Morning Glory (2010)

Roger Michell died last year at the age of 65, before his latest film The Duke was released. It is out now and I recommend seeing it, especially in a theater, where it will do the most good. Michell's most popular film is probably Notting Hill, but he also made The Mother and Enduring Love (for you Daniel Craig fans), and Hyde Park on Hudson (with Bill Murray as Franklin Roosevelt). To sum up, he made movies that are usually placed in "art-houses" where films of a limited budget and less than frivolous subject matter, unsullied by hyperbolic press and saturation campaigns go to die...and merit consideration during Awards Season, where sometimes their fortunes are favored, but mostly forgotten. And he was darned good at it. 

 

This was written at the time of the film's release.

 

"You're Gon-na Make it After Alllll"*
or
"Will Someone Tell Me Why I Logged Off 'BangingGrannies.com' For This?"

Talk about quick turn-around. Plucky news-producer Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams) has just rebounded from being fired from her New Jersey TV station to being hired to produce an in-the-ratings-dumper morning news-klatsch in New York City. The stipulation from boss Jerry Barnes (Jeff Goldblum, whose height advantage over McAdams is used to very good advantage) is that she has to turn the ratings around on the clunker or the venerable TV-institution called "DayBreak" will be cancelled.

But who wants to work in an institution?

The place is a televised mad-house. Goofy weatherman, clueless reporters, a perv' anchor (he delivers the second headline above), and the Nurse Ratched of the place is the veteran house-mother-anchor (Diane Keaton) who views Becky as just one more producer for a show that's "a revolving door for cretinous morons." She's seen 'em come and go, while she's been "pulling the train up the hill (...with my TEETH!)" for fourteen years. "DayBreak" needs to be fixed.

Becky starts to shake things up, and her first job is to find an anchor a little less orange. She goes the credibility route and seeks out Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford, who hasn't done this much mugging since Return of the Jedi**), a veteran news-man (he lunches with Chris Matthews, Bob Schieffer, and Morley Safer), grumpily living out his golden parachute contract, and has no desire to lower his standards working on a show with "half an audience who've lost the remote, and the other half are waiting for the nurse to turn them over." 

Warned that he is "the third-worst person in the world...after Kim Jong-Il and Angela Lansbury" by the movie's obligatory boy-friend (Patrick Wilson...slumming***), Becky finds a loop-hole in his contract and forces the pro to "lower his standards," but raise the bar on passive-aggressive behavior (he refuses to "banter, from the Latin word for 'gibber like a moron'")...as if the show needed any more of that. Pretty soon, every surface at the station has Becky-forehead-sized dents from her beating herself into them—that and her seeming incapacity to open doors are the two consistent jokes of which no opportunity is passed.

It's got the TV-industry cynicism down, but raised to the bitchy level of the fashion industry (the writer, Aline Brosh McKenna, also wrote The Devil Wears Prada, ...and 27 Dresses , and Laws of Attraction, and Three to Tango...so this is the first movie of hers I haven't actively avoided...although I did see Prada, and admired it). Director Roger Michell can do rom-com fine (Notting Hill), but he's capable of doing better stuff, and he keeps everything lively and semi-sunny, despite the rampant cruelty tossed around like so much unnecessary paper-shuffling on a news-desk. But, he can't do much with the cliched material, from the "meet cute" to the "slo-mo run through new York." 

Morning Glory is okay, but it breaks no boundaries (or news, for all that), it's another "working girl" comedy in the revolving door of them.

* Cue the hat-throw. Give credit where credit is due: I didn't notice this was basically "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (and a two-hour stretch of the half-hour pilot, at that) until Ford's crusty news vet says to the young producer "You have a repellent moxie" in the same way that Ed Asner's Lou Grant said "You've got spunk....I HATE spunk!"  Where's Betty White when you need her?

** ...which makes me think something is wrong.  Ford is the master of the subtle slow-burn comic performance, but this one is at a hard-boil. His lines delivered in a husky, phlegmatic drone, you start to wonder if Ford—like his character—just isn't happy to be there (y'know, like his narration in BladeRunner?). Then, he manages to take what should have been the movie's worst scene, and make it shine, giving it depth, resonance and heart...while still not betraying his character. Nice work.

