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100-575: Mario Francis Puzo ( / ˈ p uː z oʊ / ; Italian: [ˈmaːrjo ˈputtso, -ddzo] ; October 15, 1920 – July 2, 1999) was an American author and screenwriter. He wrote crime novels about the Italian-American Mafia and Sicilian Mafia , most notably The Godfather (1969), which he later co-adapted into a film trilogy directed by Francis Ford Coppola . He received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for

200-451: A " whodunit " murder mystery with multiple plot twists . The story has detective fiction elements. Two other Arabian Nights stories, "The Merchant and the Thief" and "Ali Khwaja", contain two of the earliest fictional detectives , who uncover clues and present evidence to catch or convict a criminal, with the story unfolding in normal chronology and the criminal already being known to

300-505: A 96% approval rating based on 126 reviews, with an average rating of 9.7/10. The consensus reads, "Drawing on strong performances by Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola's continuation of Mario Puzo's Mafia saga set new standards for sequels that have yet to be matched or broken." Metacritic , which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 90 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Michael Sragow 's conclusion in his 2002 essay, selected for

400-534: A Corleone family tree, a "Godfather" timeline, and footage of the Academy Award acceptance speeches. The restoration was confirmed by Francis Ford Coppola during a question-and-answer session for The Godfather Part III , when he said that he had just seen the new transfer and it was "terrific". After a careful restoration by Robert A. Harris of Film Preserve, the first two Godfather films were released on DVD and Blu-ray on September 23, 2008, under

500-499: A New Year's Eve party where Fredo pretends not to know Ola but later slips. Michael realizes that Fredo is a traitor and orders both Roth and Ola killed. Batista resigns and flees amid rebel advances , and Michael, Fredo and Roth separately escape Cuba. Back home, Hagen tells Michael that his wife Kay miscarried. A Senate committee on organized crime investigates the Corleone family. Pentangeli agrees to testify against Michael and

600-451: A Valachi-like figure. Production, however, nearly ended before it began when Pacino's lawyers told Coppola that he had grave misgivings with the script and was not coming. Coppola spent an entire night rewriting it before giving it to Pacino for his review. Pacino approved it and the production went forward. The film's original budget was $ 6 million but costs increased to over $ 11 million, with Variety ' s review claiming it

700-561: A change in American crime fiction. There was a shift into hard-boiled novels and their depictions of realism. Dashiell Hammett and his work, including Red Harvest (1929), offered a more realistic social perspective to crime fiction, referencing events such as the Great Depression . James M. Cain contributed The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934). This novel includes a married woman trying to murder her own husband with

800-419: A crime. Readers speak of crime fiction as a mode of escapism to cope with other aspects of their lives. Crime fiction provides distraction from readers' personal lives through a strong narrative at a comfortable distance. Forensic crime novels have been referred to as "distraction therapy", proposing that crime fiction can improve mental health and be considered as a form of treatment to prevent depression. In

900-604: A forerunner of Arthur Conan Doyle 's Sherlock Holmes , appeared in works such as " The Murders in the Rue Morgue " (1841), " The Mystery of Marie Rogêt " (1842), and " The Purloined Letter " (1844). With his Dupin stories, Poe provided the framework for the classic detective story. The detective's unnamed companion is the narrator of the stories and a prototype for the character of Dr. Watson in later Sherlock Holmes stories. Wilkie Collins ' epistolary novel The Woman in White

1000-460: A funeral the second time—the tears just don't flow as easily." The film quickly became the subject of a critical re-evaluation. Whether considered separately or with its predecessor as one work, The Godfather Part II is now widely regarded as one of the greatest films in world cinema . Many critics compare it favorably with the original – although it is rarely ranked higher on lists of "greatest" films. On Rotten Tomatoes , it holds

1100-482: A game based on The Godfather Part III. Although The Godfather Part II did not surpass the original film commercially, it grossed $ 47.5 million in the United States and Canada. and was Paramount Pictures ' highest-grossing film of 1974, and the seventh-highest-grossing picture in the United States. According to its international distributor, the film had grossed $ 45.3 million internationally by 1994, for

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1200-537: A group of men's pulp magazines with titles such as Male , Men . Under the pen name Mario Cleri, Puzo wrote World War II adventure features for magazine True Action . A November 1965 short story, "Six Graves to Munich", was expanded into a novel in October 1967, and adapted into a film in 1982. In 1969, Puzo's best-known work, The Godfather , was published. Puzo stated that this story came from research into organized crime, not from personal experience, and that he

