by, I learnt to love it and now consider it a masterpiece, even if it’s not at the same level as its two predecessors.
Now, as an adult middle age man, I consider the first part of 1972, with Marlon Brando’s terrific performance, as the best of the trilogy. But my favorite was and still is The Godfather: Part II, where you will see the great Al Pacino in an impeccable performance as the cunning and ruthless mafia boss Michael Corleone as he is involved in a web of lies, betrayals and murders.
On this post you will find first a description of the plot of the movie, following 20 facts you, probably, didn’t know about it. Then, you will find the trailer followed by the wonderful score composed by the great Nino Rota. Then you will find a bonus I hope you like. So, without further ado, let’s begin:
About The Godfather Part II and its Plot
Premiered in New York City on December 12, 1974, the sequel to The Godfather takes the theme of contrast to new heights, juxtaposing no only violence with family devotion but also one era with another: Vito Corleone’s humble beginnings in Sicily and his early life in New York City, and the rise and fall of his son Michael in the 1950s.
The saga of the Corleone family continues focusing on its protagonist, the ruthless mafia leader, Michael Corleone, his rise in success and his mission to take the family out of the crime business. Michael seems to live a perfect life at his Nevada compound until an assassination attempt makes him realize he has no one to trust. Michael will then embark on a mission to discover who tried to murder him. His journey will take him to Miami, New York City and Cuba, where a group of mobsters is making business with a corrupt government. Michael will face new enemies, betrayals, a congress hearing, and the loss of his marriage.
The movie switches back and forth to the early 20th century to tell also the story of a young Vito Corleone in Sicily. After his family is murdered by a local chieftain, he manages to escape to the United States, he arrives to Ellis Island where he must stay in quarantine. Next, we see him as an adult married man with children who, by chances of fate, later will become a mobster. After killing a mafia leader in Hell’s Kitchen, and his rise to power, Vito will go back to Sicily to seek his revenge.
This 3 hours and 22 minutes film was directed by Francis Ford Coppola who co-wrote the script again alongside author Mario Puzo, whose novel was the basis for the first film. Most of the actors of the first film returned for this sequel and they all performed their parts to perfection, receiving many recognitions and Academy Awards nominations. The whole production, cinematography, costumes, wonderful locations, terrific acting, and direction make this film probably the best sequel ever made.
20 Facts about The Godfather: Part II
1 – It was the first film ever to have part 2 in its title.
Movie sequels and series have been present in Hollywood practically since its beginnings. For better or worse, the studios love to invest in movies that can be serialized and keep bringing in those dollars. Originality and quality usually go out of the window with these kinds of movies. However, none of them used to have the now so common “Part 2” in any of their titles until The Godfather: Part II came out in 1974. Second parts back then used to have titles such as The Son of the Sheik, Tarzan the Ape Man, Don Q Son of Zorro or Bride of Frankenstein. According to some websites, the very first numbered sequel in film history was a British movie called Quatermass 2, released in 1957. But The Godfather: Part II it’s the first Hollywood release with a numbered sequel in its title. It is worth noticing that the Roman numeral II was selected instead of the Arabic number 2; the Roman numeral gave the title an air of class and elegance.
2 – The whole production ran smoothly for Coppola.
After all the pressure from the studio producers and a terrible experience during the filming of the first movie, where he was nearly fired three times, Francis Ford Coppola initially didn't want to direct the second part and even suggested Martin Scorsese as a director. But when the executives rejected that idea, and wanted him in the director seat again, Coppola made a list of demands and conditions that the studio granted. So Coppola got his wishes, a budget of 11 million dollars and, although the second part is a larger and more complicated movie, he was in total control and production went smoothly.
3 – Where is Peter Clemenza?
Actor Richard Castellano (1933-1988) who played the loyal capo to the Corleone family, Peter Clemenza, in the first Godfather movie was supposed to appear in its sequel. But when Castellano made outrageous demands about his character and even asked to write his own lines, director Francis Ford Coppola decided to kill off the character of Clemenza for good. Then, actor Michael V. Gazzo was brought as a stand-in for the Clemenza character, playing the part of Frank Pentangelli, a longtime associate of Vito Corleone. Gazzo served as the comic relief for this movie and even got a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. We do see Clemenza, however, but only his younger version played by actor Bruno Kirby in the early 20th century New York part of the film as a partner in crime of a young Vito Corleone.
4 – The Dominican Republic was a stand-in for Cuba.
