The Godfather Part II: BOSS OF BOSSES
A critical essay by Michael G. Rosenthal
At the end of 1974, Francis Ford Coppola directed, co-wrote and co-produced The Godfather Part II, his sequel to the monumentally successful film The Godfather. Producing two masterpieces in a row is a rare and curious phenomenon in regard to critical judgment. How does one decide which work of art is the superior one? This deliciously vexing predicament arises in music whenever I try to pit A Tribe Called Quest’s back-to-back masterpieces The Low End Theory (1991) and Midnight Marauders (1993) against each other. This same dilemma occurs when I try to compare two more recent classic back-to-back albums by Kendrick Lamar: good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012) and To Pimp A Butterfly (2015). Perhaps the most sound resolution to the “which masterpiece is better?” conundrum is to recognize the unique majesties and rewards of each individual masterpiece especially with interconnected films like The Godfather Part I and The Godfather Part II. It is most rewarding to simply be enraptured by the profoundly humanizing experience of a work of art that generates wonder and insight regardless of how many times one revisits it. However, it is also an irrepressible part of human nature to crown champions even among a studded field of challengers. The Ancient Greek word “agon” or “contest” is still a shaping force in life and culture in our present time. Therefore I am going to submit to my own competitive drive and render a decision that many reading will take issue with. The Godfather Part II is, in mafia slang, the “capo di tutti capi” or “boss of bosses” in regard to being the superior film of the two widely-acclaimed film classics of the three-film The Godfather saga.
The “war” between Godfather Part I (or The Godfather) and The Godfather Part II mirrors the deadly physical and cerebral battles embedded within the plots of the two films. The victory of The Godfather Part II is hardly a unanimous decision because, as pointed out, The Godfather is a masterpiece that has justifiably transcended the realm of popular art and is now a cherished part of the American popular culture. The one aspect of The Godfather that decisively surpasses The Godfather Part II is the tight cohesiveness of its plotline. Unlike The Godfather Part II which ambitiously shifts back and forth eleven times from the “Michael as boss” plotline in the late 1950s to the rise of his immigrant father Vito to boss in the WWI era plotline, The Godfather Part I is a linear diamond of unerring consistency that rises like an orca at the end to snap its prey, its viewers, at the end of the film. I could chance upon The Godfather Part I on cable television and become instantly hooked no matter where I landed with the film while I would be more apprehensive of jumping into The Godfather Part II midway through it. This is because, for all its stateliness and impeccable stylization of the mid-20th century, The Godfather Part I is a sinewy story that essentially depicts the succession of Michael Corleone into the king-like role of “Godfather” of his father’s crime family and blood family. The plotline provides its own high-grade GPS for the viewers so that, having viewed it at least once, a viewer who drops in the film instantly knows exactly where one is in the plotline and can emotionally catch up just as quickly. In comparison, The Godfather Part II can be split up for enjoyment–the Havana scenes in particular work well on their own–but I would be reluctant to only watch parts of a film that depends so heavily on the coordination of two seemingly separate yet, beneath the surface, brilliantly interconnected plotlines like The Godfather Part II.
The Godfather Part I also scores a plot victory over The Godfather Part II in regard to clarity, particularly the clarity of the main antagonists’s motives. Ambiguity is a force that Coppola and Puzo wield like Monet’s watercolors in Godfather Part II. The ambiguity that permeates Michael’s storyline in Part II is a primal source of the film’s staying power because it creates fresh and open spaces for the viewers to repeatedly lose themselves in, fresh-minting the film’s mysterious aspects. However, the Hyman Roth plotline, especially in its earlier stages, suffers from an excess of ambiguity. In comparison, in Part I, when Don Corleone or the Godfather spurns Sollozzo’s proposal to invest millions of dollars in a drug operation because it would jeopardize his political and legal strongholds, Sollozzo reacts by joining rival families who want to take Don Corelone out under a hail of bullets and, with him liquidated, pick thorough his wide menagerie of “bought” politicians like vultures. This plotline fits as smoothly as a nice pair of dress socks. In contrast, discerning the first two pivotal scenes with Roth are like walking on loose floorboards that need some more nailing down. This sense of dizzy imbalance is generated by not clearly knowing why Roth goes through the “masquerade” of courting Michael as a partner and mentee. Is he, like Sollozzo, only interested in the Corleone family’s two-million dollar contribution to building more casinos in Havana and strengthening the mob’s stronghold over the nation and the figurehead Cuban president Batista who is firmly in bed with them? Why does Roth choose Michael as his successor in the casino rackets if he is venomously planning to have Michael murdered? Perhaps the excessive ambiguity can also be attributed to a lack of exposition in regard to the running of casinos in the 1950s. We learn about the cost of a casino license in Senator Geary’s ill-fated attempt at shaking down Michael early in the film but that’s about it.