1300-527: A heavy locked chest along the Tigris River, and he sells it to the Abbasid Caliph , Harun al-Rashid , who then has the chest broken open, only to find inside it the dead body of a young woman who was cut into pieces. Harun orders his vizier , Ja'far ibn Yahya , to solve the crime and find the murderer within three days, or be executed if he fails his assignment. The story has been described as

1400-431: A much-loved movie entitled The Lady Vanishes (1938), and Ira Levin 's (born 1929) science-fiction thriller The Boys from Brazil (1976), which was filmed in 1978 . Older novels can often be retrieved from the ever-growing Project Gutenberg database. The Godfather Part II The Godfather Part II is a 1974 American epic crime film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola , loosely based on

1500-520: A part in the film, but he refused. James Caan agreed to reprise the role of Sonny in the birthday flashback sequence, demanding he be paid the same amount he received for the entire previous film for the single scene in Part II , which he received. Among the actors depicting Senators in the hearing committee are film producer/director Roger Corman , writer/producer William Bowers , producer Phil Feldman, and actor Peter Donat . The Godfather Part II

1600-525: A sequel and a prequel to The Godfather that would tell the story of Vito's rise and Michael's fall. Principal photography began in October 1973 and wrapped up in June 1974. The Godfather Part II premiered in New York City on December 12, 1974, and was released in the United States on December 20, 1974, receiving divisive reviews from critics; its reputation, however, improved rapidly, and it soon became

1700-442: A series in 1999 entitled "Pan Classic Crime", which includes a handful of novels by Eric Ambler , but also American Hillary Waugh 's Last Seen Wearing ... . In 2000, Edinburgh -based Canongate Books started a series called "Canongate Crime Classics" —both whodunnits and roman noir about amnesia and insanity —and other novels. However, books brought out by smaller publishers such as Canongate Books are usually not stocked by

1800-461: A shoot that ran very smoothly despite multiple locations and two narratives running parallel within one film. Coppola discusses his decision to make this the first major U.S. motion picture to use "Part II" in its title in the director's commentary on the DVD edition of the film released in 2002. Paramount was initially opposed because they believed the audience would not be interested in an addition to

1900-465: A steamy sex scene between Sharon Stone and William Baldwin straight from the 1993 movie , and again, Bret Easton Ellis 's American Psycho (1991). Bloomsbury Publishing PLC , though, have launched what they call "Bloomsbury Film Classics"—a series of original novels on which feature films were based. This series includes, for example, Ethel Lina White 's novel The Wheel Spins (1936), which Alfred Hitchcock —before he went to Hollywood—turned into

2000-412: A still from the movie on the front cover and the film credits on the back cover of the book—yet another marketing strategy aimed at those cinemagoers who may want to do both: first read the book and then watch the film (or vice versa). Recent examples include Patricia Highsmith 's The Talented Mr. Ripley (originally published in 1955), Ira Levin 's Sliver (1991), with the cover photograph depicting

2100-513: A story forward in order to unravel mysteries. Likewise, the feature of detectives was popularized by Edgar Allan Poe and Conan Doyle . Hard-boiled detective stories attracted a decent amount of attention to the genre in America and France as well. Within crime fiction, it can also be common to use dark themes from real life, such as slavery , organized crime , and more. Aside from general themes, referencing instances of crime in real life

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2200-408: A story they had already seen. But the director prevailed, and the film's success began the common practice of numbered sequels. Only three weeks prior to the release, film critics and journalists pronounced Part II a disaster. The cross-cutting between Vito and Michael's parallel stories were judged too frequent, not allowing enough time to leave a lasting impression on the audience. Coppola and

2300-468: A total run time of 583 minutes (9 hours, 43 minutes), not including the set's bonus documentary by Jeff Werner on the making of the films, "The Godfather Family: A Look Inside". The Godfather DVD Collection was released on October 9, 2001, in a package that contained all three films—each with a commentary track by Coppola—and a bonus disc that featured a 73-minute documentary from 1991 entitled The Godfather Family: A Look Inside and other miscellany about

2400-494: A worldwide total of $ 93 million. Initial critical reception of The Godfather Part II was divisive, with some dismissing the work and others declaring it superior to the first film. Pauline Kael in The New Yorker was an early champion, writing that the film was visually "far more complexly beautiful than the first, just as it's thematically richer, more shadowed, more full." She writes: "Twice I almost cried out at

2500-451: A writer. Puzo retained screen credit in the completed film as a result of a quickly-settled lawsuit over story credit (most elements from his first draft made it into the final film), and Puzo's name subsequently featured heavily in the advertising. Puzo also wrote the original screenplay for Richard Donner 's Superman , which then also included the plot for Superman II , as they were originally written as one film. He also collaborated on