Most of The Godfather Part II was largely filmed on location, which gave an air of authenticity to the story of the Corleone crime family and allowed for a more realistic depiction. A crew, led by designer producer Dean Tavoularis, spent six months transforming New York City's East Village into a 1917 Little Italy, where most of the story of young Vito Corleone takes place. Michael Corleone’s house in Lake Tahoe is not a set, but a real place and showcases the rise in success of the Corleone family. The Cuba sequence was shot in The Dominican Republic, where the presidential palace was used. The production team also traveled to Sicily to shoot the sequences on location and capture that picturesque land and sunlight before a nine-year-old Vito Corleone escapes to the United States, and his subsequence comeback as a grown man seeking revenge.
5 – Hyman Roth was inspired by a real-life Jewish mobster.
Meyer Lansky was born in 1902 in a territory that was back then part of the Russian Empire. In 1911 he migrated to the United States, and later met Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel and Charles "Lucky" Luciano, with whom he became longtime friends and partners in the crime and mafia business. Known as the "Mob's Accountant", he died in Florida in 1983. The role of Michael Corleone’s antagonist, Hyman Roth, was inspired by him and, like his real-life counterpart, has many connections and is deported form Israel and isn’t allowed entrance in several countries. Coppola first offered this role to Elia Kazan, but after Kazan’s rejection Al Pacino suggested the legendary Actors Studio’s director Lee Strasberg (1901-1982) for the role of the elderly mobster. Strasberg played a terrific part and was even nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Later, Meyer Lansky called Strasberg to congratulate him.
6 – Senator Pat Geary is said to be inspired by John F. Kennedy and others.
Following the same structure as the first movie, The Godfather Part II starts with a party in which some individuals have brief meetings with Don Corleone. In one of these, we are introduced to a tall middle-age politician known as Senator Pat Geary. This character and his wife are said to have been loosely based on Senator John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jackie; Kennedy’s ties with the mafia have always been well-documented. The senator also takes inspiration from another real-life politician that was Senator Pat McCarran, who was a United States senator from Nevada in the early 1950s, and was known for his anti-immigration positions; the main Las Vegas airport is named McCarran Airport after him. When Senator Geary denies a request for a casino license and tries an extortion, the Machiavellian Michael Corleone will set in motion a plan to get what he wants from the Senator. In Michael’s office we can also see a copy of Profiles in Courage, written (or, better said, ghostwritten for him) by John F. Kennedy.
7 – Coppola’s lucky number.
In The Godfather Part II, when a nine-year-old Vito Corleone arrives to Ellis Island in 1901, he’s given the number seven in a card. This is director Francis Ford Coppola’s lucky number, and also the lucky number of many people around the world. Probably the most popular number ever, the number seven is associated with intuition, wisdom, self-awareness, and even luck. It has been used since Biblical times and tends to represent perfection or completeness. You have the Seven Wonders of the World, seven days in a week, the seven dwarfs, the seven deadly sins, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and the list goes on.
8 – Michael Corleone’s mysterious bodyguard doesn’t have any dialogue.
After surviving and assassination attempt at his Lake Tahoe compound, Michael Corleone must go to find out who tried to kill him. He knows he cannot trust his inner circle of men, so he hires a mysterious tall man, who always dresses in black, from Sicily. This creepy guy who barely says a word, becomes Michael’s bodyguard and travels with him to Miami and New York City; but things will not go well for him in Havana. Played by Hungarian sculptor and occasional actor Amerigo Tot (1909-1984), his name is Busetta and was one the native Sicilians who were brought to the United States by the Corleone family. The name Busetta is never mentioned in the movie.
9 – Robert De Niro was the first actor to win an Academy Award for a non-English speaking role.
Robert De Niro spent four months learning the Sicilian dialect which the character of Vito Corleone, previously played by Marlon Brando, speaks in The Godfather: Part II. De Niro only speaks 17 words of English in the entire film. The learning of that language really paid off as he later won his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor; it was also the first time an actor won the award for a role spoken in different language other than English. De Niro was the first of only eight actors to win an Academy Award for a role primarily in a language other than English; the other actors are: Sophia Loren, Christoph Waltz, Roberto Benigni, Benicio Del Toro, Penélope Cruz, Marion Cotillard and Youn Yuh-jung.
10 – Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro are the only actors to win Oscars for playing the same character.
Although both Joaquin Phoenix and the late Heath Ledger won Oscars respectively for playing the Joker in the Batman franchise, each of them played different versions of that character in different universes. Which leaves Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro as the only two actors who have won Academy Awards for playing the same character, that of Sicilian immigrant turned mafia leader Vito Corleone. Marlon Brando (1924-2004) received the award for Best Actor in a very controversial ceremony in 1973 and two years later Robert De Niro received his own, but as a Supporting Actor. Robert De Niro had previously auditioned for the role of Sonny Corleone in The Godfather (1972).
11 – Dominic Chianese who plays Johnny Ola in The Godfather Part II also played Uncle Junior in The Sopranos.
Born in the Bronx in 1931, Dominic Chianese is and actor and a singer who got his start in theater and TV. In 1974, Francis Ford Coppola cast him as Johnny Ola in The Godfather Part II, beginning a film career that would see him appear several times alongside Al Pacino in films such as Dog Day Afternoon (1975), ...And Justice For All (1979), and Looking for Richard (1996). He’s mostly known for his role in the greatest TV series of all time, that is The Sopranos (1999-2007), where he played Corrado "Junior" Soprano, the uncle of protagonist Tony Soprano, a role for which he was twice nominated for the Emmy Awards. In The Godfather Part II, Chianese plays the part of Hyman Roth’s henchman Johnny Ola. He is the one who secretly contacts Fredo Corleone to put in motion a sinister plan.
12 – Marlon Brando was expected on the set.
Near the end of The Godfather: Part II, there’s a flashback scene where we see the Corleone family getting ready for a celebration. Three characters from the previous movie are there, but one is missing. James Caan reprised his role as Sonny Corleone in the wonderful surprise scene, whereas Marlon Brando is nowhere to be seen. Brando was supposed to be there, and was even expected on the set of filming; but when the star didn’t show up, director Francis Ford Coppola had to spend a day rewriting the scene and shot it the next day with the remaining actors. There has been a lot of speculation about why Brando wasn’t there; the most commented reason is that the actor felt mistreated by the board at Paramount during the production of the first movie. The scene Coppola wrote was great and even worked better without Brando himself.
13 – Vito Corleone’s birthday is December 7, 1891.
In the flashback scene of Don Vito Corleone’s birthday set in 1941, the character of Sonny Corleone talks about those “Japs” attacking US territory on "on Pop's birthday". On December 7, 1941, at 7:48 a.m. (local time), Japan conducted a swift and precise attack on the US naval base of Pearl Harbor located in Honolulu, Hawaii. The base was attacked by 353 Imperial Japanese aircraft and a total of 2,393 Americans were killed. The reason for the attack was to prevent the United States fleet interfering with Japan’s military actions in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. The surprise attack was followed by a declaration of war from Japan the next day, and it meant the entrance of the United States in World War II. Although they had no formal obligation with Japan, Germany and Italy each declared war on the United States. After four years of intensive combats in the Pacific, the United States dropped two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which led to Japan’s official surrender a few days later. In the previous movie, Don Vito Corleone’s birthday was stated on a tombstone as April 28, 1887, but this was changed for the sequel.
14 – Oranges again!
What began as a mere coincidence in the first Godfather movie of 1972, became a symbol for bad things to come in future movies and TV shows. To counteract the sober lightning of DP Gordon Willis, the production team decided to use oranges. But they didn’t realize the coincidence that everyone seemed to die after an orange appeared in sight. Since then, oranges in cinema have been associated with death or an ominous event that is about to happen. In The Godfather: Part II, Johnny Ola gives Michael an orange, and later he’s almost assassinated; in the New York part, Don Fanucci takes an orange and seals his fate; later, when Michael and his enforcers are discussing plans for a murder, he’s seen eating an orange, the only time in the trilogy a character does such a thing. Some interpret this as Michael eating and consuming death. Other movies that have used oranges as symbols of death are: Children of Men, Requiem for a Dream, and Point Break.
15 – Coppola had the idea of telling the story of a father and a son at the same age.
Director Francis Ford Coppola had the idea for a long time about making a movie about a father and a son at the same age, and when the opportunity for making a second part of The Godfather presented, he put his idea to work. Coppola’s vision was to juxtapose the ascension of the family under Vito Corleone and its expanding and subsequent decline under his son Michael. So the movie ended up being a sequel that works at the same time as a prequel.
16 – John Cazale is the only actor ever to start in five movies, all nominated for Best Picture.
A gifted actor born in Massachusetts in 1935, John Cazale started his career in theater in the early 1960s. Later he was in a couple of TV shows and made his film debut in The Godfather (1972), which led him to a successful career in the 1970s with movies directed or related to Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino or Robert De Niro. He dated actress Meryl Streep and always had problems with alcohol. In 1977, Cazale was diagnosed with lung cancer and died the next year at the age of 42. He’s the only actor ever to have appeared in five different movies all of which were nominated for Best Picture of the Year. In The Godfather: Part II, he reprised the role of the misunderstood Fredo Corleone, the second son of Don Vito Corleone, and gave the best performance of his short but great filmography.