*** Yeah, but on the other hand, I've felt so sorry for so many good actresses playing "the girlfriend" over the years, this is one for equal opportunity. 

Olde Review: Love and Death

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW Film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the kid I was back in the '70's a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.

Love and Death (Woody Allen, 1975) Let no one get the idea that I don't like Woody Allen. I really do. There was a time in my life that I was completely absorbed in the Allen "persona." For a time I was even writing term papers in his style (luckily I was a freshman and no one knew the difference). But even though I like Allen a great deal, it doesn't prevent me from not being too enthralled with Love and Death, for there are too many times when Allen forgets that he is making a moving picture, and does a monologue much like the ones he did in his old night-club days. Indeed, there are times, when "Love and Death" becomes merely an illustrated version of his writings in "Getting Even" and "Without Feathers." *

The best Allen movie is still Play it Again, Sam which, coincidentally, is being broadcast by CBS Friday night). Allen wrote it, based on his hit stage play, but Herbert Ross directed it. And one of the reasons that it is more successful is because the Allen "schlemiel" character is rooted to the present time. In "Love and Death," the movie takes place at the time of the Napoleonic Wars and the jokes come easily...too easily. All Allen has to do is put together an anachronistic scene--very easy to do and he still gets the yoks! (Cheerleaders on the battleground, indeed!**) Play it Again, Sam and its current scene forced Allen to come up with genuine funnies, not anachronistic ploys. Sleeper was successful because it worked with our knowledge of the present with our ignorance of the future. Love and Death is less so because it worked our knowledge of the present against our knowledge of the past. The two don't work together.***

Broadcast November 4th and 5th, 1976

Love and Death would prove to be the last of what Allen cheekily labeled "his earlier, funny ones" (in Stadust Memories). At the time this review was written, Allen was polishing the edit of what was at that time called "Anhedonia," which would become the Best Picture Oscar-winning Annie Hall, and Allen would never go back to making his anachronistic "easy-laughs" kind of film, and started taking the craft of making films a lot more seriously. Love and Death was Allen's "Long Goodbye" to that style of sketch-comedy film-making.

Actually, Love and Death was his "transition" film, a bridge between those two styles--for example, how Allen shot a couple things became the joke—his classically framed "lions-roar" that he ripped from Eisenstein's Potemkin, for example. His camera set-ups began to take on the spare look of an Ingmar Bergman film (he also took the Death figure from The Seventh Seal). The script was a mess (as all his early films were)--this time an amalgram of Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy and Sleeper, but it was funny stuff, and a lot less episodic than Bananas, or Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex***** One dismisses the craft of comedy in film at one's own peril, because there are enough well-shot comedies that can't eke out a laugh to save their box-office lives. If one is looking at the photography more than enjoying the jokes is that anhedonia? 

The bottom line is, though, "is it funny?"

After Love and Death, Allen began to take the films—and himself—more seriously, burying the schtick and overt clownishness and embedding the jokes in the material, leaving them unsupported by buffoonery; he was getting older and the mugging at some point would look childish. He also stopped hiding behind satire to make his points. Oh, the influences were still there—they are there for every film-maker—he just wouldn't call attention to their sources so nakedly. When one does that, one's work has nothing to hide behind and leaves it open to all sorts of criticisms, charges of pretension, and the usual huffiness of the professional (or non-professional) critic. One can no longer just slip on a banana peel and wink "just kidding..."

So, I was wrong here, but not as wrong as I would be, and Allen would leave the blandly Ross-directed Play it Again, Sam (which is offensive now with its casual "rape" jokes) behind, with such classics as Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Crimes and Misdemeanors, and a lot of gems along the way. Every economically-made five or six films or so, Allen will make a great film. That's a fine batting average in the Biz.

* These are collections of Allen's essays for "The New Yorker."

