Far from the long voyages it once undertook, it now serves as a luxury restaurant, mafia members not included.
It was actually built three years after the film was set, in 1904. The boat that brought the young Vito Corleone was the Moshulu, a real ship that now resides in Philadelphia. Despite the extremely late notice, Gazzo eventually received a nomination for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance, losing out to co-star Robert De Niro. Gazzo) was conceived to replace his character. Thus, Franco Pentangeli, a high ranking member of the Corleone family (played by Michael V. Originally the role of Clemenza was meant to continue from the original Godfather film, but before filming Richard Castellano pulled out, due to an on-going issue with his salary. Havana was substituted for Santo Domingo, the Islands capital and this is where Roth’s hotel is. Instead, the pre-revolutionary scenes were filmed in the Dominican Republic. So I said ok, but you can’t kill him until the mother dies.” His reasoning behind this was that he felt if Fredo was killed by Michael before their mother’s death then the audience would never be able to forgive him.8įor obvious reasons filming the scenes for Cuba on location was near enough impossible. In Coppola’s documentary ‘Behind the scenes of The Godfather 2’ Pozo says, “I didn’t want Fredo to be killed, but Francis was adamant. Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather books originally didn’t want the character of Fredo to die at all. Apparently it was one of the musicians that pointed out the mishap, although it’s not clear why he was starting at everyone’s zippers in the first place… So the trousers had to be changed and the scenes shot again, this time with button-flies instead. The original scenes contained zippers on the trousers, which weren’t invented until 1913, way after the flashbacks were set. The flashback scenes had to be re-shot because of historical inaccuracies with the trousers. Roth’s statement in the film to Corleone ‘We’re bigger than U.S Steel’ was a direct quote from Lansky to his wife, although Roth’s eventual fate differed from Lansky’s who died of lung cancer in 1983 at the age of 80. Lansky was instrumental in the development of the ‘National Crime Syndicate’ in America and contributed to a major gambling empire that stretched overseas. The character of Hyman Roth (played by Lee Strasberg) is loosely based on the real life mobster, Meyer Lansky. All this together led to a belief by the immigrants that an organisation actually existed and thus the folklore existed. In any case, they still terrorised, intimidated and did some generally nasty stuff to the Italian immigrant population of the early twentieth century. In reality the ‘Black Handers’ in The Godfather II were freelancers with no real affiliation to a criminal organisation. This is described as ‘a process of colour cinematography using synchronized monochrome films, each of a different colour, to produce a colour print.’ The film was eventually digitally restored (as part of the trilogy) in 2008, thank goodness for Blu-ray. The Godfather II was the last American film to be printed in dye-transfer Technicolor. In actuality it kicked-off the trend of Hollywood films using ‘Part’ in their titles after the films exceptional success. They believed it would be off putting to an audience who would see it as an addition to the prequel.
His reasoning behind making the sequel then? He thought it would be interesting to make a film about two stories in parallel of a man and his father at the same age.Īccording to the director’s commentary on the DVD release of the film, Paramount was originally opposed to Coppola calling the film ‘Part II’. In later interviews he states he didn’t particularly want to make a sequel because the first part ended all the original aspects of the story. The Godfather Part II is one, submerging us in a world of mafia fuelled violence alongside the dream of making it big.Īs we all know, not everything in the film industry is black and white so here’s a list of things that you probably didn’t know about the second instalment of the trilogy…įrancis Ford Coppola was exhausted by the time he’d finished The Godfather. Great sequels are about as rare as an Italian mobster without his suit but in the words of Don Vito ‘Don’ worry’ there are a few exceptions.
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