Film Analysis: The Godfather, Part II Francis Ford Coppola, 1974

Paul M. Nguyen

Film Fr. John Wykes, OMV December 12, 2011

Nguyen 2 Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Part II, released in 1974, follows the Andolini/Corleone family from Sicily to New York and Las Vegas. The film expresses the brutality of loyalty to family within the Italian mob culture, and illustrates how successive generations of this particular family embody this mentality. Coppola uses a vast array of cinematic techniques to illustrate the story, which is carefully told of two generations simultaneously. The film opens with the funeral of Vito Andolini's father, at which his brother Paolo is killed. Vito's mother approaches the men responsible and is killed when she threatens their leader, leaving Vito the sole survivor of his immediate family. He is smuggled out of the country to New York (at which point immigration officials declare his name Vito Corleone, named after his Sicilian hometown instead of Andolini, the family name), where he grows up, marries, and has a son, Fredo. Vito soon falls on the bad side of a local mob boss, Don Fanucci, whom he eventually kills and takes his place atop the power structure in that neighborhood, becoming known as The Godfather. What Coppola has already shown us is that the very same oppression from which Vito fled Sicily was present in his new life in New York, and actually caused Vito to become the antagonist he previously despised. Our pity for the boy left without a family turns to a sadness upon learning he took on the same attitude of brutality that had plagued his family a little more than a decade prior. As he is telling this story, Coppola weaves in the story of the next generation: that of Vito Corleone's son, Michael. He opens the modern story with the First Communion service of Vito's grandson, Anthony. This serves as a somewhat disorienting plot device that conveys a sense of timelessness; though we are alerted via textual titles in the film to the year (1958) and the fact that we are seeing Anthony Corleone, the Godfather's grandson, it is up to the audience

Nguyen 3 to repair the continuity and conclude that Michael, Anthony's father, is Vito's son. The inciting incident of the plot line and Michael's character is the attack that is made on his life at his home. From this point forward, Michael sets out to determine, among a pool of associates, whom he trusts and distrusts in varying degrees, who it was that ordered him dead. What is ironic and demonstrates the extensive ramifications of the use of evil to defeat evil is that in the process of protecting his family, which he claims is his mission, he actually pushes them away from himself and loses all of them, including ordering the murder of his brother Fredo on Michael's own property. At the close of the film, Michael's parents are dead, his wife Kay and his children have left him, he has killed his brother, and his sister Connie is also out of the picture. The film closes with a flashback to a family gathering on the occasion of his father's birthday. This scene serves to inform the audience, partially, of Michael's actual disposition toward his family; juxtaposed against his prior claims that he was protecting his family, and that he was stingy with the senator but generous with his sister, Michael actually holds family less dear, and is willing even to kill his own brother. The film is absolutely bursting at the seams with beautiful composition. This frequently includes use of the rule of thirds in scenes of dialogue, and the framing of key figures and symbols. Point-of-view reaction shots are also many; they frequently portray the apparent power dynamics, though there are many examples of the opposite. The figure of lesser actual power is portrayed standing (typically the posture of the authority figure looking down), and the one who is really in control is seated or lounging (as in Michael in his conference at home with the senator and again when he goes to meet Hyman Roth at his home). The camera angles are often arranged so that the power figure is shot from a height equal to his, while the shot of the one standing is from below, which actually mitigates the looking down effect that we might expect from their

