The Godfather Part II
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Francis Ford Coppola
Al Pacino
Robert De Niro
Robert Duvall
Diane Keaton
Phil Feldman
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Continuing saga of the Corleone family as they move to Nevada and make the casino business their major income source under the leadership of the increasingly paranoid and malevolent Michael, whose reign as the "Don" is juxtaposed against the parallel tale of his father's escape from Sicily as a young boy and his subsequent rise to power in New York's Lower East Side during the turn-of-the-century.
Director
Francis Ford Coppola
Cast
Al Pacino
Robert De Niro
Robert Duvall
Diane Keaton
Phil Feldman
John Aprea
Leopoldo Trieste
Joe Della Sorte
Joe Logrippo
Richard Bright
Johnny Naranjo
Morgana King
Julian Voloshin
Romano Pianti
Edward Van Sickle
Gabria Belloni
Mario Cotone
Herkulis E Strolia
Tom Dahlgren
Tito Alba
Tere Livrano
Marianna Hill
Slavatore Po
Themes Mars
James Caan
Michael V Gazzo
Venancia Grangerard
Abe Vigoda
Tom Rosqui
Lee Strasberg
Oreste Baldini
Elda Maida
Ignazio Pappalardo
Amerigo Tot
Talia Shire
Bruno Kirby
William Bowers
Richard Watson
Harry Dean Stanton
G. D. Spradlin
Yvonee Coll
Francesca De Sapio
Ezio Flagello
Frank Sivero
Theresa Tirelli
Joe Spinell
Gastone Moschin
Troy Donahue
Andrea Maugeri
Erica Yohn
Kathy Beller
Peter Lacorte
Carmen Argenziano
Dominic Chianese
James Gounaris
Gianni Russo
Maria Carta
Joseph Medeglia
John Cazale
Vincent Coppola
Paul B Brown
J D Nicols
Peter Donat
Giuseppe Sillato
Livio Giorgi
Fay Spain
Roger Corman
Saveria Mazzola
David Baker
Crew
Newton Arnold
B J Bachman
Howard Beals
Mark Berger
George Berndt
Burt Bluestein
Jerry Bock
Nathan Boxer
George Brand
Tony Brandt
Sandra Burke
James Caan
Serena Canevari
Randy B Carter
Naomi Cavin
Joe Chevalier
Carmine Coppola
Carmine Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Mario Cotone
Valerio De Paolis
Emy Desica
Jack English
Jane Feinberg
Mike Fenton
Deborah Fine
A. D. Flowers
John Franco
Gray Frederickson
Sonya Friedman
Jim Fritch
Lisa Fruchtman
William Gereghty
Ralph Gerling
Michael S Glick
Angelo Graham
Edwin Guthman
George Holmes
Larry Holofcener
Alan Hopkins
Mona Houghton
Pat Jackson
Jim Klinger
Bobbe P Kurtz
Mike Kusley
Henry J Lange
Joe Lombardi
Maurizio Lucci
Douglas T Madison
Barry Malkin
Richard Marks
Melissa Mathison
Nancy Mcardle
Walter Murch
Charles Myers
George R. Nelson
Tammy Newell
George Newman
Marie Osborne
Francesco Pennini
Bruno Perria
Romano Pianti
Marilyn Putnam
Mario Puzo
Mario Puzo
Vic Ramos
Fred Roos
Bob Rose
Nino Rota
Charles Schram
Eric Seelig
V Bud Shelton
Nanette Siegert
Mona Skager
Carl Skelton
Dick Smith
Dean Tavoularis
Theadora Van Runkle
George David Weiss
Tommy Welsh
Chuck Wilborn
Gordon Willis
Gordon Willis
Peter Zinner
Peter Zinner
Film Details
Technical Specs
Award Wins
Set Decoration
Best Director
Best Music Original Dramatic Score
Best Picture
Best Supporting Actor
Best Supporting Actor
Best Writing, Screenplay
Award Nominations
Best Actor
Best Costume Design
Best Supporting Actress
Articles
The Godfather: Part II - The Godfather, Part II
Coppola's idea for the sequel would be to "juxtapose the ascension of the family under Vito Corleone with the decline of the family under his son Michael...I had always wanted to write a screenplay that told the story of a father and a son at the same age. They were both in their thirties and I would integrate the two stories...In order not to merely make Godfather I over again, I gave Godfather II this double structure by extending the story in both the past and in the present."