Later in the film, these shaky plot and characterizations are straightened out when Michael repeatedly provides the exposition that he believes Roth is playing a long con on him. Like a magician pulling life out of a death mask, the ailing, aging Roth is shrewdly using his infirm status as a suit of deceptive armor. This makes him an exceptionally tricky rival to outsmart and eliminate. As Michael says, “The old man thinks he’s going to live forever and he wants me out” and “That man’s been dying of the same heart attack for the last twenty years.”
The Godfather Part II is a better film than The Godfather Part I for three centrally-important reasons: 1) the film’s antagonists are more layered, interesting and dangerous than Part I 2) The film achieves greater depth in its delineation of two key familial relationships, Michael’s relationships with his brothers Fredo and Tom and 3) the hauntingly powerful characterization of Michael Corleone who begins the film with a boys’ choir serenading him with the chipper tune “Mr. Wonderful” to sitting alone in his vast compound, face half darkened and graven, like, in Francis Ford Coppola’s words, “a living corpse.”
Michael’s main trio of enemies in Part II are septugenarian master racketeer Hyman Roth, Michael’s own capo, or captain, Frankie “Frankie Five Angels” Pentangeli and, most devastating for Michael, his own older brother Fredo who colludes with Roth against him. In comparison, Part I offers Don Corleone and later his successor Michael Corleone these antagonists: the vicious yet disciplined gangster Virgil Sollozzo, the snake-like dissembler Don Barzini, Michael’s brother-in-law Carlo and, finally, longtime Corleone capo Sal Tessio, who betrays Michael by intending to have Michael killed at Don Barzini’s behest. Hyman Roth is a better antagonist than Don Barzini because he is, in Michael’s famous line, an enemy that needs to be kept closer to Michael. Don Barzini is wily and duplicitous but Hyman Roth is those things and he’s simultaneously a kindly, father-figure for Michael. I get the sense from Part I that Don Barzini and Don Corleone have subsisted on an uneasy truce between mob wars. Hyman Roth repeatedly refers to his association Michael’s deceased father in order to disarm him and soften him up. And while Don Barzini is able to infiltrate the Corleone family by luring Michael’s brother-in-law Carlo and longtime capo Tessio to his side, Hyman Roth proves to be a much trickier adversary for Michael. Michael is able to have Barzini liquidated fairly easily at the end of Part I. To finally eliminate Roth, Michael sacrifices the life of one his top hit men, Rocco Lampone, in a wildly audacious airport muder while Roth is under custody. Roth’s demise comes after a labyrinthine series of manipulations. Roth seduces Fredo Corleone to conspire against Michael, outplays Michael by manipulating Pentangeli into believing that Michael tried to have him killed instead of him, and, finally, voyages across the globe to escape government prosecution and Michael. Roth is a far more nuanced and dangerous adversary than Don Barzini and this is an important factor that gives Part II and edge over Part I.
Pentangeli is a sympathetic adversary for Michael because he is basically an “old-school,” loyal gangster who turned against Michael in an understandable moment of doubt and pain when he is nearly murdered by the Rosado brothers after Michael orders him to make peace with them. Pentangeli believes Michael has double-crossed him when in fact Roth has double-crossed Michael and Pentangeli is collateral damage or “small potatoes” as Roth puts it. His motive for violating the omerta, or mafia code of silence, is understandable. He becomes more sympathetic when he double-crosses the Senate Committee by recanting his testimony after Michael and Tom’s ploy of flying in his older brother from Sicily. Pentangeli is jolted into affirming the omerta while the government loses its star witness against Michael. Furthermore, Roth’s carefully-laid plan to set up Michael on five counts of perjury instantly falls apart. Although Michael cannot keep Frankie alive because of his nearly-damaging treachery, he does make a deal with him that is unique in the realm of The Godfather. In exchange for his noble Roman general-inspired bathtub suicide, Michael will not harm Pentangeli’s family in any way. Even this level of qualified humanity is rarely seen in Michael’s world. Pentangeli is presented as a simple man who is caught up in complicated, roaring tides beyond his control. My sympathy for him creates a pathos that no antagonist character in Part I ever generated. At the end of Part I, Sal Tessio reacts to his treasonous plan being exposed with the resignation of a gambling addict who has just lost all of his chips on a bad blackjack run. He is going to be executed as just part of “business” and Sal hardly tries to convince Tom to spare him, making just one feeble, half-hearted attempt. Frankie’s death scene is much more rewarding dramatically because the viewers understand Frankie’s motives on a deeper level. Would we have really acted differently in his shoes if we thought our boss set us up to be murdered?