2600-535: Is Agatha Christie , whose texts, originally published between 1920 and her death in 1976, are available in UK and US editions in all English-speaking nations. Christie's works, particularly featuring detectives Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane Marple , have given her the title the Queen of Crime, and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the genre. Her most famous novels include Murder on

2700-491: Is Florida -based author Carl Hiaasen , who has been publishing books since 1981, all of which are readily available. From time to time, publishing houses decide, for commercial purposes, to revive long-forgotten authors, and reprint one or two of their more commercially successful novels. Apart from Penguin Books , which for this purpose have resorted to their old green cover and dug out some of their vintage authors. Pan started

2800-514: Is also common in several works of crime fiction. These reflections of reality can be expressed in many ways. For instance, crime fiction in Spain expressed grievances with authority, which was opposite to the instances in Japan that credited the government's functionality. Espionage is another prominent inclusion in many works of crime fiction. It includes the use of political intrigue, morality, and

2900-461: Is even better than the first film, and has the greatest single final scene in Hollywood history, a real coup de cinéma." The Godfather Part II was featured on Sight & Sound ' s Director's list of the ten greatest films of all time in 1992 (ranked at No. 9) and 2002 (where it was ranked at No. 2. The critics ranked it at No. 4) On the 2012 list by the same magazine the film

3000-529: Is from 1827 ; another early full-length short story in the genre is The Rector of Veilbye by Danish author Steen Steensen Blicher , published in 1829. A further example of crime detection can be found in Letitia Elizabeth Landon 's story The Knife , published in 1832, although here the truth remains in doubt at the end. Better known are the earlier dark works of Edgar Allan Poe . His brilliant and eccentric detective C. Auguste Dupin ,

3100-1031: Is married in Little Italy and has an infant son, Sonny . Black Hand extortionist Don Fanucci preys on the neighborhood, costing Vito his grocery store job. He begins stealing for a living with his neighbor Peter Clemenza and has two more children: Fredo and Michael . Clemenza, Vito and Salvatore Tessio sell stolen dresses door-to-door. Fanucci demands payoffs of $ 200 from Vito and his partners. Vito doubts Fanucci's muscle and decides to offer less. He meets Fanucci and offers $ 100, which Fanucci grudgingly accepts. Emboldened, Vito tracks Fanucci back to his apartment and kills him. Vito's reputation spreads, and neighbors ask him to defend them from other predatory figures. In 1922, Vito and his family travel to Sicily to start an olive oil importing business. He and business partner Don Tommasino visit an elderly Don Ciccio. He obtains Ciccio's blessing for their business, then reveals his identity and slices Ciccio's stomach, avenging

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3200-422: Is placed under witness protection . On returning to Nevada, Fredo tells Michael that he did not realize that Roth was planning an assassination. Michael disowns Fredo but orders that he should not be harmed while their mother is alive. Michael attends the committee hearing with Hagen and Pentangeli's brother from Sicily. Pentangeli, after seeing them, retracts his statement implicating Michael in organized crime, and

3300-583: Is terrible". Puzo died of heart failure on July 2, 1999, at his home in West Bay Shore, New York , at the age of 78. In April 2022, Paramount+ began streaming The Offer , a 10-episode dramatic mini-series telling a fictionalized story of the making of The Godfather , including Puzo's decision to write the first book in what came to be a series . Patrick Gallo plays Puzo. Victoria Kelleher plays his wife, Erika. All short stories, except "The Last Christmas" and "First Sundays", were written under

3400-617: The BAFTAs and was nominated at the Oscars . Like its predecessor, Part II remains a highly influential film, especially in the gangster genre. It is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time , as well as a rare example of a sequel that rivals its predecessor. In 1997, the American Film Institute ranked it as the 32nd-greatest film in American film history and it retained this position 10 years later . It

3500-687: The Epic of Gilgamesh from Mesopotamia , the Mahabharata from ancient India , the Book of Tobit , Urashima Tarō from ancient Japan , the One Thousand and One Nights ( Arabian Nights ), and more. One example of a story of this genre is the medieval Arabic tale of " The Three Apples ", one of the tales narrated by Scheherazade in the Arabian Nights . In this tale, a fisherman discovers

3600-599: The Father Brown short stories, and Henry Christopher Bailey . The Golden Age also had roots in the US. As used by S. S. Van Dine , fictional character Philo Vance also took advantage of an inflated personality and a high-class background in a plethora of novels. In 1929, Father Ronald Knox wrote the ‘Detective Story Decalogue,’ mentioning some conditions of the era. Early foreshadowing and functioning roles for characters were discussed, as well as other items. Ellery Queen