Gene Phillips wrote in his book Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola, "Many of the actors from The Godfather reprised their roles in Godfather II: Al Pacino, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton, John Cazale, and Robert Duvall all returned. As for new members of the cast, Coppola was at pains to find the right actor to play Vito Corleone as a young man. He tested Robert De Niro. 'I thought De Niro had a sort of stately bearing, as if he really was the young Vito who would grow into that older man who was Marlon Brando in Godfather I. He had grace.' As a matter of fact, De Niro had spent some time in his apprenticeship days as a young actor studying Brando's acting style and was able to recreate in Godfather II Brando's measured gestures and calm, convincing voice." Ironically, De Niro had auditioned unsuccessfully for a role in the first film, but when Coppola saw his performance in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) he brought him back to audition again. Because his dialogue in the film would be in Sicilian, which he did not speak or understand, De Niro prepared for his role by living in Sicily. His Sicilian was convincing enough to win De Niro a Best Supporting Actor Oscar® for his performance. Interestingly, De Niro and Brando are the only two actors to date who have won an Academy Award for portraying the same character.
Casting the rest of the film was not so smooth. Marlon Brando was supposed to make a cameo appearance in the film during the scene in which the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor on his birthday, December 7th. Angered by the way he was treated by Paramount during the first film, Brando simply neglected to show up that day for filming and the lines were hastily rewritten. James Caan only appeared in flashback towards the end of the film, but he asked for (and got) the same salary he made for the entire filming of The Godfather three years before. Richard Castellano, who had been the highest paid actor in the first film, was not so lucky. He wanted a bigger salary and the freedom to have his lines written by a writer of his own choosing. Coppola refused and instead rewrote Castellano's character Clemenza as Frankie Pentangeli, played by Michael V. Gazzo, who earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Acting legend Lee Strasberg was talked out of retirement by Coppola's father Carmine, and when Strasberg's health failed, the character of Hyman Roth was rewritten to accommodate his illness. Roth was reportedly based upon real-life gangster Meyer Lansky, who actually phoned Strasberg after the film's release to congratulate him on his performance. The role of Merle Johnson went to former teen idol Troy Donahue, who had known Coppola when the two attended military school. Donahue's real name was Merle Johnson. Danny Aiello, appearing in his third film, improvised the line "Michael Corleone says hello" while committing a murder. After stopping the scene, Coppola asked Aiello what he had said in the first take and liked the line so much, he told Aiello to say it again.
Shooting for The Godfather Part II began on October 23, 1973 at Lake Tahoe, where the Fleur de Lac estate served as location for the Corleone's compound. Interiors were filmed at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood. Paramount had been bought by the conglomerate Gulf and Western in 1966, and part of its holdings included extensive property in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic where the Cuba sequences of the film were shot. While filming in Santo Domingo, Al Pacino developed pneumonia. During his month-long convalescence, the company moved operations to New York City where shooting began on the young Vito Corleone's flashbacks, which were filmed on East Sixth Street in Lower Manhattan, between Avenues A and B. Later filming would move to Miami, Las Vegas, New York City, Sicily and Italy.
