The Best Picture Countdown #47: The Godfather Part II (1974)

Note: this post is modified from a previously published post

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, John Cazale

I go back and forth over whether I think The Godfather: Part II is the better of the first two instalments of the trilogy. On one hand, the sequel obviously benefits from having the original as a starting point with much of the set-up already done. But on the other, I think that Part II contains the key elements to the trilogy as a whole. Add to that the fact that the world we enter with Part II is darker, more complex and ultimately more ambiguous than its predecessor, and you’ve got a tough choice to make indeed.

The film tells two parallel stories. One follows Vito (played as an adult by Robert De Niro) who begins life in the village of Corleone in Sicily and sees the members of his family picked off one-by-one by the local Mafioso. He escapes to America, takes the name Corleone and eventually usurps power from the local Don to begin his own consolidation of power. The other story follows Michael (Al Pacino), already in control of his empire and struggling to maintain it against conspiracy within his organization, a Senate committee out to bust him, and his own familial troubles. Family is the crucial element of the film. Vito’s rise to power is shown as a way to safeguard his American family and give them a better life, as well as a way to ensure that he can return to Sicily and avenge the family he lost there. The Don he eliminates holds his territory with an iron fist. When he’s assassinated by Vito, it isn’t framed as a bad act, but as something which will ultimately enable Vito to take care of his family. For Vito, business is a way of maintaining the family. For Michael, on the other hand, family is something that must be sacrificed for the sake of business.

The Godfather: Part II is essentially the story of Michael’s isolation as he drifts further and further away from what Vito established. One brother (Sonny) is already dead at the beginning of the film, sister Connie (Talia Shire) is a mild irritation, someone he has to deal with but whose presence has little effect on his life, and adopted brother Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), once in the thick of things as the family’s consiglieri, is being pushed further and further out of the family business for his own protection, as Michael tries to assure him. His marriage to Kay (Diane Keaton) is already falling apart as she grows increasingly impatient with his empty promises to make the family legitimate. Eventually he will push her away completely and, as in The Godfather, shut the door on her, this time definitively. And then there’s Fredo (John Cazale)…

The key to understanding the trilogy as a whole and Michael as a character lies in the death of Fredo, whom Michael orders to be killed. The first film is leading up to this moment, the moment when Michael is so far gone, so completely enveloped in the “business,” that he can order Fredo to be murdered as if that is “just business” and not personal. Everything in the third film leads away from it and much of that film concerns Michael’s guilt over his act (“My mother’s son,” he laments in Part III). How did Michael get to this point? How did the “good” son of The Godfather, the one least expected to get into the business, end up being the most ruthless of them all? It is perhaps his lack of previous contact with this world that made him so susceptible to it, like someone whose immune system is compromised by sudden exposure to a disease never before encountered.

Fredo is the soul of the film and when he kills Fredo, Michael kills his soul, committing an act he will never be able to fully justify or find redemption for. As Fredo, John Cazale renders a heartbreaking performance. “I’m your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over… I’m smart. Not like everybody says… like dumb… I’m smart and I want respect!” he says to Michael, who responds dispassionately. It’s an emotionally charged role, that of the older brother trying to step out of the shadow of the younger, the brother who is aware that no one believes he is capable of running the show, the one who is forever stuck at the figurative kid’s table. Cazale’s film career was brief, but he left a filmography that any actor would be jealous of, having appeared in The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter in addition to the first two Godfather films. Pacino, Keaton, Duvall and De Niro are all great, but it’s Cazale who really stands out from the crowd as a man desperate to show that he’s as good as his brother while also being so slavishly eager to please the same.

