One of the greatest sequels turns 50 this month. It’s a towering film that features the single greatest kiss between brothers ever put on screen. The Godfather Part II will forever be a colossal film that shows not only how to develop a story but also how to place it on a course toward tragic inevitability. Francis Ford Coppola’s movie manages to walk a thin line between the impenetrable world of the mafia and the world the men are trying to protect, beyond the suits and passive-aggressive meetings.
Saying all of this, The Godfather is still the better movie of the two. This is not to dismiss The Godfather Part II at all, but The Godfather is a thematic distillation of everything Part II tries and succeeds to expand upon. It is the mafia movie at its most stripped down, with one of the best dramatic arcs in American film history with Michael Corleone and some of the best work of Marlon Brando’s career. The Godfather Part II takes what The Godfather does so well and builds on it further, but there’s an unmistakable charm to the first film that imbues all the second’s tragedy with the presence of Brando’s central force.
The two together make one of the best double-bills ever because we like to pretend The Godfather Part III never happened, and comparing the two is no easy task. But there’s something more tragic about the ascent than the descent, and that’s the main difference between the two. Why is The Godfather better than The Godfather Part II? What does The Godfather Part II do to advance the first? How has it aged 50 years later? Here’s what you need to know.
‘The Godfather’ Is Better Than ‘The Godfather Part II,’ Briefly
Release Date December 20, 1974
Runtime 200
Five decades later, both of these movies remain the pinnacle of what American films can achieve. The Godfather Part II shows the descent of Michael Corleone’s grip on the Mafia, and it is beautifully captured. The contrast between Michael and a young Vito Corleone creates an interesting push and pull across time, expanding the first movie and adding subtext that, while not crucial to understanding Vito, makes his character all the more haunting. The Godfather Part II pokes at the soft edges of Michael’s flaws, coming to the crushing realization that he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, just like his father. The suits were a lie, and he is just as vulnerable as any other man when pressed right.
The Godfather acts as the precursor to this but includes more of a dramatic core through Marlon Brando’s towering presence to tie it all together. The Godfather drags the family up by the scruff of the neck as they release their last gasp as the group they know themselves as. They know the hierarchy and respect their roles. Coppola rips the heart out of them in The Godfather, a movie from which they never recover. The Godfather Part II shows what the dying breath of an empire can look like when managed in the shadow of a similarly ailing old man. As a sequel, it owes everything to what came before it, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but it does suffer under the weight of an arguably weaker narrative drive than the first.
How Does ‘The Godfather Part II’ Build on ‘The Godfather?’
Few sequels have mastered the concept of expanding a universe like The Godfather Part II. Everything is given an atmosphere of unease, a new version of the family trying to figure out their next moves while still unsure how to do so. They have no choice but to keep going, but new dynamics emerge, all while Michael tries desperately to step into the unfillable shoes of a man he never really understood. The Godfather Part II almost feels like an epilogue to a change that happened in The Godfather and executes it with a knowing messiness that The Godfather only showed glimpses of.
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In this way, The Godfather is the stronger movie. It has more to say and arguably captures the more interesting moments in their lives. The Godfather Part II also suffers from the De Niro sections, which, while effective at holding up a mirror to Michael, don’t do much on their own. De Niro isn’t given much to do in these scenes aside from trying to act like Brando, though it led to an Oscar win. The Godfather Part II’s dual structure takes the sting out of both sides, and The Godfather had done enough to establish their relationship without these scenes being wholly necessary.
‘The Godfather Part II’ 50 Years Later
The Godfather Part II lives on a few stellar moments, like the Fredo subplot, which culminates in the best of John Cazale’s limited on-screen history. It successfully pushes past what the first did while positioning itself as the impact of The Godfather’s fall. The second recontextualizes the first’s change as a fatal one in such a brilliant way, but the first still has the dramatic edge thanks to key scenes and an irreplaceable Marlon Brando.
Five decades later, The Godfather Part II is still one of the most influential crime movies in American cinema. It carries over all the inevitable violence and loss that comes with this world while reflecting on the past and how it has influenced the present. The Godfather is the better film, but this doesn’t take away from what the sequel managed to do to advance the story of cyclical violence and betrayal of Michael Corleone.
No mafia movie has ever come close to what either of the two movies did, and if 50 years have passed, it seems that another defining piece in the genre is still as far away as the Cannoli that’s been left in the sun since 1972. The Godfather and The Godfather Part II are available to stream on Paramount+.
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