When The Godfather Part II was released in December 1974, critics were mixed in their reception. Some, like Vincent Canby found it "a Frankenstein monster stitched together from leftover parts. It talks. It moves in fits and starts but it has no mind of its own. Occasionally it repeats a point made in The Godfather (organized crime is just another kind of American business, say) but its insights are fairly lame at this point." Roger Ebert agreed that the narrative structure was weak, but noted that Coppola "reveals himself as a master of mood, atmosphere, and period. And his exposition is inventive and subtle." Years later the film would be edited together in chronological order as The Godfather Saga and shown on television.
Like its predecessor, The Godfather Part II was a box-office hit and won several Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Robert De Niro, Best Director for Francis Ford Coppola, Best Music, Original Dramatic Score for Nino Rota and Carmine Coppola, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Coppola and Mario Puzo, author of the original novel and co-author of the first Godfather screenplay.
Producer/Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Screenplay: Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo (based on the novel The Godfather)
Cinematography: Gordon Willis
Production Design: Dean Tavoularis
Art Direction: Angelo P. Graham
Music: Nino Rota
Costume Design: Theadora Van Runkle
Film Editing: Barry Malkin, Richard Marks, Peter Zinner
Cast: Al Pacino (Don Michael Corleone), Robert Duvall (Tom Hagen), Diane Keaton (Kay Corleone), Robert De Niro (Vito Corleone), John Cazale (Fredo Corleone), Talia Shire (Connie Corleone), Lee Strasberg (Hyman Roth), Michael V. Gazzo (Frankie Pentangeli), G.D. Spradlin (Senator Pat Geary), Bruno Kirby (Peter), James Caan (Sonny Corleone), Troy Donahue (Merle Johnson), Dominic Chianese (Johnny Ola), Joe Spinell (Willie Cicci), Abe Vigoda (Salvatore "Sally" Tessio), Leopoldo Trieste (Signor Roberto), Harry Dean Stanton (FBI agent), Fay Spain (Mrs. Marcia Roth).
C-200m.
by Lorraine LoBianco
SOURCES:
Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola by Gene D. Phillips
The Internet Movie Database
The Godfather: Part II - The Godfather, Part II
TCM Remembers - Pauline Kael/Troy Donahue
Pauline Kael, who died September 3rd at the age of 82, was one of the handful of film critics who made a noticable impact on the way we view movies. Her mix of personal feelings with more abstract aesthetics inspired numerous other critics (sometimes called "Paulettes") and in a few cases even made big hits of movies like Bonnie and Clyde (1967). She claimed to never see a movie more than once or to change her mind about it later. Several collections of her work are available, most with mildly risque titles like I Lost It at the Movies, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Going Steady.
Kael was born June 19, 1919 in Petaluma, California but moved with her family to San Francisco during her teens. There she majored in philosophy at University of California at Berkeley though she didn't graduate (the school later gave her an honorary degree). That's when she started to develop a serious interest in movies. In addition to the usual writer's assortment of jobs (seamstress, cook, retail clerk) she started writing about film in 1953; her first review was of Charlie Chaplin's Limelight which she disliked. She wrote for several small publications and did a radio show on the groundbreaking network KPFA before finally landing a job at the high-profile McCall's only to be fired shortly after she panned The Sound of Music (1965) (which she called The Sound of Money). During this period she was also managing and programming Berkeley Cinema Guild Theatres (one of the country's earliest repertoire cinemas despite being basically small rooms above a laundry), and was briefly married to avant-garde filmmaker James Broughton.
The turning point came in 1965 when I Lost It at the Movies not only attracted major critical attention but became a strong seller in book stores. Two years later legendary editor William Shawn hired Kael as film critic for The New Yorker, completing her jump into the limelight. Kael never shied away from controversy as two other events proved. In the early Sixties she engaged in an infamous and surprisingly bitter debate with critic Andrew Sarris among others about the merits of auteurism, the French-born philosophy that believes the director is the chief creative person behind any film. Kael's anti-intellectual streak came forward but since auteurism wasn't meant to be a genuinely rigorous theory (such attempts came later in the 70s) this was a sort of Brer Rabbit vs. tar baby fight that Kael could never win. The other notorious controversy occured in 1971 with her essay "Raising Kane" which was intended to show that screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz deserved as much if not more credit for Citizen Kane (1941) than Orson Welles. While Mankiewicz's contribution had clearly been underappreciated, most of Kael's conclusions and even some of her factual basis have been disproven though she never bothered to revise the essay.
