--- title: The Godfather Part II: 40 Years Later description: The second 'Godfather' film made enduring stars of its lead players and defined the machismo of its generation canonical: https://time.com/3631617/the-godfather-part-ii-at-40/ author: Richard Corliss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-12T21:00:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T02:48:59.492Z article:section: History og:title: The Godfather Part II: 40 Years Later og:description: The second 'Godfather' film made enduring stars of its lead players and defined the machismo of its generation og:url: https://time.com/3631617/the-godfather-part-ii-at-40/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb703b6154c2901f2/69876e7b524fc0a399deb608/godfather-ii.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Al Pacino In 'The Godfather: Part II'Woody Allen And Mia Farrow In 'A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy'' og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Godfather Part II: 40 Years Later twitter:description: The second 'Godfather' film made enduring stars of its lead players and defined the machismo of its generation twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb703b6154c2901f2/69876e7b524fc0a399deb608/godfather-ii.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Corleone Family Values: _The Godfather Part II_ at 40 by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Dec 12, 2014 9:00 PM UTC  Al Pacino in a scene from the film 'The Godfather: Part II', 1974. Al Pacino in a scene from the film 'The Godfather: Part II', 1974.Archive Photos / Getty Images by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Dec 12, 2014 9:00 PM UTC Francis Ford Coppola didn’t want to make a sequel to his 1972 Oscar-winning blockbuster, recommending Martin Scorsese, fresh off _Mean Streets_, for the job. He finally said yes when Robert Evans of Paramount Pictures agreed that _Part II_ could include extensive flashbacks of the young Vito Corleone, played by _Mean Streets_ comer Robert De Niro. Marlon Brando was out because he wanted too much money, and the Clemenza character got dropped because Richard Castellano wanted his dialogue to be written by a friend. Director Elia Kazan, the first choice to play Hyman Roth, spent so much time with his shirt off during a conversation with Coppola that when Lee Strasberg was hired for the role, Coppola insisted he play one scene topless. That’s Francis’s mother Italia in the casket as the deceased Mama Corleone — actress Morgana King thought it bad luck to lie in a coffin — and his Uncle Louie, a dead ringer for Brando, in the Havana cake scene. Coppola provided these anecdotal nuggets in [a commentary on the 2001 five-disc DVD of the saga](http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,179417,00.html) he made from Mario Puzo’s novels: _The Godfather_ in 1972, _The Godfather Part II_ 40 years ago (its New York premiere was Dec. 12, 1974; it arrived in theaters about a week after) and _The Godfather Part III_ in 1990\. Third time was not the charm, but the first two were sensationally popular, influential and cherished. Both won Oscars for Best Picture — the first and only time that’s happened — and made enduring stars of De Niro, Al Pacino (as Michael Corleone), Diane Keaton (Michael’s wife Kay), James Caan (his brother Sonny) and Robert Duvall (Consigliere Tom Hagen). In TIME’s _Godfather Part II_ review, titled “The Final Act of a Family Epic” — who knew, back then, that every movie epic had to be a trilogy? — Richard Schickel described the Lake Tahoe scene of a party celebrating Michael’s son’s First Communion and noted: --- > “” --- _The Godfather_ was its year’s box-office champ — its $135-million take at North American theaters would be nearly $700m today — and, in real dollars, still in the all-time top 25\. _Part II_ was sixth on the 1974 chart (Mel Brooks’s _Blazing Saddles_ was No. 1) and is widely considered the darker and stronger of the pair. Together they formed a bold mural of America: crime infiltrating big business and Washington politics, all intersecting with the Corleones’ family values. _God I_ and _God II_ had both immediate and lasting impact. They helped define machismo for a couple generations of young males, maybe females too. The films spawned countless Mafioso movies, and of course _The Sopranos_ — in fact, every vaunted TV drama about loving families with a dirty secret. (They’re vampires, they’re polygamous, they run a meth business, they’re Commie spies.) _True Blood_, _Big