Review of The Godfather Part II (1974) by Googolendtimes — 02 Nov 2014

Part II is perhaps the greatest American film of all time, at least in my opinion, upstaging Citizen Kane and even its predecessor. If Part I was to Coppola what The Grapes of Wrath was to Steinbeck, then Part II is his East of Eden.

It recreates all that was so brilliant about the first but fine-tunes it in a manner so that it happens on a scale much larger and much more ambitious, with a wide scope traversing decades and continents that intersects the past with the present in its ferocious exploration on how organised crime shapes those who operate at its highest levels.

Returning cast members up their game, especially John Cazale, Diane Keaton and Talia Shire, and Coppola replenishes the ranks with a stellar supporting cast that includes memorable turns from Robert De Niro and Michael V.

Gazzo. But no-one can detract from Al Pacino, who tops the brilliance of his first outing as Michael Corleone with a mesmerising, electric tour de force of Macbethian portents that gives this film its heart and its gut: both are as crucial to the film's impact as the other.

Where Part I was more cerebral and restrained in its meditation on matters of morality, Part II opens the floodgates to unleash a blistering and merciless cascade of betrayal, savagery, bitterness, passion, vengeance and irreconcilable guilt and greed as corrosive as the other, eventually leaving us with something that is tragic, elegiac and searingly true.

The morally-corrosive properties of power may be a tried and tired theme of cinema by now, but the unflinching manner that Part II slides it under the microscope and squints as far as the eye can reach has never been replicated - and quite probably never could.