In 1979, Kael made a detour to Hollywood by the urging of Warren Beatty. She was meant to be an "executive consultant" at Paramount but actually making movies is quite a different matter than writing about them so Kael lasted only five months. She went back to The New Yorker, eventually retiring in 1991 partly as a result of Parkinson's Syndrome. She still kept up with movies though, loving such smaller films as Vanya on 42nd Street and actors like Jim Carrey (who "has practically kept movies alive the past few years" she said in 1998).
By Lang Thompson
Troy Donahue 1936-2001
Troy Donahue died September 2nd at the age of 65. He was a fixture in movies during the 1950s, playing an assortment of heartthrobs and borderline tough guys. Donahue was actually Merle Johnson Jr, born in New York City on Jan 27, 1936. He went to Columbia University and started acting in small theatrical roles which eventually led to film appearances, the earliest ones uncredited. His first was Man Afraid (1957) but Donahue also made brief TV appearances at the time on shows like Wagon Train. He signed with Warner Brothers in 1959 and immediately jumped to stardom in films like A Summer Place and Imitation of Life (both 1959). He was busy in a variety of films during this periods - notably Parrish (1961) and Rome Adventure (1962) - but also starred in the TV series Surfside 6 (1960) and Hawaiian Eye (1962 and predating Hawaii Five-O by several years). Donahue's career declined as the Sixties became more turbulent but he still made notable appearances in The Godfather Part II (1974), playing a character with Donahue's own real name, and Monte Hellman's Cockfighter (1974). Most of Donahue's later films were direct-to-video efforts like Nudity Required and Omega Cop but trash aesthete John Waters, a huge fan, used him for Cry-Baby (1990).
By Lang Thompson
TCM REMEMBERS CARROLL O'CONNOR 1924-2001
Carroll O'Connor - who died June 21st at the age of 76 - will be best remembered for portraying Archie Bunker on TV's All in the Family but his career actually was much more extensive. Born in New York on August 2nd, 1924, O'Connor served in the merchant marine during World War II before attending the University of Montana where he worked on the school newspaper. Before graduating, he followed his brother to another college in Ireland (he would later get a Masters in speech from Montana). It was in Ireland that O'Connor started acting in several local productions. He returned to the U.S. for his Broadway debut in 1958 and shortly after started to appear on numerous TV shows like The Untouchables and Naked City. His first film was Parrish (1961) though he eventually acted in over a dozen films during the Sixties including Cleopatra (1963), Marlowe (1969), Hawaii (1966) and Point Blank (1967). O'Connor even auditioned for the part of the Skipper in the TV series, Gilligan's Island, but it was his role as Archie Bunker in a 1971 sitcom that made him a star. All in the Family was an American version of the British sitcom Till Death Do Us Part that met some initial resistance (ABC rejected the first two pilots) but quickly captivated American audiences and became the country's top-rated TV show. Archie became such an icon that his chair is now preserved in the Smithsonian. The series lasted until 1979 and brought O'Connor four Emmys, even leading to a four-year spinoff Archie Bunker's Place starring O'Connor. (It also produced one of TV's oddest spinoffs in1994's 704 Hauser about a multi-racial family living in Archie Bunker's old house. It had no cast members from the earlier series and only lasted six episodes.) In 1988, O'Connor took the role of a Southern sheriff in a TV series based on the movie In the Heat of the Night and found himself in another hit, this one lasting until 1995. He also occasionally played Helen Hunt's father on Mad About You. By all accounts, O'Connor was nothing like Archie Bunker; in fact, O'Connor was an active anti-drug crusader, partly the result of his son's drug-related suicide.
