The Godfather: Part II (1974)

This celebrated film stars in fact Al Pacino and it is a great bla bla bla music - Nino Rota, image, bla, acting, bla bla. I'll try to stay focused on DeNiro. The 1972 'first' Godfather stared in the role of the older Don Vito the well-known forty-eight years old Marlon Brando who won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar. The part was heavily worked and Brando's deep involvement is known. At 31 Robert DeNiro creates Vito Corleone in 'The Godfather:Part II' and wins the Best Actor in a Supporting Role Oscar (Coppola accepted the award at the ceremony as DeNiro was not attending). DeNiro filled graciously Brando's shoes even in the fragmentary flash back the narrative allows. There is a quality in the silent Vito that I cannot find a word for. He is not exceptionally smart nor exceptional in other ways. If possible I would call him very mediocre: he displays a certain combination of ambition, focus and values that bring him in the forefront. He is not a man that shows much, that one can easily read. Yet one can feel a vibe that renders him special when you meet him. He would not shine if the camera would not pay attention. DeNiro plays the part with great restraint and conveys a subtle power that generates relations and events like ripples around his character. Even if praised to death The Godfather is one of the must see movies for many internal reasons, and, if nothing else, for the deep influence it had.

Paul und Paula

It's nice. Also it's about GDR. Paula is all feeling and Sehnsucht, and also she's in love with Paul. She has children which she rather accidentally acquired in the search of men before. Paul is very honest and good-hearted, that's why his wife cheats on him. He loves Paula because she never would, but he also loves his son. But he also loves Paula. I liked how laconically and curtly the story is told, especially at the beginning when both their first partnerships are elapsing in the rhythms of some seemingly universal pattern, from which Paula's dreams then fly to surreal places of flower-covered drifting; and how the movie ends, just as laconically, yet warm.