A double ‘Godfather’ dose: Two times the brilliance
For many film fans, “The Godfather” and “The Godfather, Part II” are a matched set … which makes perfect sense. Director Francis Ford Coppola’s 1970s masterpieces, based on Mario Puzo’s best seller about an underworld family, often are shown together on television. AMC holds to that tradition Tuesday, May 30, by offering both Oscar-winning classics. (The concluding film in the trilogy, now known as “The Godfather: Coda — The Death of Michael Corleone,” generally is deemed a lesser work and typically is relegated to the overnight hours if it’s shown at all.) The 1972 milestone “The Godfather” showcases all the immediate members of the Corleone family, but patriarch Vito looms large over the whole film. Small wonder, since the part is played by Marlon Brando, who earned his own Academy Award (which he famously rejected) for the performance. When an attempt is made on Don Vito’s life in the course of a turf war, war-hero son Michael (Al Pacino) steps up to even the score. Hothead Sonny (James Caan) and weakling Fredo (John Cazale) are the other Corleone offspring, with attorney Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) a surrogate son. Diane Keaton, Richard Conte, Talia Shire (Coppola’s sister), John Marley, Richard Castellano, Abe Vigoda, Al Lettieri, Al Martino and Sterling Hayden are among the other cast members who register in their respective moments … and we must give a special shoutout to Alex Rocco’s Moe Greene, who pays a memorable price for refusing a Corleone “offer you can’t refuse.” Released in 1974, “The Godfather, Part II” — like its forerunner, named its year’s best picture at the Oscars — brilliantly parallels Michael’s continuing ascension as a crime king with the roots of the young Vito (portrayed in flashbacks by Robert De Niro, who claimed an Academy Award for the project). Adding such notables as Lee Strasberg and Michael V. Gazzo to the cast, “Part II” is notable in its own way, with a distinctive look and feel to the Las Vegas and Cuba settings it largely relocates the story to.