TS: Godfather vs Godfather II

i don't understand the confusion about II's plot- it's a couple of years since i've seen it but i could follow it pretty well at the time.

anyway- II for me, but they're both great films. i've never seen three but might pull the boxset out of the xmas wrapping tonight if it's quiet.

ModigGrabb12 (6 days ago) Show Hide
Who is the Godfather in the movie The Godfather? and do he die? please answer and dont say like watch the movie : )

Thegodfather847 (4 days ago) Show Hide
watch the movie

lol

re-watched both of these recently. both great, but i think i'd go with one.

on the current "Coppola restoration" of I & II:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2008/09/the-coppola-res.html

"G,
I hear the new Godfather restorations are an improvement, and look as good as they ever did, but they do not live up to the expectations set by the home theater crowd. Apparently Gordon Willis, who supervised the operation, went back and duplicated the look the films had when they originally premiered...."

Not to be disrespectful or vulgar, but the "home theater crowd" can go eat a bag of dicks.

I've looked at about an hour of the Blu-ray of One, and I admit they did a very bold thing. They reproduced the film with all the grain, with all the blown-out whites of the wedding scene...all the same "imperfections" that made the studio people want to fire Willis. And help make Godfather the glorious film it is. I'll be looking at a lot more in detail soon.

There's no fucking hope for these people, I swear.

more on the new discs... I've seen these enough for awhile, but would visit if someone has BluRay.

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/006733.html

I really wish the Godfather Epic thing they did for NBC back in the day was on DVD. Still the best version I've seen.

all that footage is available in one of the older sets, yeah?

or just not cut together 'chronologically'?

I really wish the Godfather Epic thing they did for NBC back in the day was on DVD. Still the best version I've seen.

^^^

Kehr's review today made these new prints sound mouthwatering.

As bonus scenes maybe, but yeah the NBC version (which they released on VHS in the 90s) is the only one which sets it up chronologically.

I remember that version, and you can see why they cut scenes like Vito and the boys visiting the dying consigliere, but they do add texture.

plus young hyman roth!

I watched the two of them eight years ago, and haven't seen them since. At the time, I thought the first one was superb and was left lukewarm by the second one, but I'm not sure if there was necessarily anything rational about either reaction.

the NBC recut is the only version I've seen, when it was rerun on AMC or something a few years ago. but I didn't see the whole thing, so as a result, I've only seen part of 2 and part of 1! I should finally watch these

Rosenbaum on I & II, Kael, and Bush's America:

For the Pauline Kael who viewed Kane as “kitsch redeemed”, the notion that The Godfather could be viewed as a different kind of kitsch rather than as a noble Shakespearean tragedy is never considered, because there are certain ideological givens about American violence and power, even at their most infantile and unreasoning, that are too serious to be scoffed at, especially when they’re bathed in “Rembrandt” lighting....

This development can perhaps be traced in part back to Kael’s use of the adjective “Shakespearean” near the end of the first paragraph of her review of The Godfather, Part II. Her second paragraph—– which casually identified its predecessor as “the greatest gangster picture ever made,” immediately after announcing that Part II “enlarges the scope and deepens the meaning” of its predecessor—–marked the lamentable suspension of her Orwellian scoffing at pretension that was perhaps the strongest virtue of her early criticism. In terms of her own unapologetic trash aesthetic, a far better candidate for “greatest gangster picture” would surely be the Hawks-Hecht-Hughes Scarface, no less arty than Coppola’s blockbuster but far more exuberant and irresponsible (and far more honest about its own amorality), and in most respects closer to the starkness of Greek tragedy, incest and all, than to any Shakespearean tragedy or historical melodrama.

It’s a moot point whether Coppola intended this, but the ethical contrast between Vito Corleone (Brando) as an earthy, charismatic gentleman Mafiosi and his cold-blooded son and successor Michael (Pacino), a Machiavellian who winds up engineering the deaths of family members—–a brother-in-law in the first film, a brother in the second–—tends to mystify or at least detract from the degree to which both men are killers. If we’re being asked to brood about the moral and stylistic decline of the Corleones, we’re less likely to be attentive to the continuity of violence between the nostalgically depicted past and the more coarsely perceived near-present.

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=14913

Mocking pretension does not mean you accept trash at all times.

good article but this:

Mythologies about macho power and the pride of wanton blood-spilling are arguably at the roots of what put George W. Bush twice into office

is total bullshit.

I would agree -- no more than they raised the new Michael Corleone to power.

^^ not sure if that is or is not a ref to obama

By contrast, consider all the depictions of violence in such otherwise very different films as Renoir’s The Rules of the Game and Jarmusch’s Dead Man, which refuse the very possibility of violence having any kind of dignity whenever or however it occurs.

really have no idea what he's getting at. TRotG really is too dissimilar and i don't know why he's brought it up. but i don't think the violence in 'the godfather' is more dignity-y than in the (incredibly boring and lame) 'dead man'. even then, is this a generalizable principle? he appears to be applying it as one.

it's illegitimate to bring in bush to back up this point anyway.

i think he's in dodgy territory talking about that tudor propagandist shakespeare, too.

