As the film opens Michael is not part of the family business, and plans to marry a WASP, Kay Adams ( Diane Keaton). The irony of the title is that it eventually comes to refer to the son, not the father. He is thrown a bone-”a living”-and later, when he is killed, Michael coldly lies to his sister about what happened. Connie ( Talia Shire), the Don’s daughter, is so disregarded that her husband is not allowed into the family business. There is little room for women in “The Godfather.” Sonny uses and discards them, and ignores his wife. Now here is a trivia question: What is the name of Vito’s wife? She exists in the movie as an insignificant shadow, a plump Sicilian grandmother who poses with her husband in wedding pictures but plays no role in the events that take place in his study. And notice how a woman’s “mistaken” phone call sets up the trap in which Sonny ( James Caan) is murdered: It’s done so neatly that you have to think back through the events to figure it out. Notice how the undertaker is told “someday, and that day may never come, I will ask a favor of you.” and how when the day comes the favor is not violence (as in a conventional movie) but Don Vito’s desire to spare his wife the sight of their son’s maimed body. Notice how the request by Johnny Fontane, the failing singer, pays off in the Hollywood scenes how his tears set up the shocking moment when a mogul wakes up in bed with what is left of his racehorse. The writing is subtly constructed to set up events later in the film. The screenplay of “The Godfather” follows no formulas except for the classic structure in which power passes between the generations. It is a virtuoso stretch of filmmaking: Coppola brings his large cast onstage so artfully that we are drawn at once into the Godfather’s world. By the end of the wedding sequence, most of the main characters will have been introduced, and we will know essential things about their personalities. And then they would fear you.”Īs the day continues, there are two more scenes in the Godfather’s darkened study, intercut with scenes from the wedding outside.
And if, by chance, an honest man like yourself should make enemies. The Godfather’s reply will underpin the entire movie: “Why did you go to the police? Why didn’t you come to me first? What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you’d come to me in friendship, then this scum that ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. “I went to the police, like a good American,” the man says. Don Vito asks why he did not come to him immediately. A man has come to ask for punishment for his daughter’s rapist. It is the wedding day of Vito Corleone’s daughter, and on such a day a Sicilian must grant any reasonable request. It is significant that the first shot is inside a dark, shuttered room. There is one commandment, spoken by Michael ( Al Pacino): “Don’t ever take sides against the family.” The real world is replaced by an authoritarian patriarchy where power and justice flow from the Godfather, and the only villains are traitors. That is its secret, its charm, its spell in a way, it has shaped the public perception of the Mafia ever since.
The story views the Mafia from the inside.
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