His scowl and guilty eyes constitute a heavy performance.

Pacino is not shown as a romantic character, but as a man under a great evil burden throughout. Without the first film, there’s little to sympathize with in this cold, ruthless, ego-tripped and power mad character. Here the Pacino character finds out and admits to himself the realities that the audience knew about him at the end of the first film. The personal side of the story plays variations on the family love versus business violence ironies that were well explored in the first screenplay. Coppola’s screenplay, written with Mario Puzo, builds itself around the events of the earlier movie, intercutting between a late ’50’s crisis in the regime of a young godfather Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) and flashbacks to the early 1900’s tracing the rise to power of Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro), the character played in the original by Marlon Brando.

It is neither a very happy or driving picture.īut it is intellectually daring and marks an important breakthrough in the growing up of the Hollywood film.

This movie’s huge world audience may see it less as entertainment than as condemnation of the American corporate power structure. In keeping his film emotionally honest, Coppola sacrifices some of the shock value of his violence, cools the ambition of his visual style, and forgoes the audience identification with characters that mark a more personal film. Part two of Francis Ford Coppola’s filmization of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather is an admirable, responsible production, less emotionally disturbing than its predecessor, but a grand historical epic studying the nature of power in the United States’ heritage. 20, 1974, Francis Ford Coppola unveiled The Godfather: Part II in wide release. The Paramount film claimed six Oscars at the 47th Academy Awards, including for best picture. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below:

Film the godfather 2