3700-484: The Godfather Epic VHS box set, which also told the story of the first two films in chronological order, again with additional scenes, but not redacted for broadcast sensibilities. Coppola returned to the film again in 1992 when he updated that release with footage from The Godfather Part III and more unreleased material. This home viewing release, under the title The Godfather Trilogy 1901–1980 , had

3800-652: The "Grand Master" of 20th-century Chinese detective fiction, translated Sherlock Holmes into classical and vernacular Chinese. In the late 1910s, Cheng began writing his own detective fiction series, Sherlock in Shanghai , mimicking Conan Doyle's style, but relating better to a Chinese audience. During the Mao era , crime fiction was suppressed and mainly Soviet-styled and anticapitalist. In the post-Mao era, crime fiction in China focused on corruption and harsh living conditions during

3900-536: The 1969 novel The Godfather by Mario Puzo , who co-wrote the screenplay with Coppola. It is both a sequel and a prequel to the 1972 film The Godfather , presenting parallel dramas: one picks up the 1958 story of Michael Corleone ( Al Pacino ), the new Don of the Corleone family , protecting the family business in the aftermath of an attempt on his life; the other covers the journey of his father, Vito Corleone ( Robert De Niro ), from his Sicilian childhood to

4000-555: The 19th century was crucial in popularising crime fiction and related genres. Literary 'variety' magazines, such as Strand , McClure's , and Harper's , quickly became central to the overall structure and function of popular fiction in society, providing a mass-produced medium that offered cheap, illustrated publications that were essentially disposable. Like the works of many other important fiction writers of his day—e.g. Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens —Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories first appeared in serial form in

4100-514: The Andolinis. In 1958, Don Michael Corleone has several meetings at his Lake Tahoe compound. Johnny Ola, representing Jewish Mob boss Hyman Roth , promises support in taking over a casino. Corleone capo Frank Pentangeli asks for help defending Bronx territory from Roth affiliates, the Rosato brothers. Michael refuses, frustrating Pentangeli. Senator Pat Geary demands a bribe to secure

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4200-568: The Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics. In January 2002, the film (along with The Godfather ) made the list of the "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" by the National Society of Film Critics . In 2017, it ranked No. 12 on Empire magazine's reader's poll of The 100 Greatest Movies . In an earlier poll held by the same magazine in 2008, it was voted 19th on the list of 'The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time'. In 2015, it

4300-575: The Mao era (such as the Cultural Revolution ). The Golden Age, which spanned from the 1920s to 1954, was a period of time featuring the creation of renowned works by several authors. Many of these authors were British. Agatha Christie wrote The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) and The Murder at the Vicarage (1930). These novels commonly prioritized the allure of exploring mysteries in

4400-488: The National Film Registry web site, is that "[a]lthough The Godfather and The Godfather Part II depict an American family's moral defeat, as a mammoth, pioneering work of art it remains a national creative triumph." In his 2014 review of the film, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote "Francis Coppola's breathtakingly ambitious prequel-sequel to his first Godfather movie is as gripping as ever. It

4500-524: The Orient Express (1934), Death on the Nile (1937), and the world's best-selling mystery And Then There Were None (1939). Other less successful, contemporary authors who are still writing have seen reprints of their earlier works, due to current overwhelming popularity of crime fiction texts among audiences. One example is Val McDermid , whose first book appeared as far back as 1987; another

4600-414: The acts of violence that De Niro's Vito committed. I didn't look away from the images, as I sometimes do in routine action pictures. I wanted to see the worst; there is a powerful need to see it. You need these moments as you need the terrible climaxes in a Tolstoy novel. A great novelist does not spare our feelings (as the historical romancer does); he intensifies them, and so does Coppola." However, while

4700-481: The age of 57 in 1978, her nurse, Carol Gino, became Puzo's companion. In 1950, Puzo's first short story, "The Last Christmas," was published in American Vanguard and republished in the 1953 anthology New Voices: American Writing Today #1 . After the war, he wrote his first book, the novel The Dark Arena , which was published in 1955. In 1960, Bruce Jay Friedman hired Puzo as an assistant editor of

4800-404: The army barracks where he is held and they discuss how failed conspirators against a Roman emperor could commit suicide to save their families. Pentangeli is later found dead in his bathtub, having slit his wrists. Enforcer Al Neri takes Fredo fishing and shoots him as Michael watches from the compound. Sitting by the lake, Michael recalls Vito's 50th birthday party on December 7, 1941 . While

4900-576: The assistance of a potential suitor. This theme extends to his other work, Double Indemnity (1934). Such elements of the book were a reference to the Gray and Snyder trial. Raymond Chandler was a significant author who managed to see some works made into films. In 1944, he argued for the genre to be seen critically in his essay from ‘ The Simple Art of Murder .’ Crime fiction provides unique psychological impacts on readers and enables them to become mediated witnesses through identifying with eyewitnesses of

