After watching The Godfather Part 2 for the third time, I came away with a greater appreciation for how the movie paints a mood of decay.

In Part 2, the Corleone family is like a wilting flower, with its petals falling off, its leaves yellowing, its roots rotting.

The cinematography supports this mood in a lot of ways:

1. The house is dark and doesn't have the homey feeling of the older place on the East Coast. There is an oppressiveness to it. The furniture doesn't have personality, it looks like you would expect a model house of the 1950s to look if an interior designer wanted to create a safe, bland look.

2. When Michael comes back from Cuba, he wanders through a lifeless empty house. The only activity is Kay sewing drapes.

3. In the East Coast place, there were children running around, it was alive. The Tahoe house has none of that, and you only see the kids a few times.

4. The East Coast had fun guys like Clemenza. Mike has the dour Rocco and Neri in Tahoe.

5. The overall gloominess of the Tahoe compound makes me think of Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher." In Usher you have a family about to die out, living in a shadow of its former glory, waiting for death. I get that vibe from the Corleone compound. Even if Mike is making a lot of money and gaining power, you are left with a core that is weakening and losing vigor.

6. Maybe this is my imagination, but I can almost sense a yellowish-brownish gauziness to the picture, like a faded color photograph.

7. Contrast the wedding in Part 1 with the communion party in Part 2. The wedding is all fun and joy, but no one seems to be having a good time at the communion party in Part 2. Michael is more worried about looking around at everyone and policing Fredo's drunk wife. There is snipping at the family table. The band can't play any Italian music. The wedding was a celebration from the heart, but the communion looked like a fancy show to impress people, where you feel like it's a burden to show up.

What makes this so powerful is that it's subtle. FFC doesn't throw this out at you, you just absorb it.

The contrast with the flashbacks to a younger, more colorful Vito, empahsize even more the darkness of the 1950s scenes.

I didn't find the plot of Part 2 as compelling as Part 1, but I really appreciated the mood the movie paints.

I always loved the contrast between the communion party and Connie's wedding. The only holdover seems to be Frankie Five Angels, who doesn't want the "canopies", he wants his sausage and peppers. Joking around with the band, just like Mama singing at the wedding.

The other major difference is the presence of so-called society. You have the people who couldn't come to Connie's wedding because they couldn't be seen associating with the Don (but they sent expensive gifts), and Sonny spitting on the badge of the FBI guys. Then, at the Communion, law enforcement officers are plainly seen - and of course there's Senator Geary, sucking up to Michael in public, and disparaging him in private.

Ya know, you're right. I've never really thought about it that way, but when you point out all the exaples, it really becomes apperent.Like you said, its so subtle, you dont notice it the first, or second, 0r twentith time you see it until you really step back and think about it.

I love how you can see their breaths in the guest house when Fredo and Mike are arguing. Very cold scene, on many different levels.

I think that after Vito Corleone died, it took all the life and, well, let's say "brightness" out of the family. Everytime I watch "Godfather 2", I find that I feel most happy when they flash back to the scenes in Sicily of young Vito. Michael is a great mob boss, but he seems so much darker than his father. That might probably go hand in hand with the way the movie was shot -- dark and gloomy.