TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Sicilia!

The Godfather: Part II

Francis Ford Coppola
1974 - United States - 3h22

Since his the death of his father, Michael has been running the Corleone family's affairs alone. He is looking to expand his various criminal activities. This leads to negotiations with the Jewish mafia, resulting in him almost being assassinated. In parallel, the film tells, in flashback, the rise of his father, Vito, a Sicilian orphan victim of the mafia, an impoverished immigrant in the 1910s, and then a young ambitious criminal…

Thanks to the great success of The Godfather, Coppola had total freedom for the sequel and could double the budget. Echoing the loss of Michael's original values, the film tells the rise, several decades earlier, of his father Vito. By choosing to tell the story of the Corleones from their origins, Coppola brings an additional dimension to the story: the idea of destiny. Having lost his family, Vito, still a child, had to flee Sicily for America where his path, and that of his children, would be soaked in blood. The Corleones had an intimate relationship with death, like a curse overwhelming them all.

CAST AND CREW

Cast : Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, John Cazale, Talia Shire, Lee Strasberg
Screenplay : Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola
Cinematography : Gordon Willis
Sound : Howard Beals
Editing : Barry Malkin, Richard Marks, Peter Zinner
Music : Nino Rota

Production : Paramount Pictures, The Coppola Company, American Zoetrope

French distributor : Park Circus