** I guess I forgot the scene where the hot-dog vendor is yelling "Red Hots!" on the battle-field.

***Crap! Of course, they can work together!

***** But were Afraid to Ask!

Play It Again, Sam

Play It Again, Sam (Herbert Ross, 1972) Woody Allen was well into his directing career in 1972, but when Paramount Pictures brought his play, "Play it Again, Sam" to the movies, he was relegated to adapting the script and starring in it (despite the fact that his agents Charles H. Joffee and Jack Rollins—who would be the long time producers on his films—were also part of the production team). The directing duties were given to Herbert Ross, who'd done the musical numbers for Funny Girl, and had directed the musical version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips (for MGM), The Owl and the Pussycat (again with Streisand for Columbia) and a drama T.R. Baskin (for Paramount), possibly because one of the producers was Arthur P. Jacobs—who'd produced the musical of Mr. Chips. It might have been that Allen's films up to that point—Take the Money and Run, Bananas, and a couple of short satire films for PBS—had a rough, low-budget feel to them and Ross could give them the necessary big-screen gloss. 

Allen explained that his impetus was three-fold: he had no interest in directing one of his plays for the screen (a rule he forgot when he directed 1994's TV movie of Don't Drink the Water); he was tied up with trying to get his farce of the best-seller Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex*; and he thought that if someone could make something charming of the film, it could only help build an audience for his own films.

Good choices, those; He was right on all counts. Play it Again, Sam reached a wider audience than Allen's previous movies and set up an audience attracted to his comedy (and his nebbish persona) for his subsequent films. He also must have gotten some pointers from observing Ross on this film as his following films exhibited a better directorial panache, while still keeping the autonomy he enjoyed as a talented independent film-maker outside the studio system.

In the film, Woody plays Allan Felix, the recently-divorced editor of of a fringe film magazine ("Film Weekly") and "one of the life's great watchers" (as his ex describes him). She's left him because he's no fun, risk-averse ("I'm red-haired and fair-skinned—I don't tan, I STROKE!"), and just watches movies, while she wants to have a happy, active life. He worries that will give him a heart attack. When we first see him, he's watching Casablanca, (probably for the umpteenth time), rapt. He's much more comfortable in a movie theater, where he can passively absorb and not act, or engage, or "be" in the world (the movie is set in San Francisco, rather than New York). He's a bit adrift, but that might be less a result of his divorce, than a symptom of his own, which probably contributed to it.

He begins to ruminate over his situation, going over his split in his mind, and having imaginary conversations with Humphrey Bogart (Jerry Lacy) whom he idolizes and wants to emulate. But, Bogart's advice isn't very realistic: "Dames are simple, kid," Bogart's spirit tells him early on. "I never met one who hasn't understood a slap in the mouth or a slug from a 45." Bogart is much more comfortable in his own skin (if he had skin), and he basically advises Allan to "man up" (or the 1972 equivalent as  filtered through the '40's). And as far as being dumped is concerned? "Nothing a little bourbon and soda can't fix."

Alcohol, however, makes Allan nauseous. He pours his heart out to his best friends, Dick Christie (Tony Roberts), a preoccupied stock-broker and his model-wife Linda (Diane Keaton). Dick tells Allan his divorce is an opportunity to be free, "to sow wild oats", to go and meet women, but when they set Allan up with some of their friends, he is beset with insecurities and a false brio that make every date a disaster—even their friend, a nymphomaniac, rejects him. Barely able to sustain anything more than half-a-date, Allan starts to become a third wheel in the life of Dick and Linda.

Allan: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?
Museum Girl: Yes, it is.
Allan: What does it say to you?
Museum Girl: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness
of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren,
Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste,
horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.
Allan: What are you doing Saturday night?
Museum Girl: Committing suicide.
Allan: What about Friday night?

Allan wants a relationship ("Where'd you learn THAT word, a shrink?" scoffs Bogart) like they have, but even that marriage isn't all it's cracked up to be. With every change of venue, Dick has to check in with "the office" to make sure they know where he can be reached (this is in 1972—the pre-history of cell-phones) and his frequent absences make the neurotic Linda feel abandoned and needy and she ends up spending more time commiserating with the equally needy Allan. With so much in common, pretty soon, their friendship turns to affection and Allan starts envisioning having an affair with her, but struggles with his conscience about cheating with his best-friend's wife.

Egged on by Bogart, Allan pursues Linda, even as he has visions of the result such an indiscretion will have—Dick dramatically walks into the sea in one, and in another he's a vengeful Italian (eh?) seeking to filet Allan for making him a cuckold. But, the Bogartian prodding, like a gat in the lower spine, has him pursuing the low hanging fruit with self-esteem issues that bothers to give him the time of day...if only she'd give him a night.

