The two best scenes in the film - “You broke my heart” and “You’re not a brother, you’re not a friend” - represent the pinnacle of what great acting and directing should be: Pacino and Cazale as the masters of their craft and Coppola as their maestro.īG: I’ll admit, Fredo screaming, with his pathetic voice cracking, slouched in that chair, that he’s not dumb like everybody says and how he’s been forced to run “Mickey Mouse nightclubs,” well, it brings me great pain every time I see it. And, in a performance that should have handily won Best Supporting Actor over De Niro, who in my opinion speaks decent Sicilian but is otherwise unremarkable as young Vito, John Cazale is magnificent as Fredo, taking what was a little more than a bit part in the first film and making him Part II‘s wrenching centerpiece. The scope is bigger, and the narrative more complex. Coppola is more ambitious and clearly more confident in his direction than he was on the first film, when he was working each day in fear of being fired, and Willis’ reliably gorgeous cinematography benefits from having more ground to cover, from Michael’s story in Lake Tahoe, Havana, and Washington, D.C., to Vito’s in New York and Sicily.
Of course, that’s not to say that Part II isn’t a stunning achievement in its own right. When it comes down to it, though, The Godfather holds a special place in my film nerd heart, not to mention cinematic history, that The Godfather: Part II can only claim in shadow. Kidding! But these are two of my favorite films of all time, so choosing one above the other feels a lot like picking a favorite child. Leah Pickett (LP): Blake, I love you, but don’t ever take sides against the family again. Everything, from Gordon Willis’ more diverse photography to Nino Rota’s grander score, felt more accomplished.
THE GODFATHER 3 VS THE GODFATHER 1 AND 2 FULL
Coppola was directing a lot of material with full power, digging into familiar pathos using even stronger methods than the first. Its narrative rubber-banding from Michael Corleone’s rise to power in the 1950s to Vito Corleone’s arrival in America in 1901 makes for fascinating insights. I think The Godfather: Part II was the stronger film. Not like “Sonny Corleone shot at the Long Beach Causeway” hurt, but you get it. No matter what we say, someone’s gonna feel hurt. They’re luxurious dramas about the Corleones’ rise in the world of organized crime, lasting templates for mob movies about family and identity. Coppola’s ’74 and ’72 films are separate but damn near equal works. Each Mario Puzo adaptation exists in its own right and has to. It’s not the way Coppola woulda wanted it! Remember when he tried to combine the films as the chronological Saga for TV, with extra scenes and toned-down violence? Yeah, that didn’t work, even if it helped fund Apocalypse Now. I’m not trying to make either one of Coppola’s crime epics feel stepped over. But it’s bound to bring up a slow-gestating resentment in the style of Fredo Corleone. In the end, we’ll try not to break your hearts, dear readers.īlake Goble (BG): Listen, I can pick a favorite between The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II . Join us for what we plan to be a peaceful accord - until one of our writers pulls a gun from behind a toilet in anger over an opinion. No, we’re not drumming up some sort of mob-land turf war here. Yet CoS film staffers wanted to ask a very difficult, possibly even cruel question: Which film is better? Godfather II’s legacy is secured as the very model of cinematic sequels, expanding and even deepening an already superb effort. On the 20th of December, 1974, your second story, The Godfather: Part II, came into this world, and it quickly became the first response whenever someone asks, “What sequels are better or as good as their predecessors?” It is the 40th year since the release of Godfather: Part II, and it has grown to be a strong film, a masculine film, a brilliant and influential film, not just about lives of crime, but the American dream.