17 – Opera “Senza Mamma.”
In the New York part of the movie, we see a young Vito Corleone going to a theater with his friend Genco Abbandando. There, they watch a musical play where an Italian immigrant remembers the mother he left behind in the old country, only to find out later she has died. This opera is called Senza Mamma and was an actual early twentieth century play; it was composed by Francis Ford Coppola's maternal grandfather, Francesco Pennino.
18 – The golden watch Michael Corleone wears is an Omega Constellation.
Throughout the movie, we see Michael Corleone wearing the same golden watch. This has been speculatively identified as a 35mm Omega Constellation, in 14k yellow gold, from the 1950s, with a white dial and shining gold bracelet. Michael likes the good stuff, yet he tries to keep things simple in an old money and discreet vibe, so he eschews excessive things and accessories and his only jewelry are the watch and a wedding ring that communicates to the rest of the world he’s a “family man”. The watch is out of production and, according to some websites, a vintage version like this can be found on the watch market for around $ 9,500.00 (yeah, you read that right).
19 – The cars of Michael Corleone.
The first time in the trilogy in which we see Michael Corleone driving a car is in the Miami part of The Godfather: Part II, where he goes to pay a visit to legendary mobster Hyman Roth. The green car Michael is driven about in Cuba is a 1957 Mercury Montclair. And the last time we see him in a car in this movie is when he arrives at his Lake Tahoe compound; there he gets out of a 1958 Imperial Crown Limousine. Al Pacino didn’t know how to drive a car back then and only learned to drive in 1977, when he starred as a race pilot in Bobby Deerfield directed by Sidney Pollack.
20 – It’s the best sequel ever made.
The Godfather: Part II not only met the expectations, but even surpassed them. It is considered by many as the best part of the trilogy and it was way more risky and ambitious. It is also a sequel at the same time that it is a prequel, telling the stories of a father and a son at the same age. Although it didn’t make as much money at the box office as its predecessor, it was an immediate success with both audiences and critics. It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won six: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Score. Three actors were nominated for Best Supporting Actor, with Robert De Niro taking the Oscar home.
Coppola’s direction was superb; lightning and cinematography again by Gordon Willis were dark and great; the whole production, sets, and costumes were exquisite; and Al Pacino has never been better. It was too bad that Pacino didn’t get the Oscar as best actor and had to wait until 1993 to receive the award; for many, this is his greatest role. It is worth noticing also that although this is not the only sequel that has won Best Picture, it remains the only second part to win the award. The film was later included in the U.S. National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1993, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It remains a highly influential film, and one of the greatest films ever made.
Trailer
Watch the original trailer for The Godfather: Part II right here:
The Godfather Part II - Trailer
Soundtrack
The great Nino Rota again in collaboration with director Coppola’s father, Carmine Coppola, created an amazing soundtrack for this epic crime and family drama, for which they earned the Academy Award for Best Score. Listen to complete soundtrack here:
The Godfather Part II Complete Soundtrack
Bonus
Didn’t I promise you a bonus at the beginning? Last year I borrowed from a cousin of mine the complete Godfather trilogy in a box set, the Coppola restoration in DVD, released in 2008. Below, you have some pictures of the DVDs. I haven’t seen the movies in years and for me this was like watching them again for the first time.
The box set is divided in four parts. The first three contain the three movies with audio commentaries by director Francis Ford Coppola, while the last one contains two discs with interviews, featurettes, photos, and other extra materials.
I hope my cousin don’t ask this back because I have no intention of give it back to him, unless he asks for it, of course.
Here you have them:
Conclusion
I hope you have liked this post, you cinephiles, it was a pleasure for me writing about my favorite movie of the Godfather trilogy and one of my favorites of all time. If you haven’t watched the entire trilogy, well, what are you waiting for? They’re some of the best movies you will ever watch in your entire life and are classic movies for the ages.
Let me know what you think about this post in the comment section. Have you ever seen The Godfather: Part II? Which one of the trilogy is your favorite? What do you think about the cool facts? Which one surprised you the most? I’ll be waiting for your answers.
Since you’re here, check now the post I wrote last year to commemorate 40 years of Return of the Jedi right here:
@thereadingman/40-years-of-return-of
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Until Next Time
Take care
Orlando Caine.