The story presented here is much bigger than that of The Godfather and I know that some become impatient with it, feeling that it digresses too much, that it isn’t as tightly focused as the first. I also know that some prefer Part II because it’s more epic in scope and much darker, showing a Don who is more realistically cold-blooded. But anyway you look at it this remains an excellent film, its story a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

The Best Picture Countdown #45: The Godfather (1972)

Note: this post is modified from a previously published post

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Al Pacino, Marlon Brando

It was unlike the mobster movies that came before, and set the standard for all those that followed. While James Cagny and Edward G. Robinson played bad guys in movies that knew they were bad, The Godfather succeeds by creating its own moral compass, eliminating the law and order side of the story and focusing squarely on the cloistered world of the mafia and its men. It isn’t just a matter of bad guys being bad; this is a story of social and business politics, of moral shades of grey, and above all else, family.

The Godfather opens and closes on family events: a wedding at the beginning, and a christening towards the end. The opening scenes are familiar even to those who haven’t seen the film as they’ve been referenced and parodied so much. This is where Michael (Al Pacino), in his soldier’s uniform, informs Kay (Diane Keaton), that his father made a man “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” and where Brando appears as Don Vito Corleone, creating the cinema’s most lasting and iconic image of the mafia boss. The first scene with Vito and Bonasera, a man who has come to ask a favour, is one of the best in the film because it lays down the code, the governing laws of this world. The Don chastises Bonasera for going first to the police – the police can do nothing for him; this is a “family” matter. He then tells him that he’s not in the business of murdering for hire – the men who caused Bonasera’s daughter pain will be made to suffer, but the punishment must fit the crime. And then he utters that immortal line: “Someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me.” And he will, later, ask a favour of Bonasera, but not of the kind that Bonasera no doubt fears.

Vito is the looming, central figure of The Godfather, although Michael is its central character. At the beginning of the film he is the son who isn’t involved in the family business – his brothers, the hot-headed Sonny (James Caan) and soft-headed Fredo (John Cazale) are directly involved, adopted brother Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) acts as the family’s counsel – but as the story progresses, he sinks deeper and deeper into the mire. When the time comes for the reins to be passed, they go to Michael, who must learn quickly how to handle them and consolidate his still unstable power. The baptism sequence operates on multiple levels. On the literal level, Michael is acting as Godfather to the baptized child. On the figurative level he is becoming the Godfather and undergoing a baptism of his own as his enemies are eliminated one after the other and he makes his first great demonstration of power.

Michael wasn’t the son being groomed to take things over; shortly before he takes his first steps into the family business, Vito tells him, “I never wanted this for you… I always thought when it was your time that you would be the one to hold the strings. Senator Corleone. Governor Corleone. Something… There just wasn’t enough time.” But even though Michael isn’t the most obvious choice, he does turn out to be better suited for the position than any his brothers. Sonny, even if he didn’t die in a hail of bullets, is too unpredictable, too quick tempered. Michael, on the other hand, is calm and collected and treats what comes as part of the business. When he and Tom learn that Tessio (Abe Vigoda) is a traitor, Tom expresses surprise, but Michael takes the news calmly. “It’s the smart move. Tessio was always smarter.” Michael recognizes that power is up for grabs now that Vito is out of commission, and he doesn’t take it personally that people are trying to grab it. He doesn’t take it lightly, though, either.

The Godfather is a film that is brutal for the myriad ways in which people are threatened and killed, but within the context of the story the Corleones aren’t considered villains. Even when Carlo (Gianni Russo) is murdered after being reassured that nothing will happen to him (“Do you think I’d make my sister a widow? I’m Godfather to your son” Michael says), we the audience are assured that this isn’t bad since Carlo betrayed the family. There aren’t any traditional good guys in this film – the only cops are crooked and anyone who’s not “with” the family is actively working against it. The film’s moral compass is skewed towards the Corleones because the story limits itself to them and the people who try to harm them; the people whom the Corleones harm through their various business endeavours don’t factor here at all.

It is easy to take measure of how influential The Godfather has been since its release. It has been echoed and quoted and satirized numerous times (perhaps most notably in The Freshman, where Brando plays a mobster who is a spoof of Don Corleone), and the image it created of the romanticized gangster – the honest man simply trying to run his business – continues to shape the way we look at the mob in film and television. But perhaps even more importantly it has transcended the realm of fiction to become, in a way, a philosophy of life. You don’t take sides against the family. It’s business, it isn’t personal. And you always leave the gun, but take the cannoli.

