"It had nothing to do with business"

Rating: 7/10 (31 July 2010)

In the movies, sequels have always been difficult. The franchise pictures of the twenties and thirties were always careful to repeat cast and basic formula without reopening story lines that had already run their course. While the following decades saw the rise of the TV series, the screen sequel became almost unknown. Today the fad of numbered sequels, ubiquitous in the eighties, has now become synonymous with unspeakable badness. That tradition was started, quite innocently, by this 1974 follow-up to The Godfather.
Being a drama, The Godfather Part II's biggest asset is probably in retaining the sublime cast that made the original so powerful. Al Pacino picks up exactly where he left off a few years previously, retreating further into passive steeliness, suppressing all emotions except the occasional burst of anger. John Cazale has a somewhat expanded role, getting to show off a more impressive acting range and making Fredo seem sympathetic in his weakness. Welcome returns are also made by Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall and Talia Shire. However the greatest turn is that of newcomer Robert De Niro. De Niro gives a credible presentation of an up-and-coming mobster and proud family man, whilst cleverly working in mannerisms of Marlon Brando's middle-aged Don in The Godfather. It's still only a small demonstration of De Niro's talents however.
Perhaps an even more important factor is the return of producer-director Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola demonstrates again his ability to focus drama, going to lengths to show us only what is important. Take, as one example out of many, the scene where Pacino and Lee Strasberg first meet. Roth's wife greets Pacino, and bustles in and out of the scene once or twice to utter a few lines, but watch the way Coppola keeps her fluttering about in the foreground, often with her back to us, framed from the shoulder down so we never see her face. Coppola allows her to appear for reasons of logic, but as she's not a character we need to remember, he doesn't allow us to connect with her visually. This is really intelligent filmmaking.
But The Godfather Part II is more than ever about stunning imagery. With a bigger budget, vaster sets and hordes of extras, Coppola shows an impressive ability to create thriving tableaux of crowds and street scenes, repeatedly using horizontal scans to move us through an environment, showing off a hundred tiny instances of real life that really make us believe in the recreation of a bygone era. This is especially true in the young Vito flashbacks, which thanks to the cinematography of Gordon Willis and the production design team lead by Dean Tavoularis, have a wonderful sepia-toned look to them. It's intriguing how Coppola also tends to keep his camera further back from the action in the those scenes, giving us the impression of something we are looking in on rather than something we are in the midst of.
And yet this concentration on the visual has perhaps been taken a little too far. There are too many rather blatant bits of symbolism, such as the business of the dividing up of the Cuba-cake, which reminds me of some kind of twee history textbook illustration. This inconsequential prop gets several amount of close-ups, and even several references in the dialogue, everything but a flashing subtitle saying "They're carving up Cuba – geddit?" But instead of looking clever it just seems silly to have Hyman Roth going on about his stupid cake. And what's more, there are too many references to the best ideas in The Godfather – the dark Lake Tahoe office where Michael does his dealings: the murderous little montage at the end – all of which serve little purpose other than sly winks to those who are familiar with the earlier picture. None of these motifs is executed as effectively as they were first time round, and so really they look almost like poor copycats by some lesser filmmakers. The Godfather Part II is in many ways a decent work, but compared to its illustrious predecessor it is lukewarm; a flawed attempt to rekindle some of the old magic. In fact, it is just what we have come to associate with the movie sequel.