OCTOBER 9, 2001, is a day many Americans are waiting for with bated breath. No, it isn’t the date for an attack against Afghanistan (some of us hope that would come sooner). It is, instead, the DVD release of one of the greatest movies of all time: The Godfather Part II. (Oh, the joy of finding an excuse to write about your favorite movie.) Now wait a minute, some of you might be saying. Don’t you mean The Godfather? No, I don’t mean The Godfather, though that movie does have its merits and I can certainly understand why many movie buffs prefer it to its sequel. But when you take everything into account, Marlon Brando v. Robert De Niro, Don Barzini v. Hyman Roth, Clemenza v. Frankie Pentangeli, New York vs. Tahoe, the sequel comes out on top. Francis Ford Coppola was a miserable wreck during the filming of the first movie. Nobody wanted Brando. Some studio execs were suggesting either Ernest Borgnine or Danny Thomas for the part. (Don’t get me wrong, I really like Ernest Borgnine, whether as a centurion or on shows like McHale’s Navy and Airwolf just not in the role of all roles.) But with a few Oscars under his belt, Coppola splurged on Part II. Remember the monumental scale of the Ellis Island scene, really filmed on Ellis Island? And the revolution in Cuba (filmed in the Dominican Republic)? Before filming the scenes of Anthony’s first communion, Coppola had the entire cast on the Tahoe grounds, playing their roles for an entire day, just to get them into character. And perhaps most memorable: Young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) stalking Don Fanucci, the Black Hand, during the Feast of San Gennaro, ending in the doorway confrontation and the fading glow of a half-screwed light bulb. Admittedly, there are a few flaws, such as the suicide of Frankie Pentangeli, aka Frankie Five Angels. Did he really have to die? Why does one of the Rosato brothers say to him, “Michael Corleone says hello!” just as Frankie is strangled nearly to death? It wasn’t a hit ordered by Corleone. It was ordered by the nefarious Hyman Roth. But then a cop walks in, interrupting the job, and a shootout ensues. Frankie survives, “scared out of his wits,” as Tom Hagen says, and flees to the feds. (Still following me?) In the end, Michael strikes back, everyone is hit, and Frankie refuses to testify knowing his brother who was brought back from Sicily would be killed if he committed such an act of betrayal. And so, in a touching speech about the greatness of the Corleones and the greatness of the Roman Empire, Pentangeli maintains his honor, takes a hot bath, opens his veins, and bleeds to death. So why did he have to die? It wasn’t his fault. And why say, “Michael Corleone says hello”? To give him a final thought of, “Hey, I’m dying and for all the wrong reasons”? To make things worse, the Rosato brother doing the strangling is none other than actor Danny Aiello. (It took him only 23 years to go from henchman to The Last Don.) If there’s anyone out there who has a clear explanation of all this, I’d like to know. Still, it s a great movie, and I was counting the hours until October 9. But then I found out you cannot buy The Godfather Part II a la carte. It comes in a package that includes the first Godfather. No matter, I thought, because I love the first film, too. Even better, there are all sorts of bonuses, including deleted footage and a documentary on the making of The Godfather. But then comes the horror of all horrors. Paramount is making you purchase that atrocity of a movie an infamnia known as The Godfather Part III. Yes, it was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar in 1990. No, it wouldn’t have deserved it if it won. (The winner should have been Goodfellas, but instead it went to Dances with Wolves.) At this point, many of you might be asking, What’s wrong with Godfather Part III? And to those people, I ask, Have you seen it? Where do I begin? For starters, there’s Sofia Coppola in the role of Michael’s daughter. She can’t act she did a better job as Connie’s baby in the first movie. Winona Ryder was orginally cast, but she fell ill and Sofia was the director’s daughter. Fine. We all understand benign nepotism. But there can be no excuses, no rationalizations, for George Hamilton. The role of the consigliere so deftly played by Robert Duvall went to The Man With The Tan because of a salary dispute. Coppola doesn’t harbor any illusions about this train wreck. When asked why he did a third installment, he didn’t say it was about closure or redemption. “I needed the money,” he explained. And maybe that’s why Parts I and II with III are being lashed together. Because he and Paramount need the money. And because no one in his right mind would ever buy the third installment, filled with incest and a Vatican conspiracy and Joe Mantegna. But by making the first two available on DVD, Paramount has indeed made us an offer we can’t refuse. (You had to have seen that one coming.) Victorino Matus is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard.