Oscarstravaganza: Bram Stoker's Dracula

* * *

Winner: Best Makeup, 1992
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves

Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula may not be the best film based on the Dracula novel (though it is, ironically, one of the most faithful adaptations), but it is the most fun. Dripping in excess, constructed with a great deal of humour, and full of references to the earlier adaptations, Coppola’s interpretation of the classic novel is an endlessly entertaining film.

Coppola’s version begins before Bram Stoker’s story, mixing in the legend of Vlad the Impaler as a back story for Count Dracula (Gary Oldman). Broken-hearted by the death of his young wife (Winona Ryder), Dracula falls into a deep despair, renouncing the church and declaring that he will rise from the grave to avenge his wife. Centuries pass and, true to his word, the Count is still alive and kicking, sustained by feasting on the blood of the innocent. One such innocent is Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves in a bit of legendary miscasting), a guest at Dracula's castle who encounters many horrors and barely escapes back to the arms of his fiancée Mina (also played by Ryder).

Unbeknownst to Harker, he’s been followed back to London by Dracula, whose object is to have Mina for himself, her appearance having convinced him that she’s the reincarnation of his wife. As he waits for his opportunity to take Mina, he satiates his bloodlust on her friend, Lucy (Sadie Frost), whose transformation from lively flirt to a pale and blood thirsty creature prompts to arrival of Dr. Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins). The doctor recognizes the signs of a vampire and teams up with Harker and Lucy’s three suitors to stop Dracula before he can destroy Mina the way he’s done to Lucy. Unfortunately, it may already be too late.

I think the thing that I really respond to in this version of the Dracula story is how much joy has obviously gone into its making (has Hopkins ever seemed to be having more fun than he does here as Van Helsing?). This is an exuberant and colourful film directed with a lot of passion and constructed with a nice dose of tongue-in-cheek humour to offset its more intensely dramatic moments. A lot of this humor comes courtesy of Van Helsing who seems to approach every situation with a mixture of seriousness and dry wit. For example, after beheading the undead Lucy, he explains to Mina and Harker (while violently cutting up the meat he's having for lunch) that she was in a great deal of pain but that after they cut off her head she seemed fine.

Is it all a little over the top? Yeah, but it’s also the adaptation that’s most in touch with Bram Stoker’s novel. Most adaptations of the story cherry pick from it, retaining the basic elements of the plot while ignoring the other preoccupations that Stoker has folded into his story, such as his fascination with emerging technologies. Coppola throws all of that in and also makes time for referencing other film versions, particularly F.W. Murnau’s great Nosferatu. This isn’t great Coppola in the way of his work pre-Apocalypse Now (an amazing film but one that clearly broke his brain given the films that have followed it) but I think that anyone who makes that film, the first two Godfathers and The Conversation should get a free pass ever after to make whatever he wants, even if it's silly. Bram Stoker's Dracula is sometimes silly. It also has moments of great beauty and has been lovingly put together and photographed. I am amazed that the cinematography by Michael Bellhaus wasn't recognized along with the film's achievements in makeup, costumes, art direction, and sound editing. I also think it's a shame that Gary Oldman couldn't get some recognition for his work here because despite how campy the film is, his performance is surprisingly soulful and it's definitely engaging. I'm not saying he should have won or anything (though I will point out that 1992 is the year Al Pacino hooahed his way to the win), but he manages to make the character more than a caricature, even when the film itself seems intent on not allowing him dimension. It's just one of the many ways that Bram Stoker's Dracula seems to work almost in spite of itself and if you can sit back and allow yourself to appreciate its glorious insanity, you're in for a good time.

