How do you follow up a film as accomplished as The Godfather? How can you progress a narrative which already seems so complete? Well, the answer, it turned out, was to tell a story which presented both a new beginning and a new ending to The Godfather story by drawing on the events of the first film whilst combining and connecting the events of the second in subtle, poetic ways. The story of the first film was about the passing of the torch, the second juxtaposes the lives of the torch passer and torch receiver as it focuses on both the young Vito Corleone: an immigrant forced into exile who, in order to survive and live a life of dignity, takes the pragmatic and courageous decision to turn to organised crime, and his son, Michael Corleone, a man who, tiring of his and his family's precarious life in New York, has decided to reinvent the rules of mob warfare. Via rivers of blood and ruthless violence he has carved out a new path in a new part of America: a place where the traditions and customs of Little Italy have been left behind forever: a place where he now finds himself a stranger, exiled from the Old World, grimly tolerated by the New. We see Vito's rise as a product of his connection to his Sicilian roots, we see MIchael's fall as a result of his inability to meaningfully exist in either new or old America. He is neither Sicilian nor American, he is something in-between, an outsider, an exception, a lone-wolf who has been charged with leading the pack. His determination, calcuation and intelligence sees that he survives, but his growing sense of dislocation leads to the antipathy and bitterness which means that each step along his path there is less to be gained by his survival. Live, he might, but he shall never prosper.

The film succeeds so well because, once again, it is a brilliant character study of both Don Vito and Don Michael, played superlatively by Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, which this time dresses itself in the garb of a morality tale. On a superficial level, Vito's rise is represented as heroic and wholesome, while Michael's schemes seem bitter and destructive. If Vito is the hero and Michael is the villain, Michael must have lost his way somewhere. Yes, but it's deeper than that. Michael is necessary to his father's legacy. Had Michael not taken action, his father and his family would have been destroyed many years ago. The true consequences of Don Vito's life do not fall on his own head, he retired and then died before that could happen; it was Michael who had to pay his father's true debts, his father's life and everything his father had built becomes his responsibility once he becomes the agent of its continuation. This isn't cinema's greatest tragedy simply because of Michael's nature but because of the nature of the wider story in which Michael finds himself a key and essentially always reluctant player. Both Vito and Michael do the same thing, they both do what they perceive to be their duty: Vito does his duty and spends his life surrounded by his family before dying as a figure of reverance. Michael does his duty and his reward is isolation and suffering. A family is gained only to be lost, it's the son who must bear witness and continue to realise the sins of the father.