The original Godfather is like Spring. Watching The Godfather part 2 is like entering a never ending Winter. Part 2 is as powerful and as mesmirising, yet so saddening

Rating: 10/10 (7 April 2019)

2 word advice: Watch it. Just watch it. Watch the restored 4K version if you can, the picture quality is breathtakingly gorgeous. This isnt a review by the way, it's just a long tribute to the brilliance of this work.
For once a sequel is as powerful as the original. The Godfather part 2 is the proof. It is more elobarate, with a more detailed, complicated story, compared to the original. It has more character devellopment than part 1. Yet it definitely has a more saddening, melancholic mood as well. The original Godfather is like watching Spring, watching The Godfather part 2 however is like entering a never ending Winter. Part 2 is as powerful, as mesmirising and as brilliant as the original, but so saddening to watch. Sad, but beautiful.
Director Francis Ford Coppola pulled of something no other director has ever achieved. He created 2 masterpieces of American cinema back to back, within 2 years. Coppola was a mad man in the seventies. Bordering on lunacy and also bordering on bankruptcy. Although one would think the enormous succes of the original Godfather made him a millionaire, he risked all his money for the sequel. That risk of investing all of his own money gave him a lot of creative control though, with consequentially terrific results.
Just to mention one example in which director Coppola took risks no other director would dare take, I want to tell you about the Robert de Niro scenes shot in New York. The studio wanted to shoot these streetscenes on a cheaper indoor filmset, but director Coppola insisted he wanted to shoot on the streets of New York.
This was not just a regular shoot, no way. Coppola cordoned off two entire city blocks for weeks on end. He redesigned the entire 2 blocks to make them look exactly like pre-war conditions. New Yorkers being New Yorkers were complaining about the inability to enter their own houses for weeks on end. The costs that cordoning off entire city blocks costed were skyrocketing. And for what purpose? Coppola wanted an authentic looking scene of merely a couple a minutes in which Robert de Niro would walk the streets of his neighbourhood.
These scenes do look stunning, and because I know how many millions these few scenes have costed, I cant help but admire Coppola even more then I already did, for wanting to go to the limit in order to achieve ultimate credibility. And THAT is what the Godfather oozes in massive amounts: CREDIBILITY. Never before or after have life and love and the bonds of family been portrayed with such cinematic craftmanship and soul.
Originally released in 1974. It was brilliant, mesmirising and taking my breath away back then. It still does, to this very day...