Great Last Scenes: The Godfather

Year: 1972
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Great Because...: If there was ever a finale more heavy with symbolism, I don't think I've seen it. These final moments say it all: what Michael has become, what he has abandoned in the process, and how life for everyone around him will be irrecovably changed.

Michael Corleone has just consolidated his power and brought a renewed sense of calm to the business side of his family. The personal side of his family, however, is another matter. Kay, having been told that Michael ordered the murder of his brother-in-law, Carlo, confronts him, desperate for him to confirm that he's still the man she thought he was. Michael denies any wrongdoing and, for a moment, Kay is appeased.

Kay leaves the room, turning back just in time to see Michael officially confirmed as "Don Corleone." As she watches her worst fears being realized, the door to Michael's office is closed on her, locking her out of part of his life forever. There are no words during this final moment but absolutely none are required; Diane Keaton's face says everything that could possibly need to be said. The division the door represents is not just between Michael and Kay, but between the idealistic/good Michael who wants to be different from his family and the dark/bad Michael who is capable of anything. It's an amazing, spellbinding close to a great film.

LAMB Movie of the Month: The Conversation (1974)

* * * *
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Gene Hackman

The Conversation has been on my list of movies to see for a long time so I was really happy that it was selected as the LAMB's Movie of the Month so that I would have some extra incentive to finally getting around to seeing it. In many ways this is a quiet and simple movie – not a lot happens – but it’s deeply layered and leaves a lasting impression. It’s a movie I’ve found myself thinking about a lot since seeing it.

Gene Hackman stars as Harry Caul, one of the preeminent surveillance experts in the States. He’s been hired to record a conversation between a young couple in a park and toils to get the cleanest recording possible. Harry sees himself simply as a means of conveying information – he has nothing to do with the situation or what may arise out of his recording; he sees himself as existing outside the context of what he is observing. However, despite his protests and assertions about his place in the story, Harry begins to worry about what will happen to the couple once he hands the tapes over. He’s particularly haunted by the young man’s declaration that “he’d kill us if he had the chance.” There’s an event in Harry’s past, alluded to by a colleague, which resulted in the death of a family. Harry feels responsible and attempts to atone for it by preventing something from happening to the young couple.

The Conversation owes a lot to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up, which is about a photographer who thinks he might have captured a murder in the background of a photo. His obsession with the photo is similar to Harry’s obsession with the recording, which he listens to over and over again. The context, though, is very different, with Antonioni’s film taking place against the backdrop of the Swinging London scene of the 60s, and Coppola’s film taking place amid Watergate-era American paranoia. Harry, certainly, is paranoid but, as it turns out, not nearly paranoid enough. He attends a conference for members of the surveillance industry and accepts a pen from a colleague which is later used to record a private conversation which causes him some embarrassment (of all people, shouldn’t he have known better than to accept a pen from a surveillance expert?) and later lets his guard down with the wrong person which results in the tapes he wants so desperately to protect being stolen.

As effective as this film is as a thriller, it’s most effective as a character study. Harry is someone who spends his days invading other people’s privacy and developing newer and better ways to do it. As a result, he’s fiercely protective of his own privacy but unsuccessful in his efforts. His apartment is equipped with several locks and an alarm, and yet his landlady is able to get in to leave him a present for his birthday; his attempts to be sneaky with his girlfriend (Teri Garr) are met with her cheerful declaration that she’s on to him; and there’s the aforementioned bug in the pen. Harry is hopeless in a lot of ways and there’s a kind of desperate acquiescence to the way that the film ends with him completely dismantling his life, destroying his apartment, his privacy and, symbolically, his faith.