Michael’s older brother Fredo is the adversary that damages Michael more than any other. One of Al Pacino’s most piercingly truthful moments in his performance as Michael in Part II is when Michael overhears Fredo incriminating himself out loud in the Havana sex club. After a close-up shot of Michael’s face as he registers that Fredo has been in cahoots with Johnny Ola and Hyman Roth and also lied to him about it, the camera returns to Michael with his head in his hand, cigarette pointing limply to the floor. It’s as if Michael has been assassinated but wouldn’t die. How he is still standing upright after taking this revolting news is truly a wonder. With the exception of his incendiary break-up scene with his wife Kay in the Washington D.C. hotel room, Michael’s unforgettable confrontation with Fredo on the dance floor during the fateful New Year’s Eve celebration is his most nakedly emotional moment. His aggressive “baccio di morta” or “kiss of death” to Fredo followed by the classic line “I knew it was you. You broke my heart” reveals how human and vulnerable Michael is underneath his thick coat of armor.
Prior to this riveting sequence, Coppola and Puzo create ambiguity in a scene where Johnny Ola calls Fredo at home late at night. We know before Michael that Fredo has betrayed him. However, it appears from hearing Fredo’s end of the conversation that he was misled and is being used deceitfully as a pawn by the diabolical Roth. “You guys lied to me!” Fredo squeals in the phone. He knows he is in way over his head and his trials have just begun.
More than halfway through the film, Michael is called before a Senate Committee on organized crime. With Michael in jeopardy of being charged on five counts of perjury, he interrogates Fredo in his Lake Tahoe compound. John Cazale’s incandescent performance of Fredo’s emotional rawness in this scene elevates Fredo from an antagonist to a timeless tragic figure. Seeing Fredo slumped in a chair while Michael sits and stands with the confidence of a five-star general returning from the battlefront creates a visual language of its own. In certain scenes you can seen a large vein protruding from Fredo’s forehead and this is symbolic for Cazale’s alchemical capacity for bringing out Fredo’s veins of humanity. Fredo desperately rails “I can handle things. I’m smart–not like everybody says. Like dumb. I’m smart. And I want respect!!” Fredo is a uniquely relatable character because in this scene where he agitates for his own dignity and worth, he is truly everyman. Who hasn’t felt “passed over” or misjudged? Fredo’s extreme vulnerability and human capability of acutely voicing his pain makes him a layered character who generates empathy. He makes the viewers feel like he is the victim of his own jealousy and resentment of his king-like younger brother. However, the best dramatic conflicts are when both characters are right. There is no way that Michael can overlook Fredo’s near-fatal betrayal of him. In fact, there appear to be multiple betrayals as I suspect Fredo warned Roth’s people’s of Michael’s imminent New Year’s Eve assassination attempt on Roth in Havana. Even in the interrogation scene, Fredo initially withholds the key piece of information that Roth has one of the Senate Committee lawyers, Questadt, on his payroll. Yet Coppola and Puzo position Fredo as a helpless man deserving of at least a stay of execution from Michael. I believe most viewers want Michael to spare Fredo’s life. Of course, Michael is incapable of doing this. Coppola and Puzo make Fredo into at least a partial martyr by having him recite the “Hail Mary” prayer in the fishing boat seconds before Al Neri murders him. Michael’s decision to oversee Fredo’s murder from his imposing floor to ceiling window overlooking Lake Tahoe results in the eradication of a large part of whatever’s left of Michael’s humanity.
