The Godfather is more important. But the Godfather part 2 is better

Rating: 10/10 (9 August 2007)

The Godfather is a more important film, of course it is. But the Godfather part 2 is a better film. It's more ambitious, it's more elegiac, it delves deeper into the soil of Italian-American myth, plus... what were they thinking of, trying to match the critical and commercial dynamite of the first film? The Godfather Part 2 was, from conception upwards, an insane project. But it worked.
When The Godfather premiered in New York on 14 March 1972, co-screenwriter and novelist Mario Puzo had already started work on the sequel. That's how sure Paramount were that they had a monster hit on their hands, despite some exhibitors turning up their noses at a preview screening: too little action, too much talking, and too long - proof that in no way are exhibitors a bunch of popcorn-selling philistines. After two days of release, cinema managers were being offered bribes by punters desperate to get to the front of the queues which busted the proverbial block. There was something of the Mafia about the way in which Paramount doubled ticket prices for weekend shows to squeeze extra revenue from their new cash cow. The sequel, announced on 16 April and working titled Don-Michael, was a commercial inevitability ("When you've got a licence to make Coca-Cola, make Coca-Cola! Said Charlie Bluhdorn, head of Gulf and Western, who owned Paramount). The Godfather grossed $101 million in its first 18 weeks, and nobody was going to stop the studio having another cake and eating it. But Francis Ford Coppola, the young director whom the studio had almost fired from the Godfather but who was now feted by Hollywood and the world, wasn't that interested. So they offered him a million dollars plus a huge 13% of the profits and total artistic control. Altogether now: it was an offer he couldn't refuse.
Thus, out of this sticky climate of money-grabbing corporate opportunism did cinemas greatest part2 emerge. Pub debates about the diminishing returns of the sequel usually collapse at the mention of it's name. So why does it work? Why isn't it Police Academy2:their first assignment? Much of it has to do with the unique power of it's own part one, which established it's family of characters so vividly. Audiences were gagging for more of Michael, Tom, Kay, Fredo and Connie. Bit the Coppola-Puzo masterstroke was to develop the saga in two directions, forwards through the faustian ascendance of Don Michael, and backwards into the early 1900s, tracing Vito Andolini's first steps into mafia hood (he earns the surname Corleone-the name of his home village-through a mix-up at Ellis Island's immigration control).
As with all of Coppola's best work, the casting was inspired.(And as with The Godfather, fans can while away hours mulling over who might have been cast. Try this one: dying Miami mobster Hyman Roth, played with precision by acting coach Lee Strasberg in the film-could have been Laurence Olivier, Ella Kazan, or blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo!) Robert De Niro, plucked from the rising star racks after Mean Streets, seems born to play the young Marlon Brando, Pacino, Coppolas wildcard in casting the Godfather, grows into the central role of Michael in perfect parallel with his character, and Diane Keaton proves the quiet lynchpin( which is no mean feat in this male-dominated film).
Everything that was majestic and mythic about the First film is more so in Part2,its scenes deliberately matching the original. Author of the essential Godfather book, Peter Cowie, describes the two-part saga in musical terms, as "Coppolas suite", with bass lines , motifs and rhyming patterns. ("As a whole, Coppola said, the first film ought to haunt the second like a spectre.") So instead of constantly reminding us that the first film is better, part 2 builds on it's operatic sweep and cranks up the drama, both narratively and visually. Cinematographer Gordon Willis goes into sublime sepia overdrive for the flashbacks. Production designer Dean Tavoularis tops his own evocative 1940s New York streets with a living, breathing Italian immigrant community circa 1912(actually the Ukranian quarter). The epic 26 minute wedding scene that opened part one is echoed in part2 by the altogether tackier confirmation party at the new Corleone compound in Lake Tahoe(the lake itself claiming the life of one of the family in part2s chilling climax.) Actually, claiming that the second is better than the first is like saying Lennon's better than Mcartney. One cannot exist in isolation from the other ; they must be watched by anyone who loves American Film consecutively.
Apparently, they made a part3 too. 10/10