What's interesting about Play it Again, Sam is what it gets wrong. In the same way, that the lead male of (500) Days of Summer achieves his idea of romance from "a mis-reading of The Graduate," Allan's Bogart-familiar is a mis-reading of the Bogart persona, emphasizing all the things that Allan lacks with not much else. Lacy's Bogart is ostensibly in the guise of the early 1940's Bogart in the era of his Sam Spade-Richard Blaine-Philip Marlowe personas. But, as hard-bitten as Bogart's character would appear in their respective films, there was always a sensibility of decency deeply rooted in the character, less interested in scoring with the ladies than in doing the right thing and living to a code of ethics that this Bogart would probably mock. It's an over-simplification to say that Allan's Bogart manifestation is Bogart—or any amalgam of his screen persona's (unless you throw in a couple of his gangster parts), so much as a projection of what Allan thinks he lacks. He ultimately has to abandon Bogart's advice and look to himself to do the noble thing, for which he's awarded with a boost in his self-esteem, a chance to re-enact one of his favorite movie scenes, and a salute of sorts from his errant bad angel.

Looking at the film today with 21st Century sensibilities, there are some cringe-inducing lines and a general sensibility—insensitivity, more accurately—that the world of women is a bit like a buffet for an indiscriminate diner...at least from a man's perspective (which is the only perspective this film has). "Playboy" for nerds. It's funny, sure. Funny and churlish. And one imagines the real Bogart, head bowed, sadly contemplating the glowing end of his cigarette, over being misused and misrepresented in the name of a misogyny he'd probably have curled his lip at. Woody Allen's Bogart is not the one I remember—tearing his guts out while confessing "I won't because all of me wants to..."**

It makes me recall that when I watched Play it Again, Sam all those years ago, my loyalties shifted subtly and radically away from Allan Felix to Linda Christie and her predicament (in much the same way that Allan Felix's character must also shift to...finally...do what's right by her). A lot of that has to do with Keaton's winsome playing of the character. But, a lot of it has to do with the realization that heroes...even projected ones...have to be heroic, if they have to win our trust and admiration. And you don't do that by looking around for heroes, but by looking for it within.

Here's looking at yourself, kid.

* but were afraid to ask. 

** 

The Godfather Part III/The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone

The Godfather, Part III (Francis Ford Coppola, 1990) Francis Ford Coppola defied the Rule of Thumb when his The Godfather, Part II turned out better than the (at the time) all-time box-office champ, The Godfather. But, flush with the success of those two films, Coppola moved on to chart his own course, famously saying that mobsters bored him and that he had said everything that he wanted to say on the subject.

Time and pressure, though. It's not mere coincidence that at one point in The Godfather, Part III Michael Corleone says of his mobster ties: "Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in." Coppola was tempted by Paramount Pictures to come back for one more go for the same reasons he took on the first film—he was in financial trouble and needed the money. Al Pacino's star was again on the ascendant (after expensive flops like Cruising and Revolution) and Coppola was the one man who could pull the original talent together and make a "legitimate" "Godfather" sequel, with no compromises.* The story takes place with Michael Corleone, now 60, with all the appearances of economic legitimacy although still with long ties to his family's Mafia roots. The old Corleone business is in the hands of Joe Zaza (Joe Mantegna—a rare chance to see Mantegna being "florid"). Now the aging Don, debilitated with diabetes, in the twilight of his life, must come to terms with what he lost in his battle to protect his Family: his family.

"Family" portrait

All the "Godfather" films start with ceremony and end with blood-baths, and Part III begins with Michael Corleone accepting a papal honor for his charity work (actually a quid pro quo for bailing out the Vatican Bank, which is in financial trouble, as always in "The Godfather" films, money is the root of all evil). That theme must have hit close to home for Coppola, having to compromise for cash. Money corrupts everything here, even the Church, and doing deals with God's representatives on Earth may be as close to heaven as Michael thinks he'll ever get. And that is the major theme of this movie: what Michael will do to save his soul.

How many movies are about that?

As a recovering Catholic, I may be a bit more sensitive to it, knowing the arcana of the Church, but I found myself watching Godfather III ticking off the moments that Michael might be in a state of Grace to go to Heaven. For the length of the "Godfather" series, Coppola distilled Mario Puzo's original best-selling novel to core themes: the immigrant's American experience and the role crime plays in it; how business is brokered so similarly between criminal organizations and Big Business; how a steadfast paternalism can descend into destruction; how good intentions can be corrupted.