The outsized success of both Godfathers helped to mark the eclipse of foreign film distribution in the U.S. for the sake of glossy American art movies, a little bit before Woody Allen’s (and Martin Scorsese’s and Paul Schrader’s) mining of similar fields started to take hold.

interesting point (although it can't be a criticism of 'the godfather', or indeed of any other film), though, y'know, bertolucci released 'last tango' and '1900' after it, and in fact 'the conformist' had been a paramount film; and iirc 'the leopard' had hollywood money in it (and it was rubbish). something tells me there may be bigger reasons why art-house distrib declined after the early '70s.

the relevance of 'psycho' eludes me.

'the leopard' had hollywood money in it (and it was rubbish)

rong but it was also '63 so I'm not sure how that fits in unless you think it was by Bertolucci (wdn't surprise me)

imo he's drawing a false dichotomy between european and american cinema, the date is irrelevant.

i have no idea why you would think i would think bertolucci directed that film.

would have to look into it, but as remains the case, european cinema tends to depend on upfront distribution $$$ from the evil americans. why coooouuuuld explain why the (incredibly awful) film stars an american.

"Really the best way to watch the first two movies is that 7 hour long thing (The Godfather Epic) they did for NBC where they put them all in chronological order and added an hour or so of outtakes".

OTM

― ArfArf, Thursday, January 22, 2004 7:18 AM (5 years ago)

ok no this is very offtm.

like any Visconti, bronson?

cuz there's no Coppola Godfather w/out his influence

no i don't like any visconti. (or fellini.)

such is the mysterious way influence works.

The outsized success of both Godfathers helped to mark the eclipse of foreign film distribution in the U.S. for the sake of glossy American art movies, a little bit before Woody Allen’s (and Martin Scorsese’s and Paul Schrader’s) mining of similar fields started to take hold.

Unless there's stats to support this, bullshit.

rosenbaum firmly believes that all any popular american filmmaker has ever done is rip off europe (note deliberate use of "movies," as opposed to foreign "films"). it's a running theme throughout pretty much all of his work, tho i hadn't previously seen him take it so far as to dismiss "citizen kane" as "white elephant art" or "a studio sucker-punch."

maybe i've just read too much movie criticism but i'm really getting weary of the whole "white elephant vs termite art" thing.

I like Rosenbaum, but every critic eventually gets impaled by his own rickety schematics, but Kael rode her contradictions to greater aesthetic success; you can't reduce her to a position on the Farber scale.

"ok no this is very offtm."

Have you even seen the version I'm talking about?

yes! if we're thinking of the same thing, this is what they often show on cable. i've only seen it once, and i don't remember all of the differences to go into detail unfortunately; but from what i remember, the extra scenes didnt really do anything for me, and the linearization of the story kinda disrupted the emotional arc and watered it down, at least they way i had remembered it (and wanted to remember it). some things just aren't meant to be fucked with.
that said, i'm sure someone who's never seen either of the first two could watch the long, combined version and think it's great. I just think it's inferior to the two individual movies

They are still showing it on cable? Why won't they release it on DVD then? Such jerks.

It's been over 15 years since I saw that version, but I found the Michael half of Part II much improved by not having to compare it to the far superior DeNiro half. But to each their own.

Well from that perspective, i can certainly see why you'd like that version better. i've never gotten why people disliked the michael part of pt II so much though (mostly comparatively, but still). i can see the point that it drags a little, but michael is such a dynamic character! as someone said upthread, the way he goes from such a sympathetic character to someone worthy of hate is remarkable (though i never really hated him; i've found the cognitive dissonance he effects to be most interesting).

The problem is that by the point that II starts he's already an unsympathetic character so basically you are just watching half a movie on a guy who starts out being a monster and ends being a monster.

i guess we'll just have to agree to disagree, but for me, his actions at the end of I/start of II arent condonable yeah but it seems like he's getting into it for the right reasons, and he's completely reluctant to even get into the biz at all. it's by the end of II with the whole wife thing and fredo thing that he really passes the point of no return for me

Uh I don't even know how to respond to that. . . since it's so completely wrong on so many levels.

I think the door's thud at the end of I is sposed to indicate Point of No Return.

getting back to thread topic, I >> II

bronson is def enrique, right

Is preferring I to II some sort of quintessentially enriquean opinion?

no, that wasn't really a piece of evidence.

what do peeps think of the book? i just started it, it's a pretty enjoyable trashy page-turner! and i like how it fills in a lot of blanks.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, August 11, 2006 5:25 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark

the book's great!! i just started reading it last week, am about 300 pages in. (actually is the 2nd time i've read it - first time when i was 15 or so, so i didn't remember much)

but yea, really enjoyable trashy page-turner. i love it, so entertaining. all the secondary characters are great, too - johnny fontane, lucy mancini, nino, the hollywood stuff, etc. those chapters are awesome.

it helps too to have the movie's cast in mind when reading, and prob makes the book that much stronger.

btw i've seen the movies a ton of times, would probably pick pt. I. but after i finish the book i'm gonna watch em over again (I & II, at least. i don't really need to see III ever again).

I like part 2 better because Cazale is spellbinding in it.

can i see 2 without having seen 1? it's playing at the theater

how confused would i be? i'm one of those people who has trouble following murder she wrote, remember

Hell no man. I mean...it's not extremely connected to the first one since it takes place years later, but for you to appreciate Michael Corleone's character arc, you have to see the first, otherwise you won't get it.

Gotta have the context. if you have time to spare, rent Godfather, watch it, the ngo to Godfather 2

ok, thank u

very confused imo