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While this occasionally happens (most notably in the first shift back to 1917, shortly after the assassination attempt on Michael), Coppola handles the transitions adroitly, keeping the pace consistent enough to limit any sense of jarring or disorientation. The danger in interweaving the early twentieth century story with the one from 1958 is that the momentum of either - or both - could be curtailed. If young Vito's era is the Corleone's dawn, Michael's is the approaching twilight. Expansion is replaced by slow disintegration, energy and success by pain and failure. Showing his arrival at Ellis Island, his early relationship with Clemenza (Bruno Kirby), and his confrontation with Don Fanucci (Gastone Moschin), these segments stand in contradiction to Michael's scenes.
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The flashback preceding the final scene presents a stark differentiation of how things once were from what they have become.Ī more comprehensive contrast emerges through the lengthy sequences detailing Vito Corleone's rise from obscurity. If the end of the first film was numbing, this one is shattering.
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Assassination attempts and government probes target Michael, but he fights back using every scintilla of ingenuity he possesses and sacrificing much of his humanity in the process.įor a man constantly battling to keep his family together, a mournful irony of The Godfather Part II is that Michael's efforts succeed only in fragmenting it. Plot and counterplot develop, and Michael becomes the focal point of a web of betrayal and deceit, turned against by those he had sought to protect. Michael cannot agree because such a killing would ruin certain business dealings currently in progress with the powerful and influential Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg). Gazzo) arrives to request the don's acquiescence to a hit. They have moved to Nevada where they are amassing influence with the nebulous goal of some day becoming "legitimate." But the affairs of the East Coast are about to interfere as Frankie Pentangeli (Michael V. The Corleones no longer live in New York. A symmetry between the first and second films is established here - both open with a family assemblage, and each quickly establishes where the power lies as the don "holds court." Michael has inherited his father's values and as Part II opens, he is surrounded by the Corleone clan as they gather for his son's first communion. In The Godfather, family was more important than anything to Don Vito Corleone. Broken trust arising from so intimate a source can be devastating. Michael lives his life and runs his business by two of his father's creeds: "A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man" and "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." There are times, however, when those precepts fail as guiding principles, such as when a betrayal occurs from within the family. The other tale picks up approximately a decade after the conclusion of The Godfather, and shows the means by which Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), now secure in his position, attempts to expand the family empire into Las Vegas and Cuba. The less time consuming of the two presents the early life of Vito Corleone (played by Robert DeNiro) in Sicily and New York, and shows how he came into power. The Godfather Part II is a more ambitious production than the original since it attempts not only to tell a pair of completely disconnected stories, but to do so in parallel. Receiving twelve Academy Award nominations, and again winning Best Picture (and this time Best Director for Coppola as well), the second installment has been rightfully hailed as the best sequel of all time. A companion piece in the truest sense of the term, The Godfather Part II garnered as much adulation as its predecessor, if not more.