5000-399: The audience. The latter involves a climax where titular detective protagonist Ali Khwaja presents evidence from expert witnesses in a court. " The Hunchback's Tale " is another early courtroom drama , presented as a suspenseful comedy. The earliest known modern crime fiction is E. T. A. Hoffmann 's 1819 novella "Mademoiselle de Scudéri". Also, Thomas Skinner Surr 's anonymous Richmond

5100-425: The author confided in him that he urgently needed $ 10,000 to pay off gambling debts. The film received three awards of its 11 Oscar category nominations, including Puzo's Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay . Coppola and Puzo then collaborated on sequels to the original film, The Godfather Part II (1974) and The Godfather Part III (1990). Coppola and Puzo preferred the title The Death of Michael Corleone for

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5200-659: The brothers to flee. Hagen blackmails Geary into cooperating with the Corleones by having him framed for the death of a prostitute. Roth invites Michael to Havana to invest in his activities under the Batista government. Michael expresses reservations about the government's response to the Cuban Revolution . Later Roth becomes angry when Michael asks who ordered the Rosatos to kill Pentangeli. Michael and Ola attend

5300-478: The casino license and insults Michael's Italian blood. That night Michael narrowly escapes an assassination attempt. Suspecting a traitor in the family, he leaves consigliere Tom Hagen in charge and goes into hiding. Michael separately tells Pentangeli and Roth that he suspects the other of planning the hit, and arranges a peace meeting between Pentangeli and the Rosatos. At the meeting the brothers attempt to strangle Pentangeli. A police officer drops in, forcing

5400-422: The chronological shifts of its narrative "a structural weakness from which the film never recovers". Gene Siskel gave the film three-and-a-half out of four, writing that it was at times "as beautiful, as harrowing, and as exciting as the original. In fact, The Godfather, Part II may be the second best gangster movie ever made. But it's not the same. Sequels can never be the same. It's like being forced to go to

5500-465: The country. The Spanish writers emphasized the corruption and ineptitude of the police, and depicted the authorities and the wealthy in very negative terms. In China, crime fiction is a major literary tradition, with works dating to the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties. Modern Chinese crime fiction emerged from the 1890s, and was also influenced by translations of foreign works. Cheng Xiaoqing , considered

5600-470: The crimes are usually unsolved, and clues are left for the reader to decipher. Famous writers include Leonardo Sciascia , Umberto Eco , and Carlo Emilio Gadda . In Spain, The Nail and Other Tales of Mystery and Crime was published by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón in 1853. Crime fiction in Spain (also curtailed in Francoist Spain ) took on some special characteristics that reflected the culture of

5700-401: The editors returned to the cutting room to change the film's narrative structure, but could not complete the work in time, leaving the final scenes poorly timed at the opening. It was the last major American motion picture to have release prints made with Technicolor 's dye imbibition process until the late 1990s. The Godfather Part II premiered in New York City on December 12, 1974, and

5800-542: The existence of spies. Prior media used the Cold War for inspiration and provided commentary on such events. Examples include numerous works by John le Carré and Gorky Park (1981), which was written by Martin Cruz Smith . Inspiration can be drawn from the legal system around the world, with varying degrees of realism. In these cases, a sense of morality and the more dubious parts of society are explored based on

5900-576: The family waited for Vito, Michael announced that he had dropped out of college and joined the Marines , angering Sonny and surprising Hagen. Only Fredo supported his decision. When Vito arrived, Michael sat alone at the table while the others welcomed him. Mario Puzo started writing a script for a sequel in December 1971, before The Godfather was even released; its initial title was The Death of Michael Corleone . Francis Ford Coppola 's idea for

6000-490: The film to his Great Movies canon, noting he "would not change a word" of his original review but praising the work as "grippingly written, directed with confidence and artistry, photographed by Gordon Willis   ... in rich, warm tones." He praises the score: "More than ever, I am convinced it is instrumental to the power and emotional effect of the films. I cannot imagine them without their Nino Rota scores. Against all our objective reason, they instruct us how to feel about

6100-433: The film's cinematography and acting were immediately acclaimed, many criticized it as overly slow-paced and convoluted. Vincent Canby of The New York Times viewed the film as "stitched together from leftover parts. It talks. It moves in fits and starts but it has no mind of its own   ... The plot defies any rational synopsis." Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic cited what he called "gaps and distentions" in

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6200-502: The film: the additional scenes originally contained in The Godfather Saga ; Francis Coppola's Notebook (a look inside a notebook the director kept with him at all times during the production of the film); rehearsal footage; a promotional featurette from 1971; and video segments on Gordon Willis's cinematography, Nino Rota's and Carmine Coppola's music, the director, the locations and Mario Puzo's screenplays. The DVD also held