By Lang Thompson
TCM REMEMBERS JACK LEMMON 1925-2001
Whether playing a cross-dressing jazz bassist or a bickering roommate, Lemmon has kept his fans in stitches for fifty years. But beneath that comedian's facade, the actor had a very serious side, which occasionally surfaced in such films as Days of Wine and Roses (1962) or Costa-Gavras' political thriller Missing (1982). Lemmon was truly a one-of-a-kind actor and his track record for acclaimed performances is truly remarkable: 8 Oscar nominations (he won Best Supporting Actor for Mister Roberts (1955) and Best Actor for Save the Tiger (1973), a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, 8 British Academy Award nominations, 4 Emmy Award nominations, numerous Golden Globe nominations, a two-time Best Actor winner at the Cannes Film Festival, the list goes on and on.
Lemmon entered the world in a completely novel fashion; he was born prematurely in an elevator in Boston in 1925. The son of a doughnut manufacturer, Lemmon later attended Harvard University but was bitten by the acting bug and left the prestigious college for Broadway. Between theatrical gigs, he played piano accompaniment to silent films shown at the Knickerbocker Music Hall in New York. Later, Lemmon claimed that he learned more about comic technique by watching these Chaplin, Keaton and Harold Lloyd two-reelers than acting school could have ever taught him.
From Broadway and early TV appearances to Hollywood, Lemmon moved West to make his screen debut in It Should Happen to You (1954), opposite Judy Holliday in a variation of her 'dumb blonde' persona that had won her an Oscar for Born Yesterday (1952). In It Should Happen to You, Holliday plays a struggling actress who soon wins fast fame as the product of promotion. Lemmon plays her levelheaded boyfriend but finds himself on the sidelines when the suave and sophisticated Peter Lawford appears on the scene. It Should Happen to You, directed by George Cukor, was a popular success and Lemmon and Holliday were quickly teamed again in Phffft! (1954), another lightweight romantic comedy. A year later, Lemmon hit the major leagues when he supported Hollywood heavyweights Henry Fonda, James Cagney and William Powell in Mister Roberts (1955). As Ensign Pulver, a deckhand who avoids work whenever possible, Lemmon won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar®.
Onscreen, Lemmon's characters often found that they were the wrong men for their jobs. In Cowboy (1958), Lemmon plays a city slicker venturing out on the wild frontier. His romantic visions of the West are soon changed by the hard-living, hard-drinking reality. Cowboy is based on the autobiography of Frank Harris, and, like the author, Lemmon found himself adapting to the rough and tumble lifestyle on the trail.
Lemmon brought a new comic persona to Hollywood films. He combined elements of screwball and slapstick comedy with his own self-deprecating humor to create satiric portraits of the contemporary American male. The sometimes cynical comic sense of director Billy Wilder provided Lemmon with the perfect complement. Together they made seven films, but it was their first, Some Like It Hot (1959), that captured the sheer comic genius of their collaborations together.
From sexual antics to social critique, Lemmon and Wilder sharpened their comic knives on the hypocrisies they saw in American culture. The Apartment (1960) focused on a working stiff who lends his home to his supervisors for their extramarital affairs. Problems arise when Lemmon falls for his boss's paramour - it gets even more complicated when she tries to kill herself in his pad! Though The Apartment was a comic success, with each passing year the film's serious side seems even more dark and derisive. Illicit love and the corruption of big business might not seem to be the stuff of hit comedies, but Wilder and Lemmon found humor in the most unlikeliest of places. Director and comic star went on to make five more films: Irma la Douce (1963), The Fortune Cookie (1966), Avanti! (1972), The Front Page (1974) and Buddy Buddy (1981).