But there is one theme that never made it from the cutting room floor in the theater released films, but is apparent if you've ever seen some of the expanded "Godfather" films, and that is the efficacy of the corrupted soul and how it still can be redeemed. That's Catholic Catechism 101, but in the real world of movie audiences (and mafia hoods) it may not have seemed pragmatic (and perhaps too hard to explain or fathom for non-Catholics). The evidence has always been there, however, from the first film's unused footage of Mama Corleone going to church to light candles for the soul of Vito (Marlon Brando) and the accompanying original End-Titles which featured Kay Corleone (Diane Keaton) lighting them for his son Michael's.**

Pragmatism might have been the reason, but the characters had moved on from the original movie and Puzo's book. The scene of Kay lighting candles for her husband added an element to her character of still loving the new Don even while knowing he was a monster, complicit in his crimes. And it was particularly weird when Coppola put it at the end of the more complete television presentation of "The Godfather Saga" after all the heinous crimes committed by Michael in Part II (including the one he finds the most unforgivable—the ultimate negation of his mission to save his family—as he says in "Part III" "I killed my mother's son. I killed my father's son.").

But the Church, which presided over Connie's wedding and Anthony's first communion and Michael's papal decree at the beginning of each of the three films, as an instrument of God's Will on Earth, can forgive all sins and cleanse all souls, no matter the crime, no matter the evil. So, half-way through the film, when Michael Corleone is forgiven his sins by the cardinal (Raf Vallone) who will become Pope John Paul I (they needed a VERY holy man to forgive Michael), suddenly...in the eyes of God—or at least the Church—Michael's soul is clean. The marionette strings of the Corleone Family have been handed to his bastard nephew Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia) who has the quicksilver temper of his father Sonny (James Caan), but is taught a Don's pragmatism under Michael's tutelage.

Big themes. Operatic themes. And The Godfather, Part III reaches its climax at an opera—"Cavalleria Rusticana" by Mascagni, a tale of a Sicilian soldier who comes home from war to find that his life has changed and seeks to corrupt the relationships of his past—where Michael's son Anthony who has rejected his father's path is debuting as a singer. It is a cause for celebration, but behind the curtain of happiness, vendettas are carried out, and the sprawling story-line comes to a tragedy's finale. Although Michael's soul is clean and pure in God's eyes, he can't escape Fate, and he pays...dearly.

Much was made at the time of Coppola casting his daughter Sofia Coppola in the role of Michael's beloved daughter Mary (Winona Ryder was originally cast, but bowed out pleading exhaustion). It must have seemed natural for Coppola to do so, having cast sister Talia Shire as Michael's sister Connie (Shire has a much bigger role to play in Part III), and Sofia has always been a part of the "Godfather" films.*** The critics were cruelly savage in their denunciation of her performance, and, admittedly, it is a little weak. But, critics seemed to blame the daughter for any weaknesses in the father's work.

That the third film does not meet the impossibly-high bar of the first two is not her fault. Blame Coppola's artistic ambitions, and forgetting that "The Godfather" has its true origin in crime-novels and gangster movies, not the opera house. But the daughter bore the brunt. As Michael says sagely in the film "When they come... they come at what you love." Sofia Coppola has more than had her own revenge by becoming a gifted director and Oscar-winning screenwriter, she has also won the critic's respect.

Her triumph, and the grace with which she achieved it, is the true ending of "The Godfather" story.

But, it's never REALLY the end, is it? Not in the digital realm of film...with "Special Editions," "Director's Cuts," and the perpetual re-mastering of movies in ever-increasing bit-rates to negligible ends. They give those directors who are lucky enough to survive their films to forego the pressures they were under to meet a release date to have another "go" at the edit, to touch things up, maybe tweak an effect here and there, even change the color timing of their films—now, film-makers make two edits of the theatrical cut and their preferred edit for the digital release.

 

And so it is with The Godfather, Part III, which, when Coppola was given the chance on the 30th Anniversary of its release, he re-edited and re-titled the film as The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. The title, which distances the film from the first two films, making it it an epilogue, rather than a part of the story, is a good, if cosmetic choice.

