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I believe I used the phrase "embalmed and enshrined" in a somewhat facile manner a few weeks ago when I referred to my love of Once Upon a Time in America (and I must also add Miller's Crossing) over The Godfather films. I should revise that slightly. Let me first draw a comparison. I may prefer several of Orson Welles' other pictures (The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, F For Fake) to Citizen Kane but I admit wholeheartedly that Kane is a great film.

The Godfather is a very, very good film - pulp raised to the level of art and transformed into the forerunner of all the event blockbusters that have followed in the four decades since. Technical achievements aside, The Godfather rested on Coppola and Mario Puzo's screenplay - rich with great material for actors to sink their teeth into. The casting was a brilliant mix of the iconic (Brando, Hayden) with up-and-comers (Pacino, Cazale, Caan) who were allowed to achieve almost an iconic status themselves. The closing shot of Michael Corleone shutting the door on his wife Kay and by extension everything in his life outside of his chambers, is chilling and majestic in its tragic implications. Michael's fate has been sealed.

The Godfather: Part II opens that door back up to poke around some more and make sure the audience understands exactly how tragic those implications were. It does it with many of the same talented actors in front of the camera and technicians behind the scenes. It would be an accomplishment and deserving of all this praise, if it felt in the least bit necessary. Coppola and Puzo again collaborate on a screenplay that becomes the filmic equivalent of the fire and brimstone preacher of yore. You know the one. He told the crowd exactly what he was going to tell them, he told them, and then he finished up by telling ‘em what he had told them.

The story structure of The Godfather: Part II is meant to evoke meaningful parallels with The Godfather by charting the spiraling destruction of Michael with the rise to power of his father, Vito Corleone. In theory, this might have yielded a tragedy of even greater proportions. Instead, it undercuts the power of the original and results in over three and a quarter hours of stasis. A lot happens in the film, to be certain. There is sound and fury, silent brooding and violent explosion of emotions, and death by gunshot, wrist slitting, grenade and garroting. Although there are individual scenes that serve as emphatic punctuation, most of the film seems devoted to covering the same ground or stuck in neutral. The alternating storylines is in large part responsible for this alienating effect.

The Godfather: Part II has a running time of 200 minutes. Fifty-five minutes of this run time, or just over a quarter of the film, are given up to the young Vito from age nine in 1901 to his early 30s in the 1920s. This progression is broken out in roughly ten-minute chunks over the course of the film. I have never read The Godfather but understand that these early scenes are mostly taken from the novel and were originally going to be used in the first film. Aside from feeling like a Reader's Digest condensed version of a generic Young Mafioso's Rise to Power, they also strip away a lot of the aura created by Brando in his quirky, mysterious and terrifying portrayal. I liken it to feeling the need to humanize a character like Hannibal Lecter. Yeah, back stories can be great things but sometimes it's more powerful not having everything summed up and spelled out. Vito Corleone seems like a mostly genial fella (well, as genial as DeNiro can seem meaning when he's smiling sincerely is when you should be most worried that he may put his arm round you and shove a knife into your gut.) He knocks off the don who controls the neighborhood with an iron fist, gets revenge on the killer of his family back in the Old Country, and sees it to that kindly old ladies aren't thrown out on the street because they have dogs that yip too much. In short, your friendly neighborhood Godfather.

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