La Vegas is out, Cuba too, so what's left for the mafia?

Rating: 9/10 (9 January 2007)

Times go on a-changing. The second generation, with a few flashbacks to the very origins of the Corleone family, how the last male survivor of the family is smuggled out of Sicily to the USA where he can start a new line, by changing his name circumstantially since it is a not too wise customs officer that gives him unknowingly a new family name, and without forgetting the vengeance he will have to achieve later rather than sooner for the killing of his father and brothers by the local Don in his village in Sicily. We see him establish his business in the 1920s by killing the local mafia boss in his neighborhood and taking over in a more humane and just way. But this is a flashback. We are interested in the next generation and what they can do in the 1950s. The takeover has already been dealt with in the first part. The appointed son for this takeover has already asserted his power over the five families that could challenge him in the previous film. Now he tries to develop his business. Drugs had been allowed but he remains rather distant from that trafficking. He develops his business in gambling, hotels, entertainment, in one word luxury industry or commerce. He tries to get into Las Vegas but is rebuffed by a local Senator, so he forgets about it. Then he tries to move into Cuba and take over some business there but too late it is the arrival of Castro. So he goes back to New York and Nevada, back to his traditional activities. But these attempts enable Coppola to show some new problematics that are coming up in the second half of the 20th century. First of all the strong sectarianism Italians have to face from politicians who declare they support Italian-Americans as good patriots in front, and behind try to make them pay twice a service or to ostracize them out of their constituencies. At the same time they have to face congressional and judicial complications with hearings about their businesses and business practices that are accused of being too criminal to be accepted. In other words we are beyond the time of Al Capone and Prohibition. And the world is also changing. Cuba of course is a big change. But women are no longer what they used to be in this Sicilian culture. Women do not want to be simple ancillary appendices to men they do not see any more. This second generation Godfather is confronted to the abortion of his third child and second son by his wife while he is in Cuba witnessing Castro's conquest of the island. Then she tries to take his children away and eventually get a divorce. She will get nothing except a separation but not the children. He also has to fight against some remnants of the old world that are handicaps and obstacles to his projects, such as the fact that he is the head of the family business and yet he is not the eldest son : hence he has to face his elder brothers, and that has been going on for a long time. The world is changing his way this time and he has to fight against the survival of what the world used to be. At this point this trilogy is becoming a vast fresco about the history of Italian-Americans or should I say Sicilian-Americans ? When the fresco is too vast we can wonder if it does not lose some of its possible meaning by diluting it into too many elements, periods and events. But it is certainly interesting to follow this intricate family history that verges onto a sitcom at times.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne