Summary
Our return to the world of The Godfather opens on a funeral in the town of Corleone, Sicily. Text on the screen tells us that Vito Corleone was born Vito Andolini in Corleone, that his father died in 1901, and that his brother Paolo swore revenge on the Mafia boss who had the father killed. During the funeral procession, shots are fired and Paolo is killed too. Vito goes with his mother to the home of the mob boss, Don Ciccio, so that she can beg for Vito's life to be spared. When Ciccio refuses, the mother makes an attempt against his life and is subsequently killed. With that, the 9-year-old Vito is smuggled out of his hometown by merciful friends risking their own lives, and makes his way to America by way of Ellis Island. There, he is dubbed Vito Corleone.
Flash forward to the 1950s, the present time in the film. There is a giant First Communion bash for Michael Corleone's son at the family's compound in Nevada. It's a bustling scene, with the Nevada senator Pat Geary getting on stage to make a toast for the occasion, and Michael making a sizable donation in a photo opp with Geary. They meet privately—Michael, Senator Geary, and Michael's consigliere Tom Hagen—to discuss a hotel deal in Vegas. Geary informs Michael that he intends to squeeze him on the deal, and proposes an exorbitant fee for the gaming license at Michael's new hotel, saying that he loathes the way Michael conducts business and masquerades his family. Michael rebuffs the offer as the senator leaves.
Back out at the party, Frank Pantangeli finds Fredo Corleone. Frank is drunk, loudly talking about the low quality of the food at the party and generally making a scene. He gets up on stage, stops the band and tries to make them play an Italian song, but they start playing "Pop Goes the Weasel" to mock him instead. Meanwhile, Michael meets with a man who passes a message along from the Miami gangster Hyman Roth that if Michael makes the right move on a casino, then Roth will partner with him on the business.
Michael continues the spate of meetings, next with his sister who brings him her new fiancé and comes asking for money to go off to Europe. Michael refuses to acknowledge him, telling Connie that the ink on her divorce isn't even dry yet. He gives her the option to move with her children into his Nevada compound, but the fight between them has already been set off. The family tension spills out into dinner, when all of the major Corleone family members are gathered around a table at the party. Their mother clearly disapproves of both Connie's and Fredo's partners, and Frank Pantangeli continues to act a foul drunk. Fredo's wife falls while dancing with another man and he goes to scoop her up. It sparks a fight that one of Michael's men has to clean up.
Pantangeli meets with Michael privately to ask for permission to knock off the Rosato brothers, telling Michael that his business interests with Hyman Roth (who the brothers work for) is getting in the way of Pantengeli taking care of business like he needs to. It turns into an argument about Michael's father's business with Hyman Roth, and choosing business interests over family. Michael dismisses Frank and then remarks that the old man had too much wine, sweeping the matter under the rug.
Done with all of his business for the night, Michael dances outside at the party with his wife Kay. He asks if the baby inside her feels like a boy, and she says it does. He apologizes to her about meeting with all the people during the day, and she responds by challenging him with a recollection that he said the Corleone family would be totally legitimate by now. Michael says he's trying.
Analysis
In the long sequence that makes up the first communion, we see some of Francis Ford Coppola's most grandiose filmmaking up to this point, and in turn both some hallmarks of the New Hollywood movement that he spearheaded, and some of the signs of Coppola's own obsolescence as a filmmaker. From a story-telling standpoint alone, Coppola virtuosically weaves together all of the key storylines that will develop throughout the film using a deceptively simple structure of depicting a series of meetings with Michael as the party outside roars. Here, one event is able to reveal a rich social lattice and immerse us in a way of life—reminiscent of the wedding scene in Michael Cimino's The Deerhunter (1978) or the rally in Robert Altman's Nashville (1975), both classics of the New Hollywood era. The budget it took to coordinate and execute scenes like this, coupled with a director's visionary ambition, makes for an alchemy in American filmmaking that was unique to this era.
Even the play of space is keen, with the different arrangements of our characters telling us as much about their roles as their lines do. Senator Geary meets with Michael and Tom Hagen around Michael's desk, lending the impression of a business deal. Frank Pantangeli storms the bandstand, in turn storming Michael's calm refuge and setting off chaos that will consume Michael. Connie is depicted in disempowered positions, whether that's sitting in a low slung chair as she begs Michael, standing and towering over her, for money. And several times over, Fredo is placed at the fringes of activity, communicating his outsider status within the family while demonstrating his desire to insert himself in the action.
But Coppola would eventually be sunk by high-budget ambitions and over-stuffed films. Apocalypse Now drove him to the brink of madness while going wildly over budget and wildly over schedule, and even entailed staging massive scenes of warfare on par with any of the actual napalm attacks staged during the Vietnam War. To an extent, Coppola got lucky that the film was so wildly beloved by critics and fans alike, since it seemed to validate his grandiose tendencies. Perhaps a check on said tendencies would have been helpful, though. Coppola's musical One From the Heart was another large-ensemble, incredibly-complex film that was ultimately a commercial and critical disaster, ultimately destroying his career.
And in this segment of the film, we also see so many artistic choices that would ultimately fall out of fashion as Hollywood shifted away from high-budget art films and towards making blockbusters. The dark lighting, the muddled sound mixing, the queasy family dynamics, even the cynical depiction of corruption—these would all go out the window just a few years later as Hollywood realized it would make a lot more money off of films like Jaws, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones. If Hollywood was going to spend a huge amount of money on a film, it would devote its money to bright, feel-good, family-friendly flicks. So even though The Godfather: Part 2 is considered one of the greatest films of all time, it would come to represent everything 1980s Hollywood would consider uncommercial and unpalatable. While the film depicts the decline of Michael Corleone's empire even as he seems to be at the height of its power, in retrospect, its depiction of outsized ambition and tragic downfall resonates with the fate of Coppola's grand filmmaking, as well.