 

He pared down some sequences, put in some alternate takes, re-tooled the images to be sharper with more color to them. But these are small cuts to the bulk of the movie.

But, it is quite different in two specific places. Rather than begin—as Part III does—with shots of the abandoned Lake Tahoe compound while Michael reaches out to his two children to attend his papal order induction, The Coda begins immediately with Michael dealing with Archbishop Gilday of the Vatican Bank to relieve a massive short-fall and receive controlling interest in the massive real estate firm Internazionale Immobiliare,**** and beginning with the words "Don Corleone, I need your help." This cut quite a few minutes from the film, and established the stakes at the beginning, and making Michael's papal honor more of a quid pro quo than it originally was.

And the ending is different. In the theatrical cut, the elderly Michael is alone in Italy (holding an orange, naturally), a shell of his former self and dies, slumping to the ground. In The Coda, Coppola leaves him alive...and suffering...an alone, irrelevant invalid...with the memories of the women he betrayed in his head. As the Archbishop who will become Pope John Paul I tells him in the garden "It is just that you suffer." 

On the fade to black before the credits, Coppola inserts his own epitaph: "When the Sicilians wish you 'Cent'anni', it means 'to a long life'. And a Sicilian never forgets."

* Well, there are always compromises: Robert Duvall did not reprise his role as consigliere Tom Hagen, citing the difference in salaries between himself and Pacino. But Coppola has always been adept at writing around such problems.

**That scene is used as the End Credits for "The Godfather Saga"—Coppola's "too much information" re-shuffling of the first two films into a strict chronology. There are lots of little interesting tidbits in that one, including the hospital visit with Don Vito's old consigliere Genco ("You blashpheme. Resign yourself."), more scenes with the undertaker from the first film, and the Corleone family paying a visit to...the Coppola family.

*** Mantegna remembers during a scene prep, of Coppola pointing to Sofia and telling him that she was the baby being christened at the end of the first film.

**** In the book, "Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather" (by Mark Seal), Coppola revealed that the inspiration for this conspiracy came from Paramount studio head Charlie Bluhdorn who, during the making of the first Godfather, confessed to the young director that he leveraged part of Paramount land interests to the Immobiliare organization to resolve studio debts. Coppola was privately shocked but...filed the information for later use.

Olde Review: The Godfather Part II

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the kid I was back in the '70's a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.


The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)

Senator Geary: "I despise your masquerade. The dishonest way you pose yourself. Yourself and your whole fucking family."

Michael Corleone: "Senator, we're both part of the same hypocrisy, but never think it applies to my family"

This Saturday's ASUW film in 130 Kane is Francis Ford Coppola's production of The Godfather Part II.

Imagine the plight of Francis Ford Coppola. He is hired out of relative obscurity in the movie industry to direct The Godfather which becomes the #1 box office draw in history. Not being prone to attempt originality, Paramount Studios asked Coppola to make a sequel. Coppola agreed, stipulating that it be a more ambitious project, but above all else, it had to be necessary to "The Godfather" story. 

Incredibly, it is. Part II needed to be told. And it is a better film than the original.

Part II tells two stories, the ones on either side of The Godfather time-wise: Before (between 1900 and 1940) when Vito Corleone (Robert DeNiro, played by Marlon Brando in the original) comes to America and rises to power; and After (between 1958 and 1963) when his son Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is attempting to expand his empire, while, at the same time, losing his family. It is possible to enjoy Part II without seeing the original, but I don't think it would be as rich an experience. But don't worry about it. If you do, you might miss what is on the screen, which is considerable.

Vito Andolini (named Corleone by an uncaring immigration official) comes to America to escape a family-wide vendetta by the Don of Corleone, Sicily. He is only eight years old at the time. A vendetta of this type--the very strong against the very weak was never present in The Godfather. All wars were between strong men, young and old. But in The Godfather Part II, the differences between stalker and prey are more apparent, the difference between stalkers less so, for Vito Corleone in avenging his family's death, takes that revenge on the same Don, who has grown old and infirm and helpless.

