“I believe in America.” That is the opening line from this film, one of the most celebrated in American history. Bonasera, an undertaker, loves America because “America has made my fortune.” And yet, it was that same America that, when his daughter is raped, lets the rapists go free by suspending their sentence. It’s “America made my fortune,” and not “America lets rapists go free.” And so he must ask a crime boss for help in securing justice for his daughter. America has failed him. But he still believes.
Anyway, the crime boss, Vito Corleone attends various crime business stuff on his daughter’s wedding day. It’s really a perfect opening for a film, introducing the major characters. The hothead ladies man Sonny, the advisor Tom, Michael coming back from the war and being kind of a black sheep, Fredo the drinker/partier, and Connie and Carlo being the happy [for now] couple. And we even get to meet some minor characters, the loyal Luca Brasi, the desperate Bonasera, and the thinly veiled Sinatra-based character, Johnny Fontaine. Introducing this many characters at the wedding and developing them is just masterful.
Then Tom goes to Hollywood to help Sinatra–I mean Fontaine’s career. And the movie guy, Woltz immediately jumps into xenophobic shite, calling Tom a “goomba” and then a “Kraut-McFriend” once Tom corrects him that he’s German/Irish. Woltz angrily brags about exploiting a young actress for sex, a disgusting element of Hollywood culture. So Tom has Woltz’s prized horse decapitated and placed in Woltz’s bed.
It’s another perfect scene [which is the case for basically the entire movie] as it establishes the Corleone family’s reach, their violence. It shows us the type of thing that Michael was just talking about at the wedding. Great development of the Corleone family as a crime enterprise.
This leads us into the main plot of the film. A criminal businessman [what’s the difference? hahaha] Solozzo, AKA “The Turk” tries to coax Vito to join Sollozzo and Tattaglia [another crime family leader] in the heroine business. Vito refuses because he believes that, even though he has judges and politicians in his pocket, he feels they’ll turn their backs on him if he gets into the drug business.
In response to this rejection, Tattaglia kills Luca Brasi, Vito’s loyal friend, and Sollozzo tries to kill Vito himself. He then kidnaps Tom Hagen and basically tells him that, since Vito’s dead [he thinks], now Tom has to convince Sonny [the presumed head of the family now] to now become business partners with Sollozzo [who had Sonny’s father killed]. Now that is what I call a bold move. Kill a guy and then expect his son, a known hothead, to become business partners with you. BOLD AF.
Michael, still not interested in the family “business,” goes to visit his father in the hospital. Once he sees all his father’s guards are gone, he realizes his father is about to be killed. His father has another visitor, the baker’s son-in-law, Enzo. Michael acts quickly, and he and Enzo pretend to be armed guards in front of the hospital to deter the would-be assassins. Enzo is terrified, as shown by his inability to light the cigarette, and Michael is calm and collected, as shown by his ability to control his hands, lighting the cigarette with ease. And more importantly, Michael notices this, giving him some confidence. He starts to think “Hey, maybe I can be a part of the family business.” And he also tells the crooked cop to go fuck himself, essentially.
Anyway, it’s amazing how cold some of these people are about all this. Tom has a horse decapitated and then he comes back like “Oh yeah, the flight was fine.” And then Sonny casually offers Paulie a drink, and then right after Paulie leaves, Sonny tells Clemenza to kill him. And then Clemenza jokes with Paulie.. as they’re about to execute him. I suppose there’s a certain callousness that develops in this type of life. I really can’t imagine being that casual about killing someone. But, you know, I probably am more capable of that callousness than I think, like most people. Like, if I were in an environment where killing was commonplace, I might develop a disregard for human life. I’m not saying I would, I’m just saying how people develop in their surroundings, and people individually think they could never do certain things, but they’re probably more capable than they think. Does that make sense?
Sonny, understandably, doesn’t want to make a business deal with the guy who tried to kill his father. Instead, he wants to kill Sollozzo, among other people. And here we are introduced to their important dichotomy: personal decisions vs. business decisions. Sonny [personal] and Tom [business] argue about what to do. Michael then comes in and says that it is better to make a “business” decision, but that killing Sollozzo and the police captain is the business decision, not a personal one. Which is.. you know, not really true, I mean it’s clearly both. Killing the drug baron who tried to kill your father, and the police captain who tried to let your father get killed and also punched you in your face, is personal, even if it is also a good business decision. He justifies it to himself as strictly business, but it isn’t.
The restaurant scene is my favorite in the movie, and one of my favorites in any movie. Michael sits and eats with Sollozzo and the police captain, and they talk business. The plan is for Michael to go to the bathroom, get the gun that’s taped behind the toilet, then kill both. He gets the gun, but he sits back down. Sollozzo keeps talking, but Michael isn’t listening, he’s thinking. This is it, this is the moment of his life, the turning point. It’s a fork in the road, and what he decides to do and how this goes will change things forever. He protected his father at the hospital, he came up with the plan, but this is the actual big leap, the test, can he kill for “the family?”
I think there are moments similar to that in life, even if they don’t involve shooting people. There are huge turning points and, depending how they go, your life ends up totally different.
I gotta say, Marlon Brando is one of the greatest actors of all time. As is Al Pacino. As is Robert Duvall. There are perfect performances by everyone in this movie. It’s really incredible. I haven’t seen many Diane Keaton movies, but she gives a great performance in this movie.
So Michael flees to Sicily and Sonny continues running the family, which means he’s killing a bunch of people. Sonny beats Carlo half to death after he finds out that Carlo hit his wife who happens to be Sonny’s sister. Can’t say I feel bad for Carlo. Well, I don’t really “feel bad” for many of the characters, but at least there’s some complexity with the others, like they do all this bad shit, but they’re “loyal” to their family or whatever. But Carlo just comes in, beats his wife, then gets his brother-in-law killed. Fuck him.
Anyway, Michael gets married, and that was the first time I ever saw boobs in a movie. Which, you know, that’s not really important, BUT it is different seeing boobs in a movie instead of online, for some reason. Probably a lot we need to change about how we view nudity [get it? “view” nudity? (like literally view it, but also how we “view” it as in consider it??] and sexuality, but that’s a bigger topic.
There’s a domestic violence scene between Carlo and Connie that is.. very brutal. I mean, the movie’s got a lot of violence, but that scene is particularly intense and repulsive to watch. She calls Sonny for help and he immediately drives off, to kill Carlo. But there are a bunch of guys with machine guns waiting for Sonny at the toll station, and they slaughter him.
We get these intensely violent scenes back to back, and then a scene that’s intense in an emotional way, as Tom has to tell Vito the hard truth, that his son was shot to death. It’s just masterful acting from Marlon Brando, possibly the greatest actor ever in his greatest performance. Vito decides, then and there, to make peace with the other families, despite his intense grief, something Sonny could never do.
Michael’s wife gets blown up after his bodyguard betrays him [they were trying to kill Michael]. And we see her dead leg dangling out of the car, just as we had seen Sonny’s dead hand lying on the street in a previous shot. This event starts Michael’s distrust that continues on and gets stronger as he grows more powerful. His killing of Sollozzo and the police captain was the biggest turning point for him in terms of him “joining” the family, and his recognition of his capability for violence “for the family,” but this was another big turning point. He may not have agreed with the family, with his father, or Sonny, or Tom, or Clemenza or whoever, but at least none of them had betrayed him at that point. He realized then that he must have a keen, distrusting eye if he [and his family] is to survive.
In the meeting of the five families we see this warped morality of the heads of the families. They want to keep the drug trade “respectable” by not selling it to kids [okay, that’s good, I guess], and then immediately saying that black people are “animals” and should “lose their souls” to drug use. And then there’s the overarching thing like, they’re corrupt, they’re crime families. “Oh let’s keep it respectable.. but also I’m the head of a crime family.” Weird morality with the so-called “mafia.”