The Conversation works because it depends on internal rather than external terror. The creepiest thing about it is not the minimal amount of violence that we glimpse through Harry’s imagination, but the psychological effect of realizing how fragile privacy can be. Given the way that the idea of privacy is eroded a little more every day by governmental policies designed to “protect” us, this is a film that seems only to grow in relevance.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Godfather: Part II (1974)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, John Cazale, Diane Keaton

I go back and forth over whether The Godfather: Part II is the better of the first two instalments of the trilogy. On one hand, the sequel obviously benefits from having the original as a starting point with much of the set-up already done. But on the other, I think that Part II contains the key elements to the trilogy as a whole. Add to that the fact that the world we enter with Part II is darker, more complex and ultimately more ambiguous than its predecessor, and you’ve got a tough choice to make indeed.

The film tells two parallel stories. One follows Vito (played as an adult by Robert De Niro) who begins life in the village of Corleone in Sicily and sees the members of his family picked off one-by-one by the local Mafioso. He escapes to America, takes the name Corleone and eventually usurps power from the local Don to begin his own consolidation of power. The other story follows Michael (Al Pacino), already in control of his empire and struggling to maintain it against conspiracy within his organization, a Senate committee out to bust him, and his own familial troubles. Family is the crucial element of the film. Vito’s rise to power is shown as a way to safeguard his American family and give them a better life, as well as a way to ensure that he can return to Sicily and avenge the family he lost there. The Don he eliminates holds his territory with an iron fist. When he’s assassinated by Vito, it isn’t framed as a bad act, but as something which will ultimately enable Vito to take care of his family. For Vito, business is a way of maintaining the family. For Michael, on the other hand, family is something that must be sacrificed for the sake of business.

The Godfather: Part II is essentially the story of Michael’s isolation as he drifts further and further away from what Vito established. One brother (Sonny) is already dead at the beginning of the film, sister Connie (Talia Shire) is a mild irritation, someone he has to deal with but whose presence has little effect on his life, and adopted brother Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), once in the thick of things as the family’s consiglieri is being pushed further and further out of the family business for his own protection, as Michael tries to assure him. His marriage to Kay (Diane Keaton) is already falling apart as she grows increasingly impatient with his empty promises to make the family legitimate. Eventually he will push her away completely and, as in The Godfather, shut the door on her, this time definitively. And then there’s Fredo (John Cazale)…

The key to understanding the trilogy as a whole and Michael as a character lies in the death of Fredo, whom Michael orders to be killed. The first film is leading up to this moment, the moment when Michael is so far gone, so completely enveloped in the “business,” that he can order Fredo to be murdered as if that is “just business” and not personal. Everything in the third film leads away from it and much of that film concerns Michael’s guilt over his act (“My mother’s son,” he laments in Part III). How did Michael get to this point? How did the “good” son of The Godfather, the one least expected to get into the business, end up being the most ruthless of them all? It is perhaps his lack of previous contact with this world that made him so susceptible to it, like someone whose immune system is compromised by sudden exposure to a disease never before encountered.

Fredo is the soul of the film and when he kills Fredo, Michael kills his soul, committing an act he will never be able to fully justify or find redemption for. As Fredo, John Cazale renders a heartbreaking performance. “I’m your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over… I’m smart. Not like everybody says… like dumb… I’m smart and I want respect!” he says to Michael, who responds dispassionately. It’s an emotionally charged role, that of the older brother trying to step out of the shadow of the younger, the brother who is aware that no one believes he is capable of running the show, the one who is forever stuck at the figurative kid’s table. Cazale’s film career was brief, but he left a filmography that any actor would be jealous of, having appeared in The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter in addition to the first two Godfather films. Pacino, Keaton, Duvall and De Niro are all great, but it’s Cazale who really stands out among the crowd as a man desperate to show that he’s as good as his brother while also being so slavishly eager to please the same.

The story presented here is much bigger than that of The Godfather and I know that some become impatient with it, feeling that it digresses too much, that it isn’t as tightly focused as the first. I also know that some prefer Part II because it’s more epic in scope and much darker, showing a Don who is more realistically cold-blooded. But anyway you look at it, this remains an excellent film, its story a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Godfather (1972)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton

It was unlike the mobster movies that came before, and set the standard for all those that followed. While James Cagny and Edward G. Robinson played bad guys in movies that knew they were bad, The Godfather succeeds by creating its own moral compass, eliminating the law and order side of the story and focusing squarely on the cloistered world of the mafia and it’s men. It isn’t just a matter of bad guys being bad; this is a story of social and business politics, of moral shades of grey, and above all else, family.

