Nominated for 11 awards at the 1974 Oscars, "The Godfather: Part II" won six: best picture, director (Francis Ford Coppola), supporting actor (Robert De Niro), screenplay (Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo), music score and art direction. In the best picture derby, it beat Coppola's other flick, "The Conversation," which had earned him the Palme d'Or at Cannes, plus "Chinatown" (also with 11 noms, tied for the most), "Lenny" and "The Towering Inferno."

"The Godfather: Part II" opened at peak derby time, near Christmas, and was a clear hit. However, the top Oscar was the only best picture prize it won during derby season. National Board of Review went for "The Conversation" and the Golden Globes for "Chinatown" (drama) and "The Longest Yard" (comedy/musical). "The Godfather: Part II" was nominated for best drama picture at the Globes, plus five other awards, but lost them all. Coppola was competing against himself with dual bids for both of his films in the picture and director races, though, so he may have split his votes. In short, his defeats may not have been an accurate reflection of how voters felt about his films. However, "Chinatown" had led with the most Globe nominations.

It's hard to say what the film critics might have picked if they weren't so anti-Hollywood back then. In the early 1970s, the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics — comprising mostly the same critics, curiously — were in a battle to prove which group was the snootiest, so they usually opted for foreign-language art-house flicks.

The New York critics went for Federico Fellini's "Amarcord," but "The Godfather: Part II" came in second place in the voting, followed by Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage." The national society went with "Scenes From a Marriage."

Coppola was nominated twice at the Directors Guild of America too, facing off against Roman Polanski ("Chinatown"), Sidney Lumet ("Murder on the Orient Express") and Bob Fosse ("Lenny"), who had won the Oscar for best director for "Cabaret" two years earlier when the original "The Godfather" took best picture. Coppola had won DGA in 1972, though, so it wasn't like the guild owed him one. Coppola and Puzo also won the Writers Guild of America award for their script to "The Godfather: Part II" just as they had for the first part.

But Coppola was holding an Oscars IOU in addition to the fact that he distinguished himself so notably with two major films in 1974.

"The Godfather: Part II" got mostly great reviews. Richard Schickel of Time wrote, "Frances Ford Coppola has made a richly detailed, intelligent film that used overorganized crime as a metaphor to comment on the coldness and corruption of an overorganized modern world."

Pauline Kael of the New Yorker wrote, "The daring of 'Part II' is that it enlarges the scope and deepens the meaning of the first film. Visually, 'Part II' is far more complexly beautiful than the first, just as it's thematically richer, more shaded, fuller."

But Vincent Canby of the New York Times gunned down the mob drama: "It's a Frankenstein's monster stitched together from leftover parts. It talks. It moves in fits and starts but it has no mind of its own.... Everything of any interest was thoroughly covered in the original film, but like many people who have nothing to say, 'Part II' won't shut up.... Looking very expensive but spiritually desperate, 'Part II' has the air of a very long, very elaborate revue sketch."

Canby also panned "Lenny" as being "no more profound than those old movie biographies Jack Warner used to grind out," while Variety hailed it "a landmark contemporary biographical drama."

Variety called "Chinatown" "an outstanding picture" and the L.A. Times said that it "reminds you again — and thrillingly — that motion pictures are larger, not smaller than life." Newsweek said "The Conversation" "remains brilliantly original in its basic style and mood." "The Towering Inferno" actually got great reviews too, as sensational blockbusters go. Cheered the L.A. Times: "More stars, more effects, more scale, more suspense, more crises, more impact, more of that feeling that you got your ticket's worth and then some!" Variety proclaimed it to be "one of the greatest disaster pictures made."

"The Godfather: Part II" is ranked 32 on the American Film Institute's list of greatest movies ever made, which is drafted pooling the views of top scholars, film critics and industry leaders. "Chinatown" is ranked No. 21. None of the other best-picture nominees of 1974 made the list.

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Photo: Paramount Pictures

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