Once Hollywood is blessed with what it sees as a potential blockbuster franchise, it is loath to let go. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, we can count on the arrival every year of at least a few sequels of original mega-hits at our favorite theater. Some of those franchises include Toy Story, Harry Potter, X-Men, Pirates Of The Caribbean, Batman and other Marvel Comic characters. Each of those films has reaped multi-million dollar profits at the box office. Even the Rocky franchise, which began forty-three years ago, is still making its presence felt with two sequels in the last four years. Life has been good for the now-seventy-three year old Rocky creator, Sylvester Stallone. With some production budgets exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars, studios turning to a previously successful franchise is a prudent gamble compared to taking a chance on new, untested fictional characters.
The movie business didn't always take this conservative approach. It is generally accepted that the James Bond movies, which began in 1962 with Dr. No, comprised the first modern era franchise. Those films were based on the exploits of the suave secret agent 007 featured in English author Ian Fleming's spy novels. Just before the American movie-going public was being introduced to Bond, American readers were gobbling up copies of Mario Puzo's crime syndicate novel, The Godfather. In a two year span in the early seventies, over nine million copies were sold. Paramount Studios had been fortunate enough to buy the rights for a mere $80,000 to convert the novel into a full length feature film of the same name. The Godfather, released in 1972, became one of the most important and highest grossing films of all time. In my July 26, 2019 post I detailed many of the reasons for its success.
Following the strategy adopted by Eon Productions, the English studio behind the Bond films, Paramount decided to back another film project which would continue the saga of the Corleone family. That film became The Godfather Part II. Wisely, Paramount once again joined forces with Francis Ford Coppola, who had directed The Godfather. This time Coppola was given more latitude, a stewardship rightfully earned by the overwhelming success of the 1972 film.
Of the many challenges facing the production of The Godfather Part II, two merit special mention. Coppola and Puzo worked together to develop the screenplay for the new film. When the story shown in the first Godfather movie ended, Michael (Al Pacino) had taken over as the successor to the late Vito Corleone, the character played by Marlon Brando. Naturally, the sequel would continue the saga of the family under this new leadership. It was mostly Coppola's idea to combine the sequel with a prequel. How did Vito Corleone, a poor orphan in a remote Italian village, get to be the powerful New York mob figure shown in the first Godfather? There are many films which resort to flashbacks and fractured chronologies, with the result being a product that is too gimmicky. In The Godfather Part II, just the opposite is true. Coppola masterfully blends the past (the first twenty or so years of the 1900's) and present (roughly 1945-1958) in a fascinating, easy-to-follow story. It does not hurt that the young Vito Corleone is played by Robert DeNiro, one of the greatest actors of his era. He was only thirty years old when The Godfather Part II was filmed.
The second major challenge to making The Godfather Part II is the casting of the principal characters. A studio can advertise a film as a sequel, but unless most if not all of the actors from the prior film reprise their role in the second, the public will probably have a hard time buying into the concept of the latter film being a bona fide sequel. Coppola had to deal with more than the typical amount of egos to get this accomplished. Brando refused to work on the project because he felt mistreated by Paramount. Pacino was in a foul mood because, unlike Brando, his Oscar nomination for the first film was in the "Best Supporting Actor" category, notwithstanding the fact that Pacino had more on-screen time than Brando, who was nominated for, and won, Best Actor. For his participation in one flashback scene which took only a single day to shoot, James Caan insisted on being paid the same amount he had been paid for playing Sonny in the first film. (Paramount caved to this request.) Richard Castellano would not reprise his role of Clemenza unless he could write his own dialogue. (Paramount did not cave to this request, so Clemenza does not make an appearance in The Godfather Part II.) What headaches! It is a small wonder The Godfather Part II was ever produced.
But, produced it was, and the result was a tremendous film which, even to this day, is often labeled the greatest sequel of all time.
****
Here is the handful of films I watched on the tube during the third quarter of 2019:
1. Death Wish (1974 drama; after his wife, Hope Lange, is brutally murdered, peace loving New York City architect Charles Bronson becomes a one man vigilante force which the cops, led by Vincent Gardenia, don't know whether to salute or stop.) B
2. The Emmigrants (1971 drama; Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, hard luck nineteenth century Swedish farmers, decide to take their growing family across the perilous Atlantic to America.) B-
3. The Godfather Part II (1974 drama; in this dual thread narrative, (i) Robert DeNiro is young man Vito Corleone who manages to escape the mafia in 1901, fleeing from Sicily to the United States, and (ii) moving ahead to 1958, Al Pacino has taken over from his late father as the syndicate family's leader.) A
4. Heidi (1937 drama; eight year old Shirley Temple is kidnapped by her evil aunt Mary Christians from the mountain home of her beloved grandfather Jean Hersholt, and forced to be a companion to a kind, slightly older invalid, Marcia Mae Jones.) B+
5. Laura (1944 detective drama; NYPD police detective Dana Andrews becomes obsessed with the victim as he investigates the murder of executive Gene Tierney.) B+
6. Ninotchka (1939 comedy; Greta Garbo is a humorless Russian special envoy sent to Paris to retrieve jewelry stolen from the mother country, but she gets distracted when Parisian playboy Melvin Douglas shows her what life in a free nation has to offer.) A-
7. Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (1961 drama; in gritty industrial Nottingham, England, angry young factory worker Albert Finney impregnates a co-worker's wife, Rachel Roberts, and dates Shirley Anne Field, with whom he's possibly met his match.) B
8. Thunderball (1965 drama; Sean Connery needs to thwart Adolfo Celi and his evil SPECTRE cronies from holding two stolen hydrogen bombs as ransom against NATO.) C+
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment