CREDITS THE GODFATHER PART 2, 1974 dir: Francis Ford Coppola Robert de Niro Al Pacino Lee Strasberg Robert Duvall Diane Keaton John Cazale Talia Shire Michael V Gazzo Bruno Kirby Roger Corman GD Spradlin

Arguably superior to part one, The Godfather, Part II was the first sequel ever to win Best Picture at the Oscars.

The village of Vito Andolini’s youth is supposedly ‘Corleone’, a real town about twenty miles south of Palermo in western Sicily, though the locale seen in the movie is around Taormina in the northeast.

A more surprising Italian location is New York’s 'Ellis Island', point of arrival for European immigrants during the first half of the century, where Vito Andolini becomes Vito Corleone. The buildings still exist, but have long since fallen into disrepair. The film uses the Old Fish Market at Trieste, on the Adriatic, northern Italy.

The Corleone lakeside estate is Fleur du Lac, the Henry Kaiser estate on the western California shore of Lake Tahoe. The lakeside area has been developed and the Corleone compound is now the boathouse of a private, gated, community.

De Niroís Little Italy, 1917 scenes were shot on Sixth Street in the East Village between Avenues A and B, tricked out in period dressing. A block north is the bar where the Rosato brothers try to garotte Pentangeli, PH Vazac’s, 108 Avenue B at Seventh Street (known as Seven and B, tel: 212.473.8840), at the southeast corner of Tompkins Square Park in the East Village. Popular in movies as a ‘lowlife’ bar, Vazac’s is where Mick Dundee (Paul Hogan) gets unwittingly fixed up with a bloke in drag in "Crocodile" Dundee; where Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) gets photos of Johnny Favorite in Alan Parker's Angel Heart; and it's the local hangout in 1988's Five Corners with Jodie Foster and Tim Robbins. I love this bar. It's not the place if you want elegance and cocktails, but it's a friendly local with a great jukebox.

The ensuing shoot-out was filmed outside on East 7th Street.

When Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) visits Hyman Roth (legendary acting coach Lee Strasberg) in Miami it’s the real thing, but Cuba was obviously out of the question. The pre-Revolutionary scenes were filmed in the Dominican Republic, the eastern part of the island of Hispaniola (Gulf & Western, Paramount’s parent company conveniently owns property in there).

Santo Domingo, the islandís capital on the southern coast, stood in for ‘Havana’, where Rothís hotel is Occidental El Embajador Hotel, Avenue Sarasota 65, and Batista’s palace, where the New Year’s Party is cut short by revolution, is Santo Domingoís Presidential Palace.

The army post, where the FBI protect Pentangeli, is the California Institute for Men, Central Avenue, three miles south of Chino, Highway 60 to the east of LA.

Two other places claiming to have been used as locations, but not instantly recognisable, are the Doheny Mansion, Chester Place, on the campus of Mount St Maryís College, off West Adams Boulevard in Los Angeles and venerable coffee house Caffe Reggio, 19 MacDougal Street at West 3rd Street in Greenwich Village.

The Reggio,reputed to be NY’s oldest coffee house, is also supposed to feature in Serpico but, although Frank Serpico's classmate says she works in Caffe Reggio, we don’t – as is claimed in many NY guidebooks – actually get to see the famed Village hangout. You can, though, see the cafe in the dull 1976 Sean Connery thriller The Next Man, as well as in the original 1971 Shaft.