Billy Wilder and Lemmon's lifelong comic foil Walter Matthau (nine collaborations with Lemmon in 32 years, including their most popular film, The Odd Couple, 1968) brought some of the comedian's finest funny moments to the screen. But there was a serious side too. Lemmon waived his salary to act in Save the Tiger (1973), the 'great American tragedy' of a businessman at the end of his rope. Lemmon won his second Academy Award for the film. In Missing (1982), directed by the uncompromising Costa-Gavras, Lemmon played a patriotic father searching for his kidnapped son in Latin America. The closer he gets to his goal, the clearer it becomes that a government conspiracy is behind his son's disappearance. Missing was inspired by a true story - the production was condemned by the Reagan administration and awarded the Golden Palm at the Cannes film festival.
Very few actors today can match Lemmon's range on the screen. He has acted in everything from lightweight sex farces (How to Murder Your Wife, 1965) to musicals (My Sister Eileen, 1955) to social dramas (Days of Wine and Roses, 1962) to political thrillers (The China Syndrome, 1979). Turner Classic Movies cherishes the memory of this remarkable talent.
By Cino Niles & Jeff Stafford
ANTHONY QUINN, 1915-2001
Not many actors can boast that they've inspired a Bob Dylan song but Anthony Quinn - who passed away June 3rd at the age of 86 - was one of the select few. But that's just one of many incidents in a life that can only be described as colorful. If a novelist had invented a character like Quinn, she would be accused of unbelievable invention. But in Quinn's case, it's all true.
Quinn was born April 21, 1915 in Mexico. His parents were involved in Pancho Villa's revolutionary struggle and must have made a striking couple since the father was half Irish and mother Mexican Indian. The couple were married on a train of rebel soldiers. After Quinn's birth, the family soon moved to East Los Angeles (after a quick Texas detour) where Quinn grew up in the shadow of Hollywood. (A branch of the Los Angeles County Public Library now occupies the site of Quinn's childhood home; in 1981 it was renamed in his honor.) At the age of 11 he won a sculpture award and shortly after began studying architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright. It was Wright in fact who suggested the possibility of acting to Quinn and even paid for an operation to cure a speech impediment. Along the way, Quinn also dabbled in professional boxing (he quit after his 17th match, the first he lost) and street-corner preaching. He continued to sculpt and paint for the rest of his life while also becoming a noted art collector.
Quinn's acting debut was in 1936 initially in a handful of barely noticable spots as an extra until he landed a speaking role in Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman, supposedly on the recommendation of the film's star, Gary Cooper. One unanticipated result was that Quinn married DeMille's daughter the following year; they appeared together in Phil Karlson's Black Gold (1947) and had five children. Quinn also appeared on stage in 1936 playing opposite Mae West. Quinn continued in film parts that gathered acclaim: Crazy Horse in They Died With Their Boots On (1941), a gambler in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), a soldier in Guadalcanal Diary (1943).
But it was the 1950s when Quinn broke out. Viva Zapata!(1952) provided him a wonderful role which he used to win a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. Oddly enough, in Viva Zapata! Quinn worked with Marlon Brando who he had replaced in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire. (Director Elia Kazan tried to start a rivalry between the two actors but they were great admirers of each other.) Quinn again won Best Supporting Actor playing painter Paul Gauguin Lust for Life (1956) which at the time was the shortest on-screen time to win an acting Oscar. The following year came was a Best Actor nomination for George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind (1957). As he did throughout his career, Quinn rarely hesitated to take work whereever he found it, which resulted in dozens of potboilers like Seven Cities of Gold (1955) but also a few cult favorites like Budd Boetticher's The Magnificent Matador (1955). It was a trip to Italy that brought Quinn one of his most acclaimed roles: a simple-minded circus strongman in Federico Fellini's La Strada (1954). Quinn directed his only film in 1958, The Buccaneer, a commercial failure he later attributed to producer Cecil DeMille's interference. Towards the end of that decade he appeared in Nicholas Ray's The Savage Innocents (1959) as an Eskimo, inspiring Bob Dylan to write "Quinn the Eskimo" (a Top Ten hit for Manfred Mann in 1968). In 1965, his relationship with an Italian costumer created a minor scandal when it was revealed that the couple had two children. Quinn divorced DeMille's daughter and married the costumer.