6300-523: The films. Now listen very carefully to the first notes as the big car drives into Miami. You will hear an evocative echo of Bernard Hermann ’s score for Citizen Kane , another film about a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it." This film is the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Godfather and The Godfather Part II remain the only original/sequel combination both to win Best Picture. Along with The Lord of

6400-523: The first film in 1972 and for Part II in 1974. Puzo also wrote the original screenplay for the 1978 Superman film and its 1980 sequel . His final novel, The Family , was released posthumously in 2001. Puzo was born in the Hell's Kitchen section of New York City to Italian immigrants from the Province of Avellino ; his father was from Pietradefusi and his mother from Ariano Irpino . When Puzo

6500-407: The flashbacks "give Coppola the greatest difficulty in maintaining his pace and narrative force. The story of Michael, told chronologically and without the other material, would have had really substantial impact, but Coppola prevents our complete involvement by breaking the tension." Though praising Pacino's performance and lauding Coppola as "a master of mood, atmosphere, and period", Ebert considered

6600-404: The founding of his family enterprise in New York City. The ensemble cast also features Robert Duvall , Diane Keaton , Talia Shire , Morgana King , John Cazale , Marianna Hill and Lee Strasberg . Following the first film's success, Paramount Pictures began developing a follow-up, with many of the cast and crew returning. Coppola, who was given more creative control, had wanted to make both

6700-460: The genre was baptized with the term libri gialli or yellow books. The genre was outlawed by the Fascists during WWII , but exploded in popularity after the war, especially influenced by the American hard-boiled school of crime fiction. A group of mainstream Italian writers emerged, who used the detective format to create an antidetective or postmodern novel in which the detectives are imperfect,

6800-517: The genre. Many stories often begin when the crime has already occurred. Such fiction also tends to draw from the cultural aspects in which the work originated, whether from recent events or from a general consensus and viewpoints. The use of serial killers and unreliable narrators exists in a decent variety of crime fiction as well. The plot-puzzle formula, which was frequent in the Golden Age, makes use of potential hints and solutions to drive

6900-446: The hearing dissolves in an uproar. Kay tells Michael that she had an abortion and intends to leave him and take their children. Michael strikes her in rage and banishes her alone. Michael's mother dies, and he hurries to wrap up loose ends. Roth returns to the United States after being refused entry to Israel . Corleone caporegime Rocco Lampone assassinates him at the airport and is shot dead trying to escape. Hagen visits Pentangeli at

7000-425: The history of crime fiction, some authors have been reluctant to publish their novels under their real names. More recently, some publish pseudonymously because of the belief that since the large booksellers are aware of their historical sales figures, and command a certain degree of influence over publishers, the only way to "break out" of their current advance numbers is to publish as someone with no track record. In

7100-538: The huge popularity of this genre. A precursor was Paul Féval , whose series Les Habits Noirs (1862–67) features Scotland Yard detectives and criminal conspiracies. The best-selling crime novel of the 19th century was Fergus Hume 's The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), set in Melbourne, Australia. The evolution of the print mass media in the United Kingdom and the United States in the latter half of

7200-437: The larger bookshops and overseas booksellers. The British Library has also (since 2012) started republishing "lost" crime classics, with the collection referred to on their website as the "British Library Crime Classics series". Sometimes, older crime novels are revived by screenwriters and directors rather than publishing houses. In many such cases, publishers then follow suit and release a so-called "film tie-in" edition showing

7300-663: The late 1930s and 1940s, British County Court Judge Arthur Alexander Gordon Clark (1900–1958) published a number of detective novels under the alias Cyril Hare , in which he made use of his profoundly extensive knowledge of the English legal system. When he was still young and unknown, award-winning British novelist Julian Barnes (born 1946) published some crime novels under the alias Dan Kavanagh. Other authors take delight in cherishing their alter egos ; Ruth Rendell (1930–2015) wrote one sort of crime novels as Ruth Rendell and another type as Barbara Vine ; John Dickson Carr also used

7400-514: The monthly Strand in the United Kingdom. The series quickly attracted a wide and passionate following on both sides of the Atlantic, and when Doyle killed off Holmes in " The Final Problem ", the public outcry was so great, and the publishing offers for more stories so attractive, that he was reluctantly forced to resurrect him. In Italy, early translations of English and American stories and local works were published in cheap yellow covers, thus