Nguyen 4 physical posture. The cinematic portrayal of psychological realities plays a key role in this film. While it is a fairly common film technique to use a close-up shot to draw attention to what a character is experiencing in his head or heart, Coppola uses a wider shot with very particular camera placement to demonstrate the reality of characters' conception of human dignity or personal value. A particularly interesting example of this effect occurs in a side story: the scene is Fredo Corleone's house of prostitution, in which a girl with no family was murdered by the man who procured her services, Senator Geary. It turns out that he was intoxicated and barely recalls the events of that night other than waking up to a bloody bed and her dead body. The senator sought to overcharge Michael Corleone for his gambling license in a new casino he was opening in Las Vegas. The audience is led to believe that there was a conspiracy blackmailing him into giving in to Michael's wishes, pivoting around a line spoken by Tom to the effect that the murdered girl had no family to plead her case or press charges and the death could be hidden and the congressman's record kept clear, provided he remember that the Corleone family had taken care of the situation. As the congressman gets up from his traumatized daze on the floor, the girl still tied to the bedpost and bloodied beside him, a small mirror on the bureau reflects the face of the girl, and another mirror at the head of the bed offers another perspective on her body. it is as though we are given three viewpoints from which to see her simultaneously, yet she remains unknown in death as in life, according to Tom. The theme of revenge is also quite present in the whole film. Vito's mother is killed as she tries to avenge the murders of her husband and son, and Vito returns to avenge them all toward the end of the film, in the midst of Michael's revenge. Michael's quest is to determine who it was that ordered the attack on his life in his own home. In pursuing this end, he brings

Nguyen 5 about the death of Johnny Ola, Frankie Pentangeli, Hyman Roth, and ultimately his own brother, Fredo. The closing scene, however, would indicate that there were tensions within the family that caused sufficient strife to precipitate Michael's withdrawal from them and that were a source of the distrust he had developed for them. Michael shows, in fact, very little evidence of actually trusting Fredo, though he does seem to give him at least the appearance of responsibility and control. Perhaps Coppola actually tries to indicate that the revenge in Michael's heart is over his family's desire for him to be something he desired not to be. In the closing scene, Michael argues with his brother Sonny and step-brother Tom about conversations that the latter two had with his father concerning his future in the family business and it seems that Michael sought to separate himself from that business, though it came back to haunt him later. In the end, Michael's recourse to evil means of protecting his family and restoring order actually stripped him of everyone who was close to him and who was most properly his family. Michael's son Anthony was named the English equivalent of Michael's grandfather, Antonio, possibly revealing Michael's desire to have Antonio's legacy live on in the boy raised in a solid family without the negative reputation that preceded those intervening, but it seems that if that were to be the case, it would now be without Michael. Coppola must architect his shots very carefully in order not to confuse the audience when transitioning between timelines; it is not obvious which timeline is primary, but it seems that the later one, Michael's, is the present time of the film while Vito's is told in flashback. The two timelines meet only in the closing scene, when Michael and Vito are together, though not visually; the family is gathered, but the scene ends when Vito arrives and we only hear his voice, while the camera stays on Michael, alone in the dining room. Prior to this scene, however, though Vito's timeline contains no reference to Michael, and Michael's timeline includes

Nguyen 6 references to Vito only in the beginning, making the two basically separate, the similarities are so striking that we might believe we were seeing simply two viewpoints on the same life. Coppola wisely uses some manipulation of color to give the audience an immediate impression of the time period; other artifacts in the shot also demonstrate the time period, particularly in transportation: horses and trains are replaced by cars and airplanes. In both timelines, too, there is evidence of a reluctance to enter into the mob scene. Both Vito and Michael first act based on an impulse to protect their families and in so doing, they end up replacing the mafia power figure and assuming the despised role of the source of injustice in their respective situations. Coppola was wise to choose the name Corleone for the birthplace of his Italian mob. What literally translates as Lionheart was given to Vito as his surname at Ellis Island when he emigrated to the United States in 1901. The name seems fitting, given the superlative and relentless energy poured into the violent dynamics of revenge and broken family loyalties in this film. Coppola also plays on the names of the principal male characters: Antonio and Anthony are equivalent, suggesting a return across a gap of three generations, of that innocence of life that was possible before violence intervened. Michael could refer to St. Michael in Catholic tradition: he is the archangel who remained loyal to God and defeated the angels who turned away from God in that great primordial battle. This role is somewhat embodied in Michael's character, in his desire to protect the good that is his family by waging war against those who threaten it, but Michael Corleone stands in sharp contrast to his angelic namesake; the former employs vice rather than virtue in his conquest. Coppola certainly depicts ruthless crime worthy of the name Corleone, and this theme of brutality in the name of family loyalty that actually echoes a deeper-seated family strife is conveyed masterfully under his direction.