Anyway, Vito makes peace with Tattaglia about their dead sons, but Vito basically says that if anything happens to Michael, I’ll kill all of you. To him, Michael was not supposed to be part of this crime family shit. Vito, in his crime family wisdom, says that he thinks it was Barzini that actually killed Sonny [he was right, we find out later].
Michael comes back to America and meets up with Kay, a teacher now. Michael says “whaddup I’m part of the crime family now,” and Kay says, “You said you weren’t gonna do that, your father is bad,” and Michael says “He’s just like any other powerful man, though [which doesn’t really justify what he’s doing, but whatever] like a President or Senator,” and Kay says “Presidents and Senators don’t have people killed,” and Michael says “you fool! Of course they do!”
And yeah, I agree that power is generally a corrupting force, and my response to that would be that we should try to limit people’s abilities to develop power over other people. That’s a general principle that’s difficult, but Michael’s basically like, “Welp, my father is powerful and he has people killed, but so do all kinds of powerful people, so it’s not really that bad and now I’m powerful anyway, so whatever.”
So the Corleone family transitions from Vito to Michael, and Tessio’s like, “With you [Vito] gone, Clemenza and I will come under Barzini’s thumb sooner or later.” Foreshadowing?? Also kind of a weird statement. Like, without you, I’m gonna betray the Corleone family, for some reason. With the transition to Michael, they’re also transitioning to Nevada instead of New York. Fredo loves partying and Michael loves, well, business. Michael talks about a deal with some casino dickhead named Moe Green. Michael wants to buy the casino/hotel and Moe tells him to fuck off.
Michael and Vito discuss business, which is yet another perfect scene, perfect acting from Brando and Pacino. Vito, the wise, seasoned Don, warns Michael about Barzini planning to assassination. It’s a prediction that comes true, except that Michael doesn’t fall for the trap, but it shows how smart Vito is, knowing his rival’s next moves. And in this scene we get the whole marionette analogy, how Vito “refused” to be a fool, dancing on the strings for all those big shots, and so he became the one holding the strings. And, you know, powerful people always delude themselves into believing that their power is justified by their strength of will. There are systems at play where you can’t just “refuse” to be a fool/pawn or whatever and then rise to “the top.” That’s another bigger discussion though. But anyway that’s literally the logo of The Godfather, a hand holding the strings. Vito expresses his regret Michael had to get wrapped up in all this, how he wanted a different life for Michael. Very common. Very common for parents to want some kind of greatness or success for their child and.. it doesn’t happen.
Vito dies in a scene which Brando came up with [I think], which shows his utter genius as an actor. At the funeral, Tessio tries to arrange a meeting between Michael and Barzini, which is exactly what Vito warned about. And later Carlo says that it was Barzini who killed Sonny, which is exactly what Vito assumed.
Michael literally becomes the Godfather, and wipes out all opposition, the other heads of families, Moe Green, Carlo, and Tessio. This is done so well, cutting back and forth between Michael’s religious ceremony, where he denounces Satan and evil, and the murders he orders. Great work by Francis Ford Coppola, as is present throughout this entire masterpiece. And it completes Michael’s journey of the film, from skeptical war hero that doesn’t agree with the family business, to the crime lord that kills anyone who gets in his way.
One minor thing at the end is the parallel between Sonny, who tells Connie “What, you think I’m gonna make that baby an orphan?” as in “I’m not gonna kill Carlo,” which he eventually tries to do, and then Michael telling Carlo “What, you think I’m gonna make my sister a widow?” as in “I’m not gonna kill you, Carlo,” which he does right after. And the door closes on Kay, and that’s the end.
There are a few movies I’d call “perfect,” and this is one of them. The plot, the dialogue, the acting, the casting, the directing, the editing, it’s all perfect.
Lefty Forrester 