What’s better? The Godfather, or The Godfather II?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
The original, no question.
yeah. most days I’d agree with you. Sometimes I like II though.
The original book.
The original.
The only really good parts of II is when De Niro is on the screen.
nalbar
Godfather I. Brando was the best.
II
The line: “I don’t want to come out of that bathrooom with nothing but my &*(O) in my hand” has layers of meaning.
Actually it is “I don’t want my brother comin’ out of that toilet with just his dick in his hand, ya know what I mean?”
It wasn’t Mike that said it, Sonny said it to Clemenza.
nalbar
And that was in the original, not II.
But tell me, weren’t the various episodes released separately, then re-edited into a different sequence…
No, II was filmed two years after the original.
I’ve never been able to make up my mind on that one. I will say that III was underrated.
When III came out, I rented and watched I and II before going to see it. I thought it was quite well-done, and I was puzzled when I heard so many people pan it. I strongly suspect that most of them hadn’t seen the first two movies since they were in the theaters.
I also differ with the critics on the common view that Sophia Coppola was the weak part of the cast. (It’s hardly worth commenting on the inevitable charges of nepotism: Francis Coppola is a consummate nepotist, and anyone who missed that until he cast his daughter is plainly overlooking the enormous number of Coppola family members employed in various capacities in all three films.) The weak part of the cast was, in my opinion, Andy Garcia. Whether that was his fault or the fault of the script is hard to say, since Garcia is ordinarily a capable actor. But when the plot of the film hinges on his character’s motivations, one would expect those motivations to be communicated rather less ambiguously than they were.
The problem is, III is absolute crap when compared to I and II. As a stand alone, it is okay and even seems a little forced. As part of the trio, it isn’t very good.
Is there going to be a Boo Trib Bracket?
I love all three films but the first one is my favorite movie of all time.
I really don’t get it. It was a good film – interesting, well done. But it’s far from my favorite film (set of films) of all time. Can someone explain to me why men seem to really take to this film?
Maybe because it depicts, in magnified form, both the burdens and the benefits of patriarchy? Especially the burdens?
Sorry if that’s too glib. I’m guessing here, as a man who shares your estimation of the film: a good, even a very good, film, but …
If indeed your asserted premise is true — that men disproportionately “take to” this film — I suspect it is because many men see Michael Corleone as themselves writ large: someone pressured by social requirements (particularly that of being protector of the family) into grimly, and at first tentatively, giving up his ambitions, his hopes, his ideals, all in the name of doing what has to be done at the present time … and at the end, finding himself the embodiment of everything he despised. (At the risk of further glibness, let us not forget here that it is a boomer-generation movie par excellance.)
George Bailey, in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” idealized this traditional male role in amazingly explicit ways; Michael Corleone, because of the nature of his “family business”, emphasized the ugliness of it more — but the two characters really are complementary sides of a single coin.
Whether that coin is a social reality, as distinguished from a perception, I leave as an untouched question.
Very interesting comments – thanks. And it’s interesting to contemplate Michael as the evil twin of George, so to speak..!
Thanks to you, too!
I would say not that Michael is more evil than George, but that he is born into a more evil universe. A universe that, for that reason alone, resembles the actual one more closely, for all of the dramatic heightening that goes into its depiction.
I would think you would love its ‘real history’ components. That, and it was the best cinematography of any film in history.
Oh, I like it very much – and it’s incredibly well made. But I don’t quite get why guys fall all over this film the way they do, when they don’t fall over equally good or better films, like Lawrence of Arabia.
I don’t think Lawrence of Arabia is that good. It’s interesting in a boring kind of way. It’s old and seems old.
The Godfather is one of the two or three greatest movies ever made, and that’s widely recognized. The American Film Association rated it second of all time behind Citizen Kane. So, I don’t think it’s strange for people to be ga-ga about the movie.
Its violence probably limits its appeal to women somewhat, but its the quality of the film, the filmmaking, the editing, the sound, the acting, the script, and the story, that make the film legendary and puts it above other movies like Chinatown.