Word: mafia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...much colder film, with austere aspirations-not fully realized-to transcend its melodramatic origins and to become an authentic tragedy. The modern sections show what Michael (Al Pacino), as heir to his father's empire, must surrender in order to maintain his power and his ideal of a Mafia-style "family." The first film made clear that part of Michael knows better, but he cannot really change the stern conditioning of his upbringing...
Criminal Life. This is particularly remarkable because he does not even appear in long stretches. As a way of offering historical perspective on the Mafia (and of warming up his movie), Coppola contrasts Michael's fight for continued control over his inheritance by crosscutting to the story of his father's arrival in this country from Sicily and his first successes in the criminal life. Robert De Niro is excellent as the young Don; Coppola's reconstruction of life in Little Italy around the year 1918 is obviously a work of love as well as research. Somehow...
...idea of working in Godfather II was a lark, working on it was not. Strasberg applied himself to the role according to his own strictest principles of introspection. "In no way did I try to give a sense of the theatrical elements of the Mafia. So I tried to create a façade of not showing emotion, the sense of a man for whom all things were business." Strasberg also carried elements of Roth over into his own life-a basic article of Strasbergian faith-to flesh out the character...
...conspired to kill Jordan, using a St. Louis advertising salesman as middleman. The purported plot fell through when Merritts and the salesman tried to hire an undercover FBI agent as the triggerman. "They let a blond, blue-eyed agent pass himself off as a member of the Sicilian Mafia," said U.S. Attorney Henry Schwarz, who is prosecuting the case against Merritts...
Revenge finds Lee in Rome, where he has been dispatched by the daughter of his employer to assist his niece with her foundering Chinese restaurant. For dim reasons, the niece is being hassled by the Mafia...