He continued the same mix of classics and best-forgotten quickies throughout the 1960s and '70s. A key role in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) only confirmed his talents while he again earned a Best Actor nomination for the unforgettable lead role in Zorba the Greek (1964). The gritty crime drama Across 110th Street (1972) is one of the best American movies of its decade, enhanced by Quinn's turn as an embattled police captain. Quinn was a pope in The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), an Islamic leader in The Message (1976), a thinly disguised Aristotle Onassis in The Greek Tycoon (1978) and an assortment of gangsters, con men, military leaders and what have you. The rest of his career might be summed up by the year 1991 when he gathered critical acclaim for his appearance in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, was nominated for a Razzie as Worst Actor in Mobsters, co-starred with Bo Derek in Ghosts Can't Do It, worked beside John Candy and Macaulay Culkin in Chris Columbus' Only the Lonely and made a film so obscure it appears to have never appeared on video. Quinn married his third wife in 1997; they had one son. He had just completed the title role in Avenging Angelo (with Sylvester Stallone) at the time of his death.
By Lang Thompson
TCM Remembers - Pauline Kael/Troy Donahue
Quotes
It made me think of what you once told me: "In five years the Corleone family will be completely legitimate." That was seven years ago.- Kay
I know. I'm trying, darling.- Michael Corleone
Oh, this is too violent for me!- Don Fanucci
Our friend and associate Hyman Roth is in the news. The High Court of Israel turned down his request to live there as a returning Jew. He landed in Brazil last night offering a "gift" of a million dollars if they'd let him stay. They said no. His passport's been invalidated, except for his return trip to the States.- Al Neri
He'll try Panama next.- Tom Hagen
Panama won't take him. Not for a million, not for ten million.- Michael Corleone
I don't feel I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my enemies.- Michael Corleone
I know it was you Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!- Michael Corleone
Trivia
Martin Scorsese was a hot favorite to direct Part II. However, following the success of The Godfather, Paramount retained Francis Ford Coppola as director.
Lee Strasberg came out of retirement to play Hyman Roth after a specific request from Al Pacino. He was unwilling at first, but agreed to do it after 45 minute meeting with Francis Coppola's father, Carmine.
To prepare for his role, Robert De Niro lived in Sicily.
Co-authors Mario Puzo and Francis Coppola disagreed over whether Michael should have Fredo killed. Puzo only agreed on condition that Michael would wait until their mother was dead.
Godfather II was the last film printed in the US in the Technicolor "imbibition" printing process. The lab was held open for about three weeks for the film to be ready to print, and then it was disassembled and sent to Peking, China. The imbibition process was a three stripe dye transfer process that photochemical processes have yet to equal in richness and longevity of color rendition.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States Winter December 12, 1974
Released in United States on Video 1977 (as part of the re-edited, 450-minute "The Godfather Saga" edition)
Re-released in United States on Video May 6, 1997 (25th Anniversary Edition--digitally remastered)
Voted Best Director by the 1975 Directors Guild of America.
Voted Best Director (shared for his work in "The Conversation) and Best Cinematography (shared with his work on "The Parallax View") by the 1974 National Society of Film critics.
Released in United States December 1974
Released in United States Winter December 12, 1974
Released in United States on Video 1977
Re-released in United States on Video May 6, 1997
Sequel to "The Godfather" (1972).
"The Godfather, Part II" is the only sequel to have won an Academy Award for Best Picture in Oscar history.
Based on the Mario Puzo novel "The Godfather" (New York, 1969).
Released in USA on video.
Selected in 1993 for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.
Released in United States December 1974
Voted "Best Adapted Screenplay" by the 1975 Writers Guild of America.