“It was an abortion, Michael. It was a son. It was a son and I had it killed because THIS must all end!” — Kay Corleone
The image of the chair in the title card says it all: the throne is empty throughout The Godfather Part II. Even though Michael (Al Pacino) is the new Don in the present and we also get to see the young Vito’s (Robert De Niro) conquest in the past, Don Vito Corleone as we got to know him in Part I through Marlon Brando is forever gone and is ultimately irreplaceable. Even in the closing moments, during the flashback to a family gathering on Vito’s 50th birthday (which also happens to be the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor), Vito supposedly enters the house, but we never get to see Brando in the flesh, even though we see James Caan as Sonny, Gianni Russo as Carlo, and Abe Vigoda as Tessio again. In reality, the reason we don’t see Brando again in this scene is because they simply didn’t want to pay him, whereas Caan, Russo, and Vigoda were likely more than thrilled to reprise their dead characters’ roles for little pay. (Brando would later make headlines for charging a then-exorbitant $1 million per week for his pivotal appearance in Apocalypse Now, so this bit of assumptive reasoning seems solid.)
Regardless of the reason behind Brando’s lack of availability, the lack of Brando has an enormously positive effect on the impact of The Godfather Part II. Part II is rather unlike any other film that has ever been made, since its narrative weaves around the ghost of an actor that never even appears in the film itself. (Do the math: the only movies that allow for this possibility are sequels, which are a tiny percentage of all the films that have been made. Not to mention most of them are shallow cash-ins by movie studios that have no artistic merit at all and never attempt anything of this magnitude, cinematically.) What most people think is unique about The Godfather Part II — namely, the parallel narrative structure depicting the rise of Vito’s empire and the fall of Michael’s — isn’t really all that unique anymore, though it certainly was new and unexpected at the time. (The structure more or less formed the basis of the TV show Lost.) No, it’s Brando’s lingering presence that makes this movie so special; it’s a movie about Don Corleone, and neither central character offered in the film’s parallel narrative quite measures up to weight of Brando’s portrayal as the character.
Obviously, the young Vito comes much closer than Michael does, but there’s still a big difference between seeing Vito wheel and deal in his twenties and watching him completely demolish Bonasera at the negotiating table in the opening of Part I when he’s in his fifties. He assassinates Don Fanucci (Gastone Moschin), yes, but he does so because he threatens his family; he’s content to co-exist with Fanucci imposing his protection racket on the entire neighborhood before that. Likewise, when he finally gets his revenge on Don Ciccio (Giuseppe Sillato) in Sicily, who murders Vito’s parents and brother in the opening minutes of the film, it’s because of what he did to his family; it’s an act driven by years of resentment at having been smuggled from his homeland to America, traveling completely by himself, without anyone familiar to him where he was headed and where he was coming from.
He’s actually quite like my grandfather in this regard, although the circumstances (obviously) differ. My grandfather was born in the state of Illinois, but his mother died when he was six and his father was in the Navy, so he spent much his childhood living with relatives. At some point, his father remarried, but his stepmother never liked him, especially after her mentally unstable son from a previous marriage shot himself on the front porch of their house in Hawaii — my great-grandfather was stationed there, apparently — and blamed my grandfather for it, never wanting him to be in her presence again. Staying with relatives who worked in the movie business, he graduated from Beverly Hills High School and enrolled in the United States Naval Academy, graduating in 1937. He proceeded to fight against the Japanese in WWII and eventually rose to the rank of three-star Admiral, retiring after returning to the Naval Academy as Superintendent (i.e., the guy in charge) from 1972-1975. (If you’re interested in reading naval stuff, he wrote a bunch of books after he retired (some with my dad) that you can buy on Amazon. They’re pretty good.)
One of the reasons why pinpointing Vito Corleone as an ENTJ on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (as I did in my piece on the first film) is not particularly difficult for me is because, like Vito, my grandfather was an ENTJ, an in-charge type (an admiral, in his case) whose ability to command reverence and respect from those around him was simply uncanny. Also like Vito, my grandfather had a borderline obsession with family, since he never really got to have one as a child. Incidentally, the character I have always enjoyed the most on the HBO series Game of Thrones is Tywin Lannister, an ENTJ with a similar tunnel vision-like focus on his family (one that gives him an obvious blind spot towards his son and daughter). In a brilliantly written scene conceived entirely for the TV series (I’ve read the book; it’s not in it) introducing us to Tywin, he lectures his son, Jaime:
Your mother’s dead. Before long, I’ll be dead. And you. And your brother. And your sister. And all of her children. All of us dead; all of us rotting in the ground. It’s the family name that lives on. It’s all that lives on. Not your personal glory, not your honor, but family.
