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Sala Montjuïc has said goodbye this season with an offer that no attendee could refuse. The offer came in the form of a surprise film and it was "The Godfather Part II" (1974, Francis Ford Coppola). The title of the article alludes to one of the mythical phrases that Don Vito Corleone, a character played by Marlon Brando, formulated in the first part of the trilogy about the Sicilian mafia, "The Godfather" (1972).
The Godfather
"The Godfather Part II" is considered one of the great masterpieces of cinema and one of the few sequels that have surpassed in quality and merits to the original film. In this case we have to say that the bar was set high. The sequel to the film inspired by the novel by Mario Puzo won six Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay written by Coppola and Puzo himself.
This second part delves into the portrait of the illegal business of the Corleone family to continue telling us about the deepest evils of America. The greatness of this second part is to elevate the original tale to a more epic and mythic level by spanning a time period that includes more than six decades of American history. Coppola and Puzo use for this purpose a complex and at the same time poetic parallel montage that works in two different temporal moments.
On the one hand the arrival, evolution and rise of a young Vito Corleone (played by Robert de Niro) after his arrival in New York as a child, and on the other; the descent into hell of Vito's heir, Michael Corleone; masterfully played by Al Pacino. The authoritarian, malignant and paranoid character of Michael, who grows as he becomes more and more alone and loses his power, culminates in one of the most heartbreaking moments in the history of cinema: the murder of his brother Freddo, ordered by Michael himself. The disintegration of the family and that of a country.
Before ending, the film offers one of the most beautiful and bitter sequences of the film: a flashback memory of a reflective Michael shows all the brothers waiting for their father to arrive to celebrate his birthday. Michael argues with his brothers because he wants to fight for his country in World War II. "Country is not your blood" his brother Sonny tells Michael. His brothers have other plans for him.
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