Even if Shakespeare himself had penned a sprawling epic about La Cosa Nostra, he couldn’t have come up with a more tragic hero than Michael Corleone.

The squeaky clean, decorated war hero in the first movie becomes a monster by its sequel – a man who broods in the darkness.

Reining in his now patented shouty-shouty grandstanding, Pacino delivers introspection in an armchair.

Casting the role in the original Godfather, Coppola looked for an actor with “the map of Sicily on his face”. By Part II though, Pacino’s features have become a road map to hell, the lips pursed tightly, the doe-eyes turned dead and cold.

Michael is Pacino’s greatest turn. Why? Because, reckons Coppola, he’s “one of the few movie characters to achieve an authentically tragic dimension.” Pacino understood that tragedy brilliantly.

Greatest moment: Giving Fredo the kiss of death.

Also see: Sonny Wortzik (Dog Day Afternoon), Frank Serpico (Serpico), Tony Montana (Scarface), Benjamin ‘Lefty’ Ruggiero (Donnie Brasco).