Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: The Godfather Part 2!

Theme: The Godfather (Theme) - Fantômas

Contains SPOILARS.

There exist two schools of thought: one, that The Godfather Part 2 is by far the best one in the series, and two, the wrong one. The real controversy is whether the original release, which segues between 1950s sequel and 1900s-20s prequel scenes, or one of the multiple edits that place the scenes in chronological order (some of which include the third film), plays best. My answer may SHOCK you: I don't care, but Part 2 works perfectly well without the flashback scenes, which you can easily skip with your DVD remote as you suck Werther's Originals and rock back and forth gently in your rocking chair. Fuck, I'm old.

"See CHUDS? Without immigration you wouldn't have had heckin wholesome murderous crime lords like Don Vito in America. Checkmate, natzees!" - Francis Ford Coppola, verbatim.

Never has a protagonist been so relatable as Al Pacino's Michael who means to get around to divesting his legitimate business interests from organised crime one of these decades, sort of like you mean to go on that diet or I mean to stop pissing everyone off with my 100% correct politics takes. Yet, just when he means to pull the plug, eventually, maybe, events contrive to drag him back into the cycle of intrigue and murder, and by "events", I mean his dipshit brother Fredo and GOAT villain of the cinéma Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg).

This is the scene everyone remembers but in no small part because he's so composed and charming in his other scenes.

It's a classic archetypal deal with the devil, only Coppola couches his accidental honesty in the plausible deniability that it's all a critique of CaPiTaLiSm and CoLoNiAlIsM, which reminds me of the way /leftypol/ made their own safe-edgy happy merchant who was some pig guy in a top hat. When was the last time The Man ever wore hats that big?

Reeeally makes you think.

Much more compelling than how young Vito became old Vito is the tragedy of Frankie Pentangeli (Michael V. Gazzo), the best and most sympathetic of all the rogues' gallery on display, whose erstwhile loyalty and faith in the Famiglia are only dashed when Roth's goons stage a botched hit on him, framing Michael, in a well-worn gambit known as the "Lavon Affair". Godfather stans like to compare the films to Shakespeare tragedies, and Frankie reminds me of both Cordelia and Kent in King Lear: had Michael listened to Frankie's street-smart counsel in the beginning, much might have been averted and little to nothing lost: the Cuba deal is ruined anyway owing to Castro's bullshit.

Something something Blumpf, something something Eff Bee Eye.

Is it really Michael's desire to root out the traitor in his own ranks that persuades him to string things out with Roth, or is he still halfway tempted by his greed for profit and legitimacy? How about daddy's posthumous approval?

When you dance with the devil, the devil always leads.

When Frankie belatedly realises that it wasn't Michael who betrayed him, and that he's flipped for nothing, he accepts his fate with stoical dignity. RIP Frankie; you were the unsung MVP of Godfather films.

We actually wuz.