What makes The Godfather Part II such a tragic and devastating film is that by the end, Michael has entirely lost his family; he’s pushed everyone away. His enemies are dead, his father is dead, his mother is dead, Sonny is dead, Fredo (John Cazale) is dead, and though Kay (Diane Keaton) is still alive, she’s been exiled. (Lest we forget Apollonia, the girl he married in Sicily in Part I, is dead, too.) The only reason why his sister Connie (Talia Shire) is still there is because she is never involved in the family affairs in the first place — although she has a few appearances here and there in Part I and Part II, she doesn’t really have a place in the film until the final thirty minutes, when the family gathers for their mother’s funeral. Likewise, Michael’s mother Carmela (Morgana King) only has one key scene in the Godfather films, and it comes shortly after the intermission in Part II. Michael asks her if his father ever feared losing his family as a result of having to act strong for them. At first, she thinks he’s referring to the baby he and Kay have just lost, and she assures him he and Kay can always have another baby. But when Michael clarifies that he’s asking about actually losing his family, his confused mother replies, “But you can never lose your family.” Michael responds, “Times are changing.”
One of the reasons why The Godfather Part III was such an unnecessary film is that the post-intermission hour of The Godfather Part II is really a movie unto itself. The major plot of Michael’s story in Part II is concerned with Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg), and likewise Vito’s antagonist is Don Fanucci. Both of these threads more or less wrap up by the intermission two hours in, which occurs right after Fanucci’s assassination. The final 70 minutes or so is almost a separate film, much like how the first 27 minutes of Part I is almost a separate short film. Everyone always says The Godfather Part II is really two movies in one, but it’s actually not in the way they think. No, it’s not because there are two parallel narratives, it’s because there is an extended epilogue that presents the thorough unraveling of the Corleone family in great detail — the final 70 minutes of The Godfather Part II is the real The Godfather Part III. I hadn’t seen either Godfather film in a while before sitting down for these two write-ups, but I always remembered Part II being particularly grim. Which is why I was surprised that it isn’t — until the intermission, that is.
While I wouldn’t characterize the plot with Hyman Roth to be ordinary since it’s executed well, it’s a typical narrative plot — Roth is the antagonist for Michael, who is our protagonist, of course, even if he is an antihero. By the time Michael escapes the revolution in Cuba shortly before the intermission, Roth’s role in the story is more or less finished — he disappears for well over an hour, surfacing again just to die in the flurry of killings that closes the film. Though far from cheerful, none of the events with Roth are especially grim, either, which is why it’s such a shock to experience the movie as it descends into its monstrously bleak final 70 minutes. In a memorable scene that may be the most painful to watch in the history of film, Kay announces she’s leaving Michael, and when he unsuccessfully attempts to reason her out of it, she finally admits that she didn’t lose the child as a result of a miscarriage; she had an abortion. It’s a stunning admission, and is one that’s impossible to see coming, since we have been so busy following Michael’s war with Roth and his testimony in front of the Senate committee that we don’t have much time to think about Kay.
Michael, of course, doesn’t see it coming either, since he’s otherwise occupied. The argument the two characters have leading up to the admission is just about as hard to watch as the admission itself — Michael yells “I don’t want to hear about it!” at her over and over, stopping only to grab a glass of water since, well, yelling can cause dry mouth. Kay meekly informs him, “At this moment I feel no love for you at all. I never thought that would ever happen, but it has.” Michael then launches into some pathetic speech about how he’s going to change for her, completely unaware that the problem is that he already has changed. It’s a pretty revealing scene: it demonstrates that the two aren’t meant for each other, and that their personalities were never compatible in the first place. Generally speaking, Ts and Fs on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator don’t mix when it comes to romantic compatibility, based on what little I’ve read. As I discussed in my analysis of Part I, Michael is an INTJ. According to this analysis, apparently the INTJ’s natural romantic partner is the ENTP, though ENFPs are also compatible. (INTJs utilize introverted intuition the most; ENTPs and ENFPs utilize extraverted intuition the most. Therefore they’re complementary types.)
Also, check out the second bullet point under weaknesses on that link for confirmation that Michael is an INTJ: “May tend to respond to conflict with logic and reason, rather than the desired emotional support.” (Ouch.) I’m not sure what I would peg Kay as, but something like INFJ or ISFJ seems reasonable. In particular, this quote by real-life INFJ Rooney Mara seems applicable: “It’s easy to let people walk all over you … because you don’t want to be difficult.” Given the scene where Michael strong-arms Kay into marrying him despite her pleading that “it’s too late,” a sentiment she echoes here in this scene when he says he’ll change, I’d say this type is a pretty good fit for her. Throughout Michael and Kay’s argument, it’s like they are speaking two different languages to each other; his proposal that they “have another child, and we’ll go on” is borderline mechanical in the way that he doesn’t seem to take Kay’s feelings into consideration at all. Finally, Kay decides she’s had enough, and her response in its entirety is just devastating:
Oh, Michael. Michael, you are blind. It wasn’t a miscarriage. It was an abortion. An abortion, Michael. Just like our marriage is an abortion. Something that’s unholy and evil. I didn’t want your son, Michael. I wouldn’t bring another one of your sons into this world. It was an abortion, Michael. It was a son. It was a son and I had it killed because this must all end! I know now that it’s over. I knew it then. There would be no way, Michael, no way you would ever forgive me. Not with this Sicilian thing that’s been going on for two thousand years —
She stops there because Michael then attacks her with an enormous amount of pent-up rage. It’s a staggeringly powerful scene, and not just because we have been with these two characters for nearly six hours of screen time. No, it’s what this scene represents that makes it haunting as hell. Is Michael and Kay’s marriage now in shambles? Yes. But the dissolution of their relationship represents a true crumbling of what the Corleone empire is supposed to stand for; the foundation of family — “all that lives on,” in the words of the immortal Tywin Lannister — is now gone. All that’s left is a labyrinthine mess of criminal connections. But moreover, Michael’s motivations have reversed: while in the first film he developed the ability to let the ends justify the means, The Godfather Part II is a lesson in what happens if you flip the script on Machiavelli’s famous line from The Prince.
