The Godfather Part II Family values

Review
The Godfather is a more important film, of course it is. But The Godfather Part II 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 II was, from conception upwards, an insane project. But it worked.

When The Godfather premiered in New York on March 14,1972, 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 April 16 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 & 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 per cent 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 cinema's greatest Part II emerge. Pub debates about the diminishing returns of the sequel usually collapse at the mention of its name. So why does it work? Why isn't it Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment? Much of it has to do with the unique power of its own Part I, which established its family of characters so vividly. Audiences were gagging for more of Michael, Tom, Kay, Fredo and Connie. But the Coppola-Puzo masterstroke was to develop the saga in two directions, forwards through the Faustian ascendance ol Don Michael, and backwards into the early 1900s, tracing Vito Andolini's first steps into Mafiahood (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, Elia Kazan or blacklisted screenwriter DaltonTrumbo!). Robert De Niro, plucked from the "rising star" racks after Mean Streets, seems born to play the young Marlon Brando. Pacino, Coppola's wild card 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 necessarily male dominated film).

Everything that was majestic and mythic about The Godfather is more so in Part II, with scenes deliberately matching the original. Author of the essential Godfather Book, Peter Cowie, describes the two-part saga in musical terms, as "Coppola's 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 II builds on its 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 Ukrainian quarter). The epic 26-minute wedding scene that opened Part I is echoed in Part II by the altogether tackier confirmation party at the new Corleone compound in Lake Tahoe (the lake itself claiming the life of Michael's own brother in Part IPs chilling climax).

Actually, claiming Part IPs superiority over Part I is like saying Lennon's better than McCartney. One cannot now exist in isolation from the other; they must be watched by anyone who loves American film consecutively (and not in the form of 1977's seven-hour TV omnibus, which, though Coppola-curated, puts the story into chronological order for dimwits). Apparently, they made a Part III too.

Once Upon a Time In America (1984) Starring Robert De Niro, James Woods and Joe Pesci

Once Upon a Time In America Shows the Immigration of Jews to America and shows how they were successful in organized crime as early as the 1920s. The story starts in the 1930s and moves forwards to the 1960s and then 1920s and then shifting several more times between the three periods. The story is focused around prohibition in the 1920s and how crime is organized around that. 

Gangs Of New York (2002, Martin Scorsese) Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day - Lewis and Cameron Diaz.    

Gangs of New York addresses the fact of people over seas Immigrating over to New York in the 1800s such as Italians, Irish, Jews and Africans . The film takes place in 1863 and shows the two major issues of the era in New York which were Irish immigration and other immigration  to the city and the ongoing Civil war in America at that time. Martin Scorsese highlights the problems of immigration  which is crime affected  by the  immigrants joining gangs and fighting the native born gangs creating damage and death with in the streets of New York.  

The God Father Part II (1972) Francis Ford Coppola Starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall.

Francis Ford Coppola addresses the fact in the God Father 2 that  Italian - American Gangsters have Immigrated over to America in this case in 'The God Father 2 ' Vito Corleone in his younger life played by  Robert De Niro Immigrates from Sicily to New York to start a new life and falls into Crime and becomes the head of a very powerful Gangster family. Francis Ford Coppola  also addresses the Italian American Stereo-type how an Italian as Immigrated over to America and has gotten involved with ' Mafia' and criminal activities.

Race and Stereo - type

Italian - Americans  through out time in the USA, and through out the world have been associated with the ' Mafia' with the help of  media and television this has been accepted by the American people. However films such as 'The God Father', 'Good Fellas' and many other Gangster films have created a negative effect on the Italian Americans showing them to be Violent and glorifying them through their extravagant lifestyle and wealth. These films however have done exceedingly well at the box office due to it appealing to the public and through this many Italian Americans have accepted it as their heritage. Through out America the Italian American Mafia has been a large wide spread phenomena with the likes of Al Capone one of the most infamous and powerful Gangsters of all time who was an Italian - American names like this have created the idea of the Mafia as being Italian - American and have created a stereotype through this by using Italian - American Characters in Films such as God Father and Good Fellas and throughout the media has been used.

"At bottom, the gangster is doomed because he is under the obligation to succeed, not because the means he employs are unlawful... This is our intolerable dilemma: that failure is a kind of death and success is evil and dangerous, is - ultimately - impossible. The effect of the gangster film is to embody this dilemma and resolve by his death" ( Robert Warshow, ' The Gangster as Tragic Hero', The Immediate Experience, 1948)