TS: Godfather vs Godfather II

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

yea you'd probably be like "why do they keep flashing back to this dude growing up in Italy for?"

not too much. There are several characters from the first one that appear as younger versions of themselves in the "origin story" plot, that, not having seen the first one, their appearances wouldn't be as significant.

Robert de Niro plays the Marlon Brando character as a young man. Marlon Brando died in the first one. Al Pacino plays his son as an adult. There was another brother, Sonny, that was going to take over from Marlon, but he was killed. Al originally didn't want to work in the family business, but he ended up doing so after Sonny was killed.

yyyyeah i guess, the flashback scenes might not mean all that much to you, though they'll still be cool. might be nice to read a quick non-spoiler synopsis of pt 1 before going to 2?

xpost ok i basically agree w/ EWP, but if you've put seeing this off for this long, you might never get around to it so i say go for it. i'm gonna guess you'll like it enough to watch both multiple times so it won't matter much

just can't imagine someone not having seen Godfather. that has to be the only movie I've seen more than 10 times....

yeah which is why he should jump into this while he can and love it and want to see the first and then watch both again!

buy a fedora too

I've seen the first one and it still took ~3 viewings of Part II before I actually understood the whole thing. To be fair though it wasn't the flashbacks that confused me, it was everything in Cuba.

yea but to be fair that whole cuba thing was extremely confusing.

I found reading the book clarified the first film a lot

I found reading the book clarified the first film a lot

Totally.

You really do need to see the first one first. I saw the third one first, and was all WTF the entire time.

The Lucy Mancini's Giant Vagina subplot in the book is totally bizarre.

it really, really is.

skip 2 go straight to 3

what bizarro world are YOU living in?

Watch Tetro instead.

There's a hot 18-year-old boy in it.

I slightly prefer 1, but 2 really is fantastic and one of the few movies to do the prequel/origin story concept right, IMO.

watch Tron first and then see Godfather II. It'll make more sense...

"Love Theme from Godfather II" (Bangalter/Homem-Christo)

Both of them are kind of only ok though, the first is good for how hot Al Pacino was back then though.

I disagree with the first half of this sentence, but the second half is very true.

Also:

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Oh god dammit. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioUIF-hSXD8

the first one I can sit down and enjoy in much the same way as I can enjoy any of the Man With No Name westerns. Like you got all this incredibly overcooked art-directed-to-death scenery and half the cast is gnawing on it like crazy and the other half is staring at them like "I don't understand the language of these ridiculous people from the Unstoic Lands. It must be because I have the largest and steeliest balls ever filmed." Then the musical score comes and kicks you in the head three or four times. You know, good hangover movies.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

watched II on TV last night, there were definitely some scenes missing (Fredo lets himself get pushed around in front of Michael by some of the Vegas mobsters right at the beginning of II, right?) and it didn;t seem to make as much sense as the only other time I've seen it. Still great.

Maybe that's one of the extra scenes that turned up in the sequential 6-hour version that was shown on television once? There's no scene like that at the beginning of II, which (after the stuff with young Vito back in Sicily) begins with the big party at the Corleone compound in Nevada where Michael donates a huge sum of money to the university...which you know because you just watched it. The scene you think might be missing isn't missing, though.

well, it wasn't right at the beginning, but i can definitely recall a scene near the start where fredo gets slapped around and it ends with michael telling him never to takes sides with anyone against the family again- it strengthened the b/g for fredo's discontent for certain. never seen the 6hr sequential version, i've caught II on DVD previously.

Now I realize what you mean--the Moe Greene scene. That's in the first film, about 2/3 of the way in. I didn't realize the sequential version was still available.

"I don't understand the language of these ridiculous people from the Unstoic Lands. It must be because I have the largest and steeliest balls ever filmed."

this sentence is making me lose my shit right now and of course its written by TOMBOT

<3

ah, that explains it. been too long since i saw first one.

http://vimeo.com/24595172

sam fuller doing a screentest as hymen roth