Love_, _Breaking Bad_, _The Americans_ and countless other were forged from the Corleone template. On the Internet Movie Database’s all-time Top 250, “as voted by regular IMDb users,” the two _Godfather_ films rank second and third, behind only _The Shawshank Redemption_ (a terrific film but… come on). And who wouldn’t rate Michael’s New Year’s Eve takedown of his traitorous brother Fredo (John Cazale) as [one of the greatest movie kisses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBalU46KqKI)? That “You broke my heart” moment was both passionate and chilling, like the films themselves. [_Part II’_s final shot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxqY2A1ZAEI), closing in on Michael as he ponders the sins that brought him his power, left viewers to determine his admixture of hero and monster. Forty years on, the films’ core stars are still prominently around. After seven Oscar nominations (two for _The Godfather_s), Pacino finally won Best Actor in 1993 for _Scent of a Woman_. De Niro matched his Supporting Actor Oscar for _The Godfather_ with a Best Actor for _Raging Bull_. Keaton was Oscared for _Annie Hall_ (one of her four nominations) and Duvall for _Tender Mercies_ (one of his six). To these and Caan, add Francis’s sister Talia Shire (Connie Corleone) and his director daughter Sofia (“Child on Ship” in _Part II_). Also two legendary 88-year-olds: B-movie mogul emeritus Roger Corman (“Senator #2”) and that supreme hangdog character actor Harry Dean Stanton (“F.B.I. Man #1”). As for Coppola, he had a great 1970s — _The Conversation_ and _Apocalypse Now_ as well as the first two _Godfather_s — but found it increasingly hard to raise financing for films he wanted to make. “It’s ironic that people should look back decades later and celebrate films I was given a lot of trouble on,” he said on the DVD commentary, “but that nobody wants me to make a movie right now. Talking to me about _The Godfather_ is like talking to me about my first wife when I’m sitting next to my second one. I’d rather get some encouragement on what I’m doing now than celebrate old projects. It was no fun 30 years ago, and I’m still doing it, and I didn’t want to.” That was in 2001, when the director was in a 10-year dry spell between projects. Since then, he has poured the profits from the Francis Ford Coppola winery into making his own low-budget, minimally-released indie films: _Youth Without Youth_, [_Tetro_](http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1898196%5F1898204%5F1898596,00.html) and the 3-D [_Twixt_](http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2093438,00.html) — intimate, moody melodramas closer in spirit to his 1963 _Dementia 13_ than to the impossibly ambitious films of his early prime. At an indefatigable 75, does Coppola look around, see the stars he discovered still in the game, and wonder if maybe it’s time for a _Godfather Part IV_? **_Read TIME’s review of_** **The Godfather Part II** **_here in the TIME Vault:_** [The Final Act of a Family Epic](http://time.com/vault/issue/1974-12-16/page/74/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3631617/the-godfather-part-ii-at-40/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3631617/the-godfather-part-ii-at-40/"},"headline":"Corleone Family Values: The Godfather Part II at 40","datePublished":"2014-12-12T21:00:34.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T02:48:59.492Z","description":"The second 'Godfather' film made enduring stars of its lead players, defined the machismo of its generation and influenced every TV drama about ordinary families with the darkest secrets","url":"https://time.com/3631617/the-godfather-part-ii-at-40/","keywords":["movies","martin scorsese","Robert De Niro"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb703b6154c2901f2/69876e7b524fc0a399deb608/godfather-ii.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Richard Corliss","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb703b6154c2901f2/69876e7b524fc0a399deb608/godfather-ii.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Al Pacino In 'The Godfather: Part II'Woody Allen And Mia Farrow In 'A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy''","caption":"Al Pacino In 'The Godfather: Part II'Woody Allen And Mia Farrow In 'A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy''","creditText":"Archive Photos / Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3631617/the-godfather-part-ii-at-40/","name":"Corleone Family Values: The Godfather Part II at 40"}}]}] ```