In other words, Michael becomes so taken with the means he used to achieve his power that he allows himself to be corrupted completely. (Incidentally, the TV series Breaking Bad has pretty much the same arc.) When Roth surfaces again as he heads back to the States, Michael orders him killed, despite the fact that he is near death already and will be arrested upon arrival. Michael’s consigliere Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) attempts to convince him of the futility of the action: “Is it worth it? I mean, you’ve won. Do you have to wipe everybody out?” Michael replies, “I don’t feel that I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my enemies.” Included on that list of enemies, now that his mother is dead, is his brother Fredo, who worked for Roth behind Michael’s back because he didn’t like how he was passed over when it came to his father choosing Michael, his younger brother, as the new Don after Sonny’s assassination in the first film. So Fredo is included in the burst of dead bodies that litter the screen at the end of The Godfather Part II. When Michael disowns Fredo earlier in the film, it’s pretty heartbreaking to watch, as well:
Fredo, you’re nothing to me now. You’re not a brother, you’re not a friend. I don’t want to know you or what you do. I don’t want to see you at the hotels. I don’t want you near my house. When you see our mother, I want to know a day in advance so I won’t be there. You understand?
The Godfather‘s ending was sinister, no doubt, but the film ended on a somewhat hopeful note, since the promise of a new era for the Corleone crime syndicate was just so damn exciting. Plus, the folks who perished in the first film’s barrage of deaths during the climax (yeah, both movies do that) were either sworn enemies who were criminals themselves or, like Tessio and Carlo, had committed the biggest sin of all in the film’s universe: disloyalty. Michael’s consolidation of power is thrilling to watch: we look past the fact that dead bodies litter the screen because those characters knew the game they were playing — no one forced them into mafia life. And that same sentiment applies to Michael, as well, since he began the first film with his back turned to the field of play, and willingly took a larger and larger role in the Corleone family business as the film progressed. By the start of The Godfather Part II, though, Michael has no goodwill left with the audience — he revealed who he ultimately is at the end of the first film, effectively cashing in all the currency of benevolence he displayed during the first two-thirds of Part I.
Throughout Part II, Michael is a cold, brutal dictator, plain and simple; every decision is detached, every person he surrounds himself with is held at arm’s length. The film pulls off a nifty narrative trick in this regard: whereas the first film sharply defined the edges of its world, clearly delineating who was inside it and who wasn’t, the second film almost does the opposite. Instead, everyone in Michael’s portion of Part II is defined through Michael; we’re as close to the characters that surround him as he is. We never know more than he does as we’re watching, and are as surprised as he is when his bedroom is shot up, with Kay’s abortion admission, and with Fredo’s betrayal. During the 70-minute post-intermission epilogue, we are finally presented with a picture of how the Corleone crime syndicate is affecting its eventual victims via the Senate committee hearings. (Yeah, all the scenes of the hearings take place after the intermission.)
I still am continually stunned every time I watch the post-intermission stretch of Part II, simply because the filmmakers actually decided to “go there,” as they say. (Michael’s half of Part II was invented specifically for the film, whereas Vito’s half was largely pulled from backstory provided by the original novel.) Had they decided to end the movie at the intermission, it still would have been a pretty good movie. Obviously, some stuff would have to be tied together and finished up a little differently, but the movie would have still been good. But they decided to add on the epilogue, which is among the most depressing stretches of story ever told on film. To this day, I simply can’t understand why they made The Godfather Part III when the whole point of the epilogue was to offer an end to the series that was definitive. The ending breaks — more like utterly shatters — the Godfather films’ universe. That’s what makes it so hard to watch. When Tom visits Frank Pentangeli (Michael V. Gazzo) in custody, they reminisce about the good old days of the Corleone empire, with Frank saying, “The Corleone family was like the Roman Empire.” Tom shakes his head ruefully and replies, “It was once.”