Astonishingly, the Michael/Fredo storyline isn’t the only exquisitely rendered brother story in Godfather Part II. The brotherly relationship between Michael and his older adopted brother Tom is also mined for rich pathos and complexity. In Part I, Tom Hagen is his adopted father Don Corleone’s relentless legal operative, an attorney with only one client–his father. He is an icy contrast to his fiery brother Sonny. He fights with his briefcase as opposed to his fists. Yet near the end of Part I, Michael perplexingly demotes him from his position as Corleone crime family consigliere or top advisor. In the beginning of Part II, after Michael is shockingly almost murdered in his own bedroom, he confers with Tom and proceeds to have one of his most emotionally intimate scenes. He reveals to Tom that he “is the only one I completely trust” and that his “love and admiration” for him is what made him secretively shield him from some of his most amoral business dealings in Nevada. Scrambling to keep his family safe while still pursuing casino deals in Miami and Havana with Hyman Roth, Michael appoints Tom as the acting boss in his absence. In an exceptionally emotional exchange for both men, Michael says “You’re my brother.” Tom, choking back tears, replies, “I always wanted to be thought of as a brother by you Mikey, a real brother.” Michael continues by admonishing Tom, “I’m trusting you with the lives of my wife and my children, the future of this family.”
It would seem that Michael’s relationship to Tom would only strengthen with this foundation of extreme love and trust between them. Indeed, Tom serves Michael with loyalty and panache when Michael is put on the defensive by the Senate Committee and is in jeopardy of being indicted on five counts of perjury. It is Tom who maneuvers to fly in Frankie Pentangeli’s brother in order to thwart his intended testimony against Michael. Tom also takes his responsibility of protecting the family compound seriously, clashing with Kay whom he doesn’t allow to leave the compound to even go grocery shopping. Kay complains to Tom that she feels like a prisoner but Tom doesn’t budge. Still, even Tom’s loyalty is placed under Michael’s scrutiny in the wake of Fredo’s treacherous betrayal. In their last scene together, it is Michael who puts the talented attorney on the witness stand of sorts. Michael knows that Tom was recently offered a lucrative legitimate job as the vice president of the Halston Hotels in Las Vegas. He taunts Tom, inferring that Tom has been keeping secrets from him, “I thought you were going to tell me that.” Tom quickly reassures Michael that he turned the position down yet Michael is not placated. Shortly thereafter, he coldly asserts to a doubtful Tom that he “doesn’t want to wipe everybody out. Only my enemies.” There is a chilling pregnant pause after Michael utters this sinister line as he sizes Tom up and down. Breaking the silence, Michael taunts Tom again, “Are you going to come along in these things I have to do or what?” And then offers Tom a free passage away from the family to take on the casino position and move his family (and mistress) to Las Vegas. Tom is wounded to the core by Michael’s questioning of his loyalty. He tells Michael, “Why do you hurt me Michael? I’ve always been loyal to you, what is this?” The hosts of the Rewatchables podcast in their Godfather Part II episode speculate that Michael may have lost trust for Tom because he believes that Tom slipped in his security details with Kay’s ability to leave the compound to procure an abortion. There is no evidence in the film to support this interpretation but it is intriguing. I would contend that Michael is so morally desiccated and distrusting of everyone and everything that in paranoia he sinks to questioning Tom’s loyalty. Regardless of why Michael gives Tom a hard time, it is clear that Kay’s onetime “warden” has now taken her place as Michael’s prisoner within the gates of his fortified compound. The Michael/Tom relationship is represented with exceptional sensitivity and depth of feeling. It may not be as operatic and tragically intense as Michael’s relationship with Fredo but it is richly compelling nevertheless. It serves as yet another incredible dramatic achievement in a film chock full of pathos and tangled webs of deceit and manipulation.
Michael Corleone – The American Dream’s Nightmare
Upon the King! Let us our lives, our souls, our
debts, our careful wives, our children, and our sins,
lay on the King!
We must bear all. O hard condition,
Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath
Of every fool whose sense no more can feel
But his own wringing. What infinite heart’s ease
Must kings neglect that private men enjoy?
And what have kings that privates have not too,
Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
– William Shakespeare, Henry V, IV.i, 238-247
The complexity of Michael Corleone as a tragic anti-hero of The Godfather Part II is the most convincing argument for the superiority of The Godfather Part II over The Godfather Part I. Coppola, Puzo and Al Pacino, along with many others on the filmmaking team, achieved a character of unparalleled depth. Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II is an indelibly-crafted paradox: the king of the hill who wipes out his enemies and reigns supreme while losing nearly everything truly dear to him, most wrenchingly his humanity. In a 1975 interview, Francis Ford Coppola reveals, “I wanted to destroy Michael.” Coppola’s destruction of Michael from the inside-out remains one of cinema’s greatest achievements.
