‘The Godfather Part II,’ the greatest sequel of all time, turns 50

The story of the rise of Vito Corleone, and the fall of his son Michael, has lost no power after a half-century.

I go back and forth, but there are times when I believe that The Godfather Part II is the best American film ever made.

There’s the film’s grand sweep, which covers the bulk of the 20th century, this sheer amount of talent in front of and behind the camera, all at the peak of their powers, and the way its story ends up much in the same place as another best-movie-of-all-time contender, Citizen Kane: With the hero having amassed all the power in the world, but still ending up sad and alone.

Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II arrived in theaters in December of 1974, 50 years ago this month. And since a key sequence is set on New Year’s Eve, I figured today would be as good a day as any to look back on it.

Pretty indisputably the best sequel in the history of the medium, and the first sequel to ever win the Best Picture Oscar, II arrived just two years after the original Godfather, with Coppola also finding the time to make another classic, The Conversation, in between. Those three films were among the five all-timers in which John Cazale appeared before his death, with Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter the other two; but his turn as Fredo Corleone in Godfather II, more than anything else, granted the actor immortality.

Godfather II, famously, has a two-part structure. The main story is a sequel to the first Godfather, following the further adventures of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), having cemented his control of the family and American organized crime in general, following the end of the first movie. Also included, in about a quarter of the film, are flashbacks to the rise of his father, Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro), and his rise in the Little Italy of the early 1920s. (Amusingly, the second Mamma Mia film borrowed II’s structure.)

Like all the best mob stories, from the first Godfather to Goodfellas to The Sopranos, Godfather II shows the gangster protagonists using power to their advantage, leaning on people and winning, and sometimes whacking people in exciting ways. But in the end, the bill comes due, and there are consequences. Coppola has talked about this in numerous interviews over the years, how people rooted for Michael as if he were a traditional hero in I, and how he wanted to punish him, and “destroy the Corleone family” in II.

And that he did. By the end of the film, Michael has defeated all of his enemies. But he’s also lost just about everyone close to him, including his wife Kay (Diane Keaton), who has had an abortion and left him.

Michael has plenty of enemies in the film, from the drunken, jealous mob captain Frankie Pentangeli (Michael V. Gazzo) to the hypocritical Senator Geary (G.D. Spradlin) to the Meyer Lansky-like Jewish gangster Hyman Roth (Lee Strasburg). The entire Michael side of the film, in fact, exists in the shadow of Marlon Brando’s Vito, who died near the end of I. Vito is mentioned and referenced constantly, all the way until the end, and the plot occasionally pauses to tell Vito’s story.

But the most powerful thing in the film, by far, is the arc between Michael and Fredo, as the older brother who was “stepped over” betrays his brother to the family’s enemies, leading to estrangement, and eventually that assassination in a boat on Lake Tahoe. I can’t even imagine what a gut-punch that must have been, for audiences watching it for the first time in 1974.

I first saw The Godfather Part II when I was about 12 years old, when my young cineaste self wanted to catch up on the two classics before The Godfather Part III was released that December. I was, of course, way too young to appreciate those moral complexities, nor did I really understand much of the film’s complex plot, especially the multiple levels of double-crosses among Michael, Roth, and Frankie. (And honestly, it probably took quite a few re-watchings in adulthood for me to parse it all.)