Coppola perfectly captures the look and feel of New York's Little Italy in this section (which is almost completely subtitled so, again, go early if you want to read them, and understand what's going on)* In the Italian ghetto, families are kept close together, in fact, the community is kept close together by the conditions, and it is upon this unity that Vito Corleone builds his dynasty. He already has a family (an unquestioning wife, and sons who will follow in his footsteps) and friends, for whom he uses his power. Don Vito rises to power for the benefit of his family, his friends and for himself.

It is not that way for Michael Corleone, Don Vito's favorite son, onto whose shoulders the reign of his father has fallen. It is interesting to note that first Michael became Godfather, and then established his family, as opposed to his father, for the two men, as Coppola wishes to show, are completely different.

Above all else, Michael is a businessman in this film, manipulating everyone in his business dealings. The turnings and twistings of plot in Michael's sequences are subtle, very convoluted, so try to keep the names straight if you want to understand what is happening.

But the main point in Michael's story is that while he may continue his brilliant business career, he does so at a cost. Though he may be able to protect his family from outside forces, he cannot control the forces attacking his family from within. So that, at the end, Michael, though still powerful, probably the most powerful Mafia chieftain, is left alone, to brood over his success...and failure. Coppola who wrote and directed Godfather II said this soon after the film was made:

"One of the reasons I wanted to make Godfather II is that I wanted to take Michael to what I felt was the logical conclusion. He wins every battle; his brilliance and his resources enable him to defeat all his enemies. I didn't want Michael to die. I didn't want Michael to be put into prison. I didn't want him to be assassinated by his rivals. But in a bigger sense, I also wanted to destroy Michael. There's no doubt that, by the end of the picture, Michael Corleone, having beaten everyone, is sitting there, alone, a living corpse...I admit I considered some upbeat touch at the end, like having his son turn against him to indicate he wouldn't follow in that tradition, but honesty...wouldn't let me do it.  Michael is doomed.

I think we can be thankful that Coppola chose to elevate this film from what it might have been in other hands to tell us something extra about those two men--father and son--about our times, our country, and ourselves.

I wish I could talk more about this film, but time prevents me. I will say that it is a beautiful fim, visually; done with genuine feeling and just a touch of spectacle. It is also very violent, though not as much as the original, that Pacino and DeNiro, in their respective parts are brilliant...and that it is being shown Saturday, October 9th at 7:30pm.

Broadcast on KCMU-FM October 8th and 9th, 1976

In a post-"Sopranos" world, it is necessary to re-inforce that the "Godfather" movies weren't supposed to celebrate the Mafia, but cast them in a Shakespearean sense of tragedy. Michael may win his battles, but descends into his own private Hell, the complete refutation of everything that his father represented, and the annihilation of the life that both father and son envisioned for him. Coppola always wanted to put the screws to Michael; to make him a King with riches but no heirs, and for all his success, to lose everything that he should be valuing.

But, a lot of people just saw him winning all his battles. The hell with his family. The hell with his dreams. He was livin' large, man!

So when Coppola was enticed to make Godfather III, he presented a withered, frail Michael, and tempted him with a clean slate, the re-unification of his family, and maybe a chance at happiness—a pure soul—and snatched it away from him, and closed the book on Michael's life.

But nobody liked that. The film was a failure and it is regarded (among many, but not me) as not a worthy successor to the other films.

But, it's not because of the film—the fault is with ourselves. And our sick national, cultural zeitgeist.

It is our custom in this country to venerate our villains. I've noted before that Marlon Brando was appalled when his biker bad-ass in The Wild One was embraced by the youth culture. In Star Wars, Darth Vader was the coolest; in the prequels, when Lucas deconstructed Vader as a tragic figure...and worse, a lackey, it was rejected. Pacino's mui-loco-in-the-cabeza Tony Montana from Scarface is an icon now.

We venerate our villains. We tear down our heroes.

What's up with that? Are we that morally corrupt that we keep making heroes out of scum-bags...and haven't learned anything from it? That maybe...just maybe...we shouldn't?

That quote at the beginning is right. We're all a part of the same hypocrisy and it infects our country, despite the good intentions with which it was created.

Coppola's comparison of America to the Mafia is more on-the-nose than he might have envisioned it to be.

* Though it sounds smarmy and somewhat condescending, I think the issue was the seating at 130 Kane. Sitting in the balcony made it an eye-strain to read sub-titles, so getting a seat on the main floor was preferable.