In The Godfather Part I, Don Vito Corleone upbraids Johnny Fontaine, “A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.” In The Godfather Part II, this is what Michael can’t ever seem to do. He only has one brief tender scene with his son Anthony as he’s about to leave Lake Tahoe for Miami. Previously he is touched by a picture Anthony drew for him. Is the picture of a father and son playing together? No, it is a telling representation of Michael from Anthony’s point of view with Michael riding in the back of a long limousine. Michael is circumspect about buying his children Christmas presents, delegating this duty to Tom. We later see a pointedly symbolic shot of Anthony’s present, the toy car, inert in the snow. The rest of the scenes when he is around his children Anthony and Mary has them appearing almost like phantoms, silent and airy. Michael doesn’t want it this way and suffers internally to be so estranged from his family. He loves his children but he is so consumed by the weight of responsibilities as godfather that his children are often an afterthought.
Michael opens his heart in a short but significant scene in his mother’s cottage on the family compound. Speaking to his mother in Sicilian, he ruminates about his father in relation to his own fractured situation with his family, “But by being strong for his family, could he lose it?” Michael’s terror about losing his family proves to be well-founded when Kay reveals that she aborted her male fetus and refers to their marriage as an abortion as well. Michael’s mother passes away and he orders Fredo’s murder, leaving only his brother Tom and his sister Connie as his surviving siblings. He is able to maintain custody of his children with Connie serving as a surrogate mother of sorts to them. This is Connie’s penance for years of living off the family’s dole and gallivanting with shallow, gold-digging men. It is an arrangement that suits both Michael’s and Connie’s needs but it does feel, like so many of the Corleone crime family’s dealings, to be a business deal as opposed to a purely familial act of caregiving and mutual support.
A universally relevant theme of The Godfather Part II is the son’s (Michael’s) inability to live up to the legacy of his father (Don Vito Corleone). It is bitterly ironic that Michael cannot ultimately be the man that Don Vito was since his leadership has propelled the Corleone family into unforeseen dimensions of power and influence. To borrow a maxim from Machiavelli, Don Vito Corleone is both loved and feared by his family and business associates while Michael is only feared. One of the tragic aspects of Part II for Michael is how profoundly unfair it is for him to be judged for not being more like his father. In The Godfather Part I, Don Vito Corleone, for all of his immense power and respect, only loses his temper once. He flashes his anger at Johnny Fontaine, slapping him when he thinks he is whining and being too effeminite. Although we see a range of human emotion from Don Vito Corleone in Part I, his basic personality is charming and avuncular. He is still very much the old world neighborhood boss even while ensconced in a guarded Staten Island compound. He is an unrepentant murderer but at the same time, a helpful and generous man of the people. Near the end of his life, he can confidently tell Michael, whom he reluctantly appoints to succeed him as godfather, “I don’t apologize to take care of my family. And I refused to be a fool, dancing on a string helf by all those big shots. I don’t apologize, that’s my life.” Don Vito Corleone endures the loss of his oldest son Sonny and his heart breaks at his youngest, favorite son inheriting the mantle of “Godfather.” Yet Don Vito Corleone manages to bask in the love and admiration of his family and top executives. Tessio doesn’t betray Don Vito Corleone while he is alive, only defecting to Don Barzini after Don Vito’s death. In contrast, Fredo betrays and, knowingly or unknowingly, colludes in a murder attempt on him while he is in the prime of his life. This reinforces that Don Vito Corleone with his uncanny mixture of warmth, caring and ruthlessness is irreplaceable and this is, in part, a source of Michael’s malaise. Don Vito Corleone sustained a loving and loyal family and Michael simply cannot.
In the entirety of his storyline in The Godfather Part II, Michael only makes one debatable attempt at humor when he tells Fredo that the Spanish word for “banana daiquiri” is “banana daiquiri.” His ironbound commitment to being the boss allows for none of Don Vito’s avuncular warmth. Instead his mind seizes on audacious plans to liquidate his enemies with the daring murder of Hyman Roth while he is, like the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald, under custody being the most prominent murder. He is a rigid, unyielding figure who sinks to deception, such as misleading Fredo into believing that his betrayal will be absolved or lying to Kay about the Corleone crime family going legitimate. He brazenly lies in front of a United States Senate Committee. He, despite his genuine love for his children, is inextricably enmeshed a web of venal sins and nefarious, despotic behavior. In The Godfather Part I, Michael memorably tells Kay that he is not like his family. However, his repeated lies to the priest while standing up for his infant nephew Michael at his baptism turn out to be a baptism into a life of evil for Michael. His lie to Kay at the end of the film regarding his innocence in his brother-in-law Carlo’s murder seals his moral degradation. Michael’s devolution in Part II is so thorough that he ends the film as a monster in uneasy solitude; he is man devoured by the moloch-like beast of his role as godfather.
