Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic movie was never the same after losing its essential character, and Robert Duvall was the one to regret it the most.
Things have been pretty rough in Francis Ford Coppola’s cult classic gangster movie The Godfather, so no wonder the franchise lost quite many of its big figures on the way, with one of those definitely missing in the sequel.
Released back in 1972, The Godfather was destined to transform the gangster genre and the way the public saw it before, adding more emotional and psychological layers to the cat-and-mouse chase within the mafia world.
However, it was nothing like that on the movie’s set, and The Godfather’s Robert Duvall thinks the first film owes its special atmosphere to his co-star.
Robert Duvall Says James Caan Was “a Lot of Fun” During ‘The Godfather’ Filming
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With guns and threats being The Godfather’s normal day in front of the camera, laughs and chill was what dominated behind it.
As Tom Hagen’s actor Robert Duvall revealed a couple of years ago, filming the first movie became some sort of core memory for most of the cast, including The Godfather’s leading star Marlon Brando, due to the light-hearted atmosphere created by James Caan.
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In the first movie, Caan portrayed Sonny Corleone, Vito's eldest son known for his hot temper which eventually leads to the character’s untimely death; the actor also made a brief appearance in The Godfather’s sequel released in 1974, but only for one flashback scene.
“Jimmy’s a lot of fun and he’d tell a joke and it would take Brando three seconds to catch on. He loved Jimmy. Jimmy was funny the whole time, but he was not in Godfather II. So, The Godfather was a bit more fun”, Duvall said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2022, not long before Caan’s passing at the age of 82 the same year.
‘The Godfather II’ Redeemed Its Reputation After Initial Failure
- On Rotten Tomatoes, The Godfather II holds scores of 96% and 97% from critics and audiences
- On IMDb, the movie is rated 9/10
Released two years after The Godfather’s premiere, the sequel first caused polarising reactions, with some critics praising it even more than the original movie and others slamming Coppola for the movie’s slow pace and incoherence.
However, as the time passed by, The Godfather II suddenly received a major reevaluation and is now regarded as one of the best movies of all time on par with its predecessor.
“Few movie sequels are as good as the films they follow and even fewer have about them the air of necessity. Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II is among the rare exceptions”, The Times’ Philip French wrote in his review back then.