7500-574: The plot over in-depth character development. Dorothy L. Sayers contributed the Wimsey novels. Her work focused on the spectacle of crime deduction. She also displayed an exaggerated form of aristocratic society, straying from a more realistic story. Other novelists tapped into this setting, such as Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh ; Allingham, Christie, Marsh and Sayers are known as the Queens of Crime . Other British authors are G. K. Chesterton with

7600-408: The producers could not reach an agreement on his demands that he be allowed to write the character's dialogue in the film, though this claim was disputed by Castellano ' s widow in a 1991 letter to People magazine. The part in the plot originally intended for the latter-day Clemenza was then filled by the character of Frank Pentangeli, played by Michael V. Gazzo. Coppola offered James Cagney

7700-446: The pseudonym Carter Dickson . Author Evan Hunter (which itself was a pseudonym) wrote his crime fiction under the name of Ed McBain. As crime fiction has expanded, there have been many common tropes that emerge from this category of fiction. Such occurrences can appear in a variety of subgenres and media. While the format may vary across different forms of crime fiction, there are many elements that are generally consistent throughout

7800-493: The pseudonym Mario Cleri. Crime novel It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction and science fiction , but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has several subgenres , including detective fiction (such as the whodunit ), courtroom drama , hard-boiled fiction, and legal thrillers . Proto-science and crime fictions have been composed across history, and in this category can be placed texts as varied as

7900-493: The rules that the work provides. Melville Davisson Post ’s Rudolph Mason: The Strange Schemes (1896) and Harper Lee ’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) are notable examples. Additionally, stories like Double Indemnity (1934) are based on cases from reality. Only a select few authors have achieved the status of "classics" for their published works. A classic is any text that can be received and accepted universally, because they transcend context. A popular, well-known example

8000-443: The sequel would be to "juxtapose the ascension of the family under Vito Corleone with the decline of the family under his son Michael   ... I had always wanted to write a screenplay that told the story of a father and a son at the same age. They were both in their thirties and I would integrate the two stories   ... In order not to merely make Godfather I over again, I gave Godfather II this double structure by extending

8100-482: The stories for the 1982 film A Time to Die and the 1984 Francis Ford Coppola film The Cotton Club . In 1991, Puzo's speculative fiction The Fourth K was published. It centres on a fictional member of the Kennedy family dynasty who becomes President of the United States early in the 2000s. Puzo never saw the publication of his penultimate book, Omertà , but the manuscript was finished before his death, as

8200-571: The story in both the past and in the present". Coppola met with Martin Scorsese about directing the film, but Paramount refused. Coppola also, in his director's commentary on The Godfather Part II , mentioned that the scenes depicting the Senate committee interrogation of Michael Corleone and Frank Pentangeli are based on the Joseph Valachi federal hearings and that Pentangeli is

8300-424: The story. William Pechter of Commentary , while admiring the movie, regretted what he saw as its archness and self-importance, calling it an "overly deliberate and self-conscious attempt to make a film that's unmistakably a serious work of art," and professing to "know of no one except movie critics who likes Part II as much as part one." A mildly positive Roger Ebert awarded three out of four and wrote that

8400-497: The subject of critical re-appraisal. It grossed $ 48 million in the United States and Canada and up to $ 93 million worldwide on a $ 13 million budget. The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards , and became the first sequel to win Best Picture . Its six Oscar wins also included Best Director for Coppola, Best Supporting Actor for De Niro and Best Adapted Screenplay for Coppola and Puzo. Pacino won Best Actor at

8500-493: The third film) for a limited theatrical run and home media release on Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the premiere of The Godfather . The disc editions were released on March 22, 2022. A video game based on the film was released for Windows , PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in April 2009 by Electronic Arts . It received mixed or average reviews and sold poorly, leading Electronic Arts to cancel plans for

8600-435: The third film, but Paramount Pictures found that unacceptable. In September 2020, for the film's 30th anniversary, it was announced that a new cut of the film titled Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone would have a limited theatrical release in December 2020 followed by digital and Blu-ray. Coppola said the film is the version he and Puzo had originally envisioned, and it "vindicates" its status among

8700-678: The title The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration . The Blu-ray Disc box set (four discs) includes high-definition extra features on the restoration and film. They are included on Disc 5 of the DVD box set (five discs). Other extras are ported over from Paramount's 2001 DVD release. There are slight differences between the repurposed extras on the DVD and Blu-ray Disc sets, with the HD box having more content. Paramount Pictures restored and remastered The Godfather , The Godfather Part II , and The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (a re-edited cut of

8800-410: The trilogy. In mid-1972, Puzo wrote the first draft of the script for the 1974 disaster film Earthquake , but he was unable to continue work because of his prior commitment to The Godfather Part II . Work continued on the script without his involvement, with writer George Fox (working on his first, and only, motion picture screenplay) and producer / director Mark Robson , who remained uncredited as