The Godfather opens and closes on family events: a wedding at the beginning, and a christening towards the end. The opening scenes are familiar even to those who haven’t seen the film, they’ve been referenced and parodied so much. This is where Michael (Al Pacino), in his soldier’s uniform, informs Kay (Diane Keaton), that his father made a man “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” and where Brando appears as Don Vito Corleone, creating the most lasting and iconic image of the mafia boss. The first scene with Vito and Bonasera, a man who has come to ask a favour is one of the best in the film because it lays down the code, the governing laws of this world. The Don chastises Bonasera for going first to the police – the police can do nothing for him; this is a “family” matter. He then tells him that he’s not in the business of murdering for hire – he will make suffer the men who caused Bonasera’s daughter pain, but the punishment must fit the crime. And then he utters that immortal line: “Someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me.” And he will, later, ask a favour of Bonasera, but not of the variety Bonasera no doubt fears.

Vito is the looming, central figure of The Godfather, although Michael is its central character. At the beginning of the film, he is the son who isn’t involved in the family business – his brothers, the hot-headed Sonny (James Caan) and soft-headed Fredo (John Cazale) are directly involved, adopted brother Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) acts as the family’s council – but as the story progresses, he sinks deeper and deeper into the mire. when the time comes for the reins to be passed, they go to Michael, who must learn quickly how to handle them and consolidate his still unstable power. The baptism sequence operates on multiple levels. On the literal level, Michael is acting as Godfather to the baptized child. On the figurative level he is becoming the Godfather and undergoing a baptism of his own as his enemies are eliminated one after the other and he makes his first great demonstration of power.

Michael wasn’t the son being groomed to take things over; shortly before he takes his first steps into the family business, Vito tells him, “I never wanted this for you… I always thought when it was your time that you would be the one to hold the strings. Senator Corleone. Governor Corleone. Something… There just wasn’t enough time.” But even though Michael isn’t the most obvious choice, he does turn out to be better suited for the position than his brothers. Sonny, even if he didn’t die in a hail of bullets, is too unpredictable, too quick tempered. Michael, on the other hand, is calm and collected and treats what comes as part of the business. When he and Tom learn that Tessio (Abe Vigoda) is a traitor, Tom expresses surprise, but Michael takes the news calmly. “It’s the smart move. Tessio was always smarter.” Michael recognizes that power is up for grabs now that Vito is out of commission, and he doesn’t take it personally that people are trying to grab it. He doesn’t take it lightly, though, either.

The Godfather is a film that is brutal for the myriad ways in which people are threatened and killed, but within the context of the story the Corleones aren’t considered villains. Even when Carlo (Gianni Russo) is murdered after being reassured that nothing will happen to him (“Do you think I’d make my sister a widow? I’m Godfather to your son” Michael says), we the audience are assured that this isn’t bad since Carlo betrayed the family. There aren’t any traditional good guys in this film – the only cops are crooked and anyone whose not “with” the family is actively working against it. The film’s moral compass is skewed towards the Corleones because the story limits itself to them and the people who try to harm them; the people whom the Corleones harm through their various business endeavours don’t factor here at all.

It is easy to take measure of how influential The Godfather has been since it’s release. It had been echoed and quoted and satirized numerous times (perhaps most notably in The Freshman, where Brando plays a mobster who is a spoof of Don Corleone), and the image it created of the romanticized gangster – the honest man simply trying to run his business – continues to shape the way we look at the mob in film and television. But perhaps even more importantly it has transcended the realm of fiction to become, in a way, a philosophy of life. You don’t take sides against the family. It’s business, it isn’t personal. And you always leave the gun, but take the cannoli.