Despite his propensity for monstrous, inhuman cruelties, Michael is remarkably a figure worthy of sympathy. This is storytelling at its most sublime and encompassing of the human condition. This is because Coppola and Puzo portray Michael as a victim of a type of ancient provincial Sicilian predestination. Just as his father Don Vito Corleone is thrust into a murderous cycle of honor and revenge with the murder of his own father, brother and mother, little Michael Corleone is more subtly ensnared into his future sin-soaked life of crime. It is hardly arbitrary that Don Vito Corleone embraces baby Michael after he murders Don Fannuci to become the neighborhood crime boss. When the now-powerful Vito returns to his hometown of Corleone to avenge the murders of his family members by gutting the elderly Don Francesco with a knife, he shortly thereafter holds his toddler Michael at the train window, poignantly helping him to “say goodbye” to the town of Corleone. Screenwriter and director Robert Towne, who penned the memorable “succession” scene between Michael and Don Vito in The Godfather Part I, points out that when Vito “moves to save the lives of his children, he damns himself and, as we’ll see, them.”
Coppola and Puzo also create rich subtlety by including a coda scene at the end of Part II that layers world history and Corleone family history. It is a flashback to December 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor which immediately led to the United States’ entry into WWII. At the Corleone compound in Staten Island, it is Don Vito’s birthday and the family is gathered at the dinner table awaiting his arrival. Michael shocks his family when he announces that he has enlisted in the Marines despite his father’s considerable maneuvering to secure him a deferment. Sonny reacts explosively and has to be restrained from physically assaulting Michael. Poignantly, Fredo is the only brother who responds positively to Michael’s bold decision. Tom responds pragmatically, telling Michael that their father “has plans for you” and that he and Don Vito have talked about his future “many times.” Michael, with quiet confidence, intones “I have my own plans for my future.” Although Michael does not actually join the Corleone crime family for several years, this scene plays like a requiem for the independent Michael. This seems to be the closest he ever comes to liberating himself completely from the Corleone family blood curse. We feel a clutch in our hearts because we know that this gleam of freedom will be evanescent.
The extraordinary achievement of The Godfather Part II is that it extends upon the essential tragic elements of Part I in creating a triple bind for the viewer that encompasses three generations of Corleones. Don Vito Corleone, as Towne observes, commits heinous crimes to better the lives of his children. His pathos emanates in part from his earnest, longstanding determination to shield Michael, unlike his other three sons, from a life of crime. Kay Corleone undergoes an abortion because she doesn’t want to bring another Corleone boy into the world. She puts her own life on the line to subvert the “2000 year-old Sicilian thing.” However, Kay and Michael already have a son, Anthony. While there is no evidence in Part II in regard to Anthony Corleone, age 12, following his father into a life of crime, there are subtle clues that something is amiss with him. Kay laments about Anthony’s behavior as she is breaking up with Michael. Later when Kay is secretly visiting with her children, Anthony won’t kiss her goodbye. Although there are no direct signposts for Anthony following his father into the family business, it appears as if he has inherited the genetic curse of the Corleone family as surely as Michael had.
In a 1975 interview, Francis Ford Coppola, speaking about The Godfather Part II, asserted “The second film goes much further than the first one. It’s much more ambitious and novelistic in its structure.” I couldn’t agree more. The Godfather Part II is the best Godfather film and one of the greatest films ever made. In comparison to Part I, Part II’s antagonists are more complicated, the family relationships are more layered and affecting, and, most consequential, the character of Michael Corleone is a tragic protagonist of Shakespearean proportions. If ambiguity, ambition and mining humanity’s depths are Coppola and Puzo’s weapons, being overwhelmed by their incomparable storytelling is a “hit” I’ll take over and over again.
’Tis not the balm, the scepter, and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farcèd title running ’fore the King,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world;
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave
– William Shakespeare, Henry V, IV.i, 269-277