Two’s company

toration of The Godfather Part II, it’s easy to see why many feel the second’s superiority; it’s a far more ambitious movie, with Coppola and crew seemingly freed from studio interference to make a more grandiose and complex statement, Pacino even more assured as actor, and the addition of Robert DeNiro as the young Vito, an Italianlanguage performance that confirms DeNiro’s genius.

It’s why the new restoration inspired a series of originals and their sequels at TIFF Bell Lightbox, to find other examples of the sequel done correctly, from Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and Sanjuro to Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, movies that live up to the sequel standard set by Godfather II; movies that improve on something that was already great.

Are you listening, Michael Bay?

Continued from B1

A far more expansive vision than the first film, The Godfather Part II makes trips in time and place that make it both a sequel and a prequel, detailing the origins of the first film, and furthering the transformation of Michael Corleone (Pacino), the eventual trilogy’s narrative centre and its thematic one, Michael’s descent into criminality as much a commentary on the American dream as the mafia itself.

At the time, many declared it better than the original, and indeed Part II (a designation which marks the first numbered studio sequel) won the Best Picture Oscar, the first sequel to ever achieve that honour. Now, upon the release of the new Coppola-approved res-

Many declared

Godfather II better than the

original