Why are people crazy about Young Don.

Agree 100%. I forget too.

I like this post. This is accurate. Well said!

I love the whole prequel part and would have preferred a full movie based on that then what GFII ultimately became.

I feel like I would like Vito's story better if he hadn't avenged his mother by killing Ciccio. Vito never seemed to be someone who reveled in revenge, including in the first movie. He only killed for business and mostly stayed out of the dreck involved in the mob world, including th heroine trade. He seemed to be someone who prioritized family over business, and to me, the real conflict of the first Godfather is blurring the line between what immoral acts you commit in the name of family and morality, and what you commit in the name of business and greed.

If Vito had gone to Ciccio and decided to forgive him due to his satisfaction with his life, it would have provided a must stronger juxtaposition to Michael killing Fredo and Roth for solely revenge purposes.

There also just seems to not be enough to the Vito story for it to warrant anything in and of itself, again except for serving as strong juxtaposition in other scenes. I maybe wish there was more of a transition to the first movie, as other commenters here have mentioned.

Agreed on so many levels! Pacino was on fire in this film and I have yet to witness any actor touch his magnificence here! The fact that he didn't win an Oscar is a travesty beyond belief. De Niro is overrated Imo.

I actually enjoyed the realism of the translated scenes.

While you're correct that Brando's Vito spoke pretty good English, he could have worked on it. There was an older Italian lady in my neighborhood when I was a kid who spoke English as a second language and while she had a good grasp of syntax and had a pretty good vocabulary, she also had a pretty thick Italian accent. One day, she called our house to speak to my mother and didn't recognize her because her English was nearly perfect. My mother told me she worked very hard to speak "professionally" on the phone and when she talked to people she didn't know, like in stores or at the bank.

Old neighborhoods and even new ones filled with one type of ethnicity tend to continue to speak in their own language, whether in the US or abroad. Look at the Hispanics or China town, so yes it was realistic for Vito to have continually spoken Italian in his Italian ethnic neighborhood.

And I prefer the Sicilian language with subtitles used over English. I guess I don't mind subtitles, I'm used to it.

In the Oscar game, Young Al Pacino simply ran into bad luck with Michael Corleone.

He was up for Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather. Some claim that was infamy-- that Brando should have been up for Best Supporting Actor, but no, Brando was an established star with a flashier role and more screen time than you would think -- Michael isn't there in the dark room where Don Vito meets people in the opening sequence(Sonny and Tom Hagen are there); Michael isn't there when Don Vito convenes the Five Families to negotiate a truce, or when Hagen tells him about Sonny on the causeway, or when Don Vito plays in the garden with his grandson.

So Brando was in line for Oscars's Best Actor of 1972 and Pacino got "cancelled out" by fellow Best Supporting Actor nominees Caan and Duvall from the movie. Joel Grey got the award for a rather limited but flashy role in Cabaret.

Two years later, Pacino was clearly the lead in Godfather II, The money action seemed to be Pacino in GII versus Nicholson in Chinatown for Best Actor (they had been up against each other the year before for The Last Detail versus Serpico.) In 1973, Pacino and Nicholson lost to Old Timer Jack Lemmon(Save the Tiger.) In 1974, Pacino and Nicholson lost to Old Timer Art Carney. I suppose Old Hollywood wanted to give Lemmon and Carney "last chances" -- Nicholson and Pacino were young, and would have more.

As it turned out, Nicholson won Best Actor the very next year -- 1975 -- for Cuckoo's Nest, but Big Al had to wait until 1992 to finally get a win, for a flashy but not terribly historic role in Scent of a Woman.

And so it goes. Oscars for the wrong roles; short waits for the statue(see Jennifer Lawrence, Brie Larsen) versus years-long waits(John Wayne, Pacino).

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