8900-420: The work was "much beyond a Mafia story" and offered Puzo a $ 12,500 option for the work, with an option for $ 80,000 if the finished work were made into a film. Despite Puzo's agent telling him to turn down the offer, Puzo was desperate for money and accepted the deal. Paramount's Robert Evans relates that, when they met in early 1968, he offered Puzo the $ 12,500 deal for the 60-page manuscript titled Mafia after

9000-880: Was 12, his father, who worked as a trackman for the New York Central Railroad , was committed to the Pilgrim State Hospital for schizophrenia , and his wife Maria was left to raise their seven children. Mario Puzo served in the United States Army Air Forces in Germany in World War II , and later graduated from the City College of New York . Puzo married a German woman, Erika Lina Broske, with whom he had five children. When Erika died of breast cancer at

9100-410: Was featured in several novels written by Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee , serving as both a character and pen name. In such novels, clues may be analyzed by the protagonist in tandem with the viewer, generating the possibility of understanding the narrative before it is revealed in the book. Past the Golden Age, events such as the Great Depression and the transition between World Wars ushered in

9200-530: Was looking to write something that would have wide popular appeal. The novel remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 67 weeks and sold over nine million copies in two years. The book was later developed into the film The Godfather (1972), directed by Francis Ford Coppola . Paramount Pictures originally found out about Puzo's novel in 1967 when a literary scout for the company contacted then Paramount Vice President of Production Peter Bart about Puzo's unfinished sixty-page manuscript. Bart believed

9300-445: Was over $ 15 million. Several actors from the first film did not return for the sequel. Marlon Brando initially agreed to return for the birthday flashback sequence, but the actor, feeling mistreated by the board at Paramount , failed to show up for the single day's shooting. Coppola then rewrote the scene that same day. Richard S. Castellano , who portrayed Peter Clemenza in the first film, also declined to return, as he and

9400-419: Was published in 1860, while The Moonstone (1868) is often thought to be his masterpiece. French author Émile Gaboriau 's Monsieur Lecoq (1868) laid the groundwork for the methodical, scientifically minded detective. The evolution of locked-room mysteries was one of the landmarks in the history of crime fiction. The Sherlock Holmes mysteries of Doyle's are said to have been singularly responsible for

9500-491: Was ranked at No. 31 by critics and at No. 30 by directors. In 2006, Writers Guild of America ranked the film's screenplay (Written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppla) the 10th greatest ever. It ranked No. 7 on Entertainment Weekly ' s list of the "100 Greatest Movies of All Time", and #1 on TV Guide ' s 1999 list of the "50 Greatest Movies of All Time on TV and Video". The Village Voice ranked The Godfather Part II at No. 31 in its Top 250 "Best Films of

9600-407: Was released in the United States on December 20, 1974. Coppola created The Godfather Saga expressly for American television in a 1975 release that combined The Godfather and The Godfather Part II with unused footage from those two films in a chronological telling that toned down the violent, sexual, and profane material for its NBC debut on November 18, 1977. In 1981, Paramount released

9700-698: Was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1993, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The Godfather Part III , the final installment in the trilogy , was released 16 years later in 1990. The film interweaves events some time after The Godfather and the early life of Vito Corleone . In 1901, nine-year-old Vito Andolini emigrates from Sicily to New York City after mafia chieftain Don Ciccio kills his family. An immigration officer registers him as Vito Corleone. By 1917 Vito

9800-721: Was shot between October 1, 1973, and June 19, 1974. The scenes that took place in Cuba were shot in Santo Domingo , Dominican Republic . Charles Bluhdorn , whose Gulf+Western conglomerate owned Paramount, felt strongly about developing the Dominican Republic as a movie-making site. Forza d'Agrò was the Sicilian town featured in the film. Unlike with the first film, Coppola was given near-complete control over production. In his commentary, he said this resulted in

9900-698: Was tenth in the BBC 's list of the 100 greatest American films. Many believe Pacino's performance in The Godfather Part II is his finest acting work. It is now regarded as one of the greatest performances in film history. In 2006, Premiere issued its list of "The 100 Greatest Performances of all Time", putting Pacino's performance at #20. Later in 2009, Total Film issued "The 150 Greatest Performances of All Time", ranking Pacino's performance fourth place. The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited it as one of his 100 favorite films. Ebert added

10000-487: Was the manuscript for The Family . However, in a review originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle , Jules Siegel , who had worked closely with Puzo at Magazine Management Company , speculated that Omertà may have been completed by "some talentless hack". Siegel also acknowledged the temptation to "rationalize avoiding what is probably the correct analysis, that [Puzo] wrote it and it

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