The Godfather, Part II

Jon Lewis is the University Distinguished Professor of Film Studies and University Honors College Eminent Professor at Oregon State University. He has published thirteen books, including The Road to Romance and Ruin: Teen Films and Youth Culture (a Choice magazine Academic Book of the Year selection) Whom God Wishes to Destroy . Francis Coppola and the New Hollywood (a Booklist starred title), Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle over Censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry (a New York Times New and Noteworthy title), Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles, and for the British Film Institute's Film Classics series, The Godfather. Professor Lewis has appeared in two theatrically released documentaries on film censorship: Inside Deep Throat (Fenton Bailey, 2005) and This Film is Not Yet Rated (Kirby Dick, 2006). Between 2002 and 2007, Lewis was editor of Cinema Journal and had a seat on the Executive Council of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Part II (1974) is a magisterial cinematic work, a gorgeous, stylized, auteur epic, and one of the few sequels judged by many to be greater than its predecessor. This despite the fact that it consists largely of meetings between aspiring 'Godfather' Michael Corleone and fellow gangsters, politicians and family members. The meetings remind us that the modern gangster's success is built upon inside information and on strategic planning. Michael and his father Vito's days resemble those of the legitimate businessmen they aspire or pretend to be. Jon Lewis's study of Coppola's masterpiece provides a close analysis of the film and a discussion of its cinematic and political contexts. It is structured in three sections: "The Sequel," "The Dissolve," and "The Sicilian Thing" - accommodating three avenues of inquiry, respectively: the film's importance in and to Hollywood history, its unique, auteur style and form; and its cultural significance. Of interest, then, is New Hollywood history, mise-en-scene, and a view of the Corleone saga as a cautionary capitalist parable, as a metaphor of the corruption of American power, post-Vietnam, post-Watergate.

A study of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II in the BFI Film Classics series.

illustrated in colour throughout with stills and screengrabs from the film

Acknowledgments1. The Sequel2. The Dissolve3. The Sicilian ThingCredits