The Immigrant/ The Godfather Part II

I am playing catch-up with the film series, as I haven't been in the right frame of mind as of late. These days I feel like a stranger in a familiar land. An outcast. An alien. I want to rise above this and become something great. Someone respected and powerful. Someone loved and beloved. Someone comical. How I am feeling, and my obvious love for great films have led me to these two great movies we will be viewing tonight. The Immigrant by Charles Chaplin (my idol) and The Godfather Part II by Francis Ford Coppola.

First up, The Immigrant. I admit, I am a huge Chaplin fan. His physical humor and his non-verbal wit leaves my sides aching. I have seen all of his full length films, save his final film. And I have seen almost all of his shorts. So, to my surprise, I had never seen The Immigrant. The Immigrant is a 20-minute film about an immigrant's voyage to America. The rocking boat and struggling to maintain equilibrium is an often used image toward the beginning of the film in the first reel. Later, the immigrant cons a conman and has a couple of run-ins with a drunkard. When happening upon a poor woman consoling another destitute femme, the immigrant decides to be a Samaritan and secretly gives her some of the few dollars he owns. A boat guard sees this and assumes the immigrant is pick-pocketing. Upon entering America, the tramp is nearly penniless and hungry. He decides to go into a restaurant for a bite to eat uncaring of how he will pay for the meal. He sees the same dame in the same restaurant that he was accused of pick-pocketing. They strike up an accord. He offers her of his sop, and orders more beans for her. When seeing the maltreatment of a patron who was 10 cents short of his bill, he becomes worried. He prepares for the worst and tries to quickly hone his boxing skills for the inevitable toe to toe. Upon finding that the waiter's trousers had a hole in the pocket allowing change to sluice through, the immigrant goes through several attempts to discreetly pick up the coin. When an artist sits with him and his date, the immigrant takes advantage of the artist's payment of meal and is able to pay for his meal. He leaves with the woman, and they immediately go to get a marriage license to be married.

This is a cute little short. With some good gags. And an interesting commentary on the poverty of the immigrants that are trying to assimilate themselves into American society. Although not expressly shown in the film, it appears that the immigrant adopts well to swindling and stealing to sustain a life in his new environment. The film was written, directed, and starred Charlie Chaplin. Already a famous star, he was given freedom to make this picture. This film was conceived while on set, and was going to be a completely different film with a different plot. Chaplin's first day of filming was a scene where he loses a quarter from his pocket unbeknownst to him, but picks it up from the ground thinking he found more money. Chaplin thought of his destitute situation, and devised the idea that he was an immigrant, penniless, and hungry. The scene where the immigrant kicks the immigration officer in the butt was later used as evidence of Chaplin's "anti-American" attitude which led to his deportation. The events leading to his deportation left a bad taste in his mouth for America. The film is a quick little plot with a little imagination and little social commentary. Needless to say, this is merely a dime in a pocket full of silver dollars in Chaplin's oeuvre.

* 1/2

The Godfather Part II. I won't go into much detail about the plot of the film, except that this is a sequel that won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards. Coppola was granted much more freedom from the studios to make this film because of the enormous success of Part I. Many critics argue that the sequel is slightly superior to the first film, but I am not one of those critics. This film tells the parallel stories of Don Vito Corleone's rise to power, and his son Don Michael Corleone's continued seedy practices and descent into corruption, greed, power, and wealth.

What makes this film great, along with its predecessor, is the acting. Such exceptional acting. One of Pacino's best performances. His collected demeanor in contrast with his explosive anger captivate. From the first film as an innocent, willing, and conflicted member of a mob family, to this volatile, power hungry, corrupt mob boss. It's amazing to watch this transformation. It's a testament to the pedigree of acting phenoms that grace the celluloid in this picture. Lee Strasberg, the acting teacher of Al Pacino and a slew of other notable actors, was coaxed to "come out of retirement" to make this picture. It's one of the few films he ever did, but his performance is up in the pantheon of great performances. John Cazale also makes an indelible mark in the film. His weakness, his insecurities, his vulnerability, his anger. Cazale, himself, did very few films before he was taken too soon, and yet again, his performance just blindsides the audience. It blindsided me, for sure. And let's not forget Robert DeNiro, who won an Oscar for his calculated and brave performance. He studied Brando's performance, and incorporated the mannerisms of the boy who played young Vito. Stellar is all I can say. So many great performances, so little time.

One thing that I am not too fond of in this film is the film stock and the development processes of the film. It's too dark throughout the movie. Or it's too yellow. I watched Apocalypse Now yesterday and compared to this film (both were Blu-ray) Apocalypse Now is so crisp, so clean, so visually appealing. Part II is grainy and 70's. The graininess would be more appropriate in keeping with the tone of early Scorsese like Mean Streets or Taxi Driver, but not this film. The film is well shot. Shooting on film has its advantages and disadvantages. For one, I noticed that the turning of the film within the camera makes the frame shake ever so slightly. An advantage, so I'm told, is that film looks a lot better when shooting night scenes than digital photography. Of course, digital photography was an impossibility in shooting this film, so me bringing it up is an exempli gratia and inconsequential.

The Tramps coming to America, penniless and clueless, really corresponds to the great privilege and strata rising ascent of the penniless and clueless Vito. His meteoric rise to the ranks of one of the most prominent Cosa Nostra leaders,and his influence on his children. Although Vito wanted a different path for Michael, Michael took the good ideals with the bad mentality. His drive and desire for power and destroying the competition ultimately costs him his family. Famiglia being the most important to any Italian patriarch, causes Michael to rethink his path, his life, and priorities in the next installment of the Godfather trilogy. It goes without saying that a theme of this film is power and as the saying goes "absolute power corrupts absolutely." Nothing is more true than Michael's behavior, his hybris, his hunger for power. This film is more an allegory; a cautionary tale for the consequences of pride, greed, and power. With the cinematography, the direction, the writing, the innovative parallel story telling, and the music, this film made its way to the forefront of the American New Wave cinema, and has become an endearing piece of art that lead to the many accolades, awards, and its inclusion in the Library of Congress film registry in 1993. One of a kind, unique, masterful, intense, wonderful, gut-wrenching, educational, and entertaining. The Godfather Part II is next to Part I on a towering pedestal, but just an inch shorter. Bellissima!

****1/2