TS: Godfather vs Godfather II

what if it was 1977 and Michael was engaged to Annie Halll

Vito also says there are reasons why Hagen can't be involved with what's to come, which almost certainly means "war and blood is coming". and the reasons Hagen can't be involved, besides "not being a wartime consiglieri", is that as soon as the five heads of the families, Moe Greene, and Carlo are dead, he'll most certainly be reinstalled in his position on arrival to Vegas, and it removes the risk of Hagen being incarcerated along with the other members of the family for these crimes as he has no foreknowledge.

I hadn't thought of this. Is this from the novel?

I don't remember, to be honest - I read it in high school. but the book does have a lot more insight into the thinking of the individual family members that kind of fills in gaps.

I always felt that they were protecting him in a way just from the way that scene unfolds.

some people have asked me why Michael makes such a quick transition to wanting to join the family's dealings after his long-standing distance and disapproval, and I'm always like "for us Italians, the moment sometime tries to kill your papa, it don't matter what disagreements you had with him prior. people are gonna die."

Your explanation of Michael freezing Tom out makes sense, but I also always thought it just had a lot to do with Michael's vindictiveness; he obviously bears some kind of personal grudge towards Tom at various points in II (e.g., when he confronts Tom about his mistress). He could be channeling Sonny's belittlement of Tom in I ("That's easy for you to say, Tom, he's not your father").

i agree that it is hard to imagine even the sainted-via-omission don of these movies being above taking revenge for the murder of his son but i'm just talking about carlo here-- connie says "you all" blamed him for sonny's death and whether she is naive or not i don't think the idea is that michael alone has the insight to figure out he was involved, and presumably the corleones can do what they want with carlo regardless of their position in mob geopolitics. the celebrated baptism montage murders are indeed exactly the kind of thing the don might have done-- then the baptism ends and michael exits the church with one more murder of his very own left to do, set aside special, a denouement.

quite possibly, but I'm not sure if that enmity had sunk in yet? he has that tender moment with Hagen after his assassination attempt at the beginning of II, but by the end, he's cold as ice to him. part of that, I think, is him either assuming Hagen helped Kay get the abortion, or at the very least, didn't try hard enough to stop her (or figure out that she was trying to get one).

(xp also of course he says the very same thing to carlo that sonny said to connie-- "you think i'd make my sister a widow?"-- then unlike violent hothead sonny immediately makes his sister a widow.)

some people have asked me why Michael makes such a quick transition to wanting to join the family's dealings after his long-standing distance and disapproval

There's also that beautiful moment after the hospital face-off, where he lights a cigarette for Enzo and realizes that he's stayed steady and calm through the whole thing, where I think he discovers that he has a taste for this stuff

forgot xpost for previous post

dlh, I see your point. I don't know that Vito himself would have killed Carlo since he loved his daughter and he'd know what that would do to her, but at the same token, I'm not sure what action he would think was appropriate. Divorce, well, they're Catholic, so that wasn't something he'd approve of (Michael himself gives her shit for getting divorced in II). Stripping him of his participation in the family, definitely.

it's hard to think of Vito allowing Carlo to sit at family dinners knowing he helped kill his son, though. and I doubt Connie would ever believe he was guilty. I'm going to guess he probably died before he could figure it out and Michael decided to deal with it knowing he'd be hated by Connie forever for it.

Pacino's concentration is so complete and so masterful that I have trouble thinking this is the same actor in Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Dick Tracy, Heat, etc. I have trouble even thinking it's the same actor who played Michael a third time.

There's also that beautiful moment after the hospital face-off, where he lights a cigarette for Enzo and realizes that he's stayed steady and calm through the whole thing, where I think he discovers that he has a taste for this stuff

― jmm, Sunday, November 6, 2022 11:59 AM bookmarkflaglink

interesting you mention that! my dad and I were watching it for about the 10th time together back in 2010, and he drew the same conclusion, saying he'd never really noticed it before but that's where he makes the emotional move towards joining the family.

xpost I don't mind yelly Pacino by any means but it's kind of amazing that his voice never really creeps above a whisper until he yells "NO!" at Kay.

my dad used to always say "this is the moment the Michael Kay knew is completely gone".

it's hard to think of Vito allowing Carlo to sit at family dinners knowing he helped kill his son, though.

oh totally i mean it doesn't make much sense as something this character would "actually" do. just parsing the ~resonance~ of what-we-are-shown here.

btw, you've never seen rage in a movie theatre like the time they brought it back via TCM Cinema Classics, but they mistakenly played the wrong introduction prior to showing the movie, instead showing the intro for Bonnie and Clyde.

dude in front of me kept yelling "WHAT? no, this is Godfather! fix it!", people booing, guy in front of me saying "I believe in America" over and over again until the film started and to everyone's relief, it was the right movie.

otm re cigarette and pacino perf in general which despite its exquisite control is still full of very nuanced lil moments like that on its long way down to what kael called the "almost immobile" gargoyle of late-2.

xxpost yeah, and it is definitely a character transition for Michael. I hadn't read the book when I saw the movie the first time and I really thought Michael was going to spare him, until I saw the backseat of the car had two people in it (hello, garotte!)

guy in front of me saying "I believe in America" over and over again until the film started

looool

(xposts) With so many mob-related films and TV shows, there's always the idea--sometimes unspoken, sometimes verbalized--that the current generation doesn't adhere to the same moral code as earlier generations. Even though Vito was a ruthless killer when he needed to be, there's this central idea that Michael isn't the man his father was. When Hagen and Pentangeli meet for the final time, they wax nostalgically about the way things used to operate (all the way back to ancient Rome, I think). That never-measuring-up idea is all over The Sopranos. So I think we're often meant to view Michael's actions through a "Vito wouldn't have done that" prism. (Maybe this is obvious.)

only other quibble w neanderthal's exegesis is that of the two women in these movies (lol) connie is def not the naive one, but the other one. the one who says "read the papers. read the papers. that's your husband! that's your husband!" get her to a doctor.

(apologies to mama corleone.)

the two things that affect to extract mikey a little from the old-school family -- the first approved by vito, the second not -- are being "joe college" and joining up: it's been almost 50 yrs since i read the book so i don't know if this is even filled in there, but do we know if michael saw actual-real action overseas and if so where? bcz basically the first is vito's vison of achieving respectability (which i don't think is fully bogus even if i do think it's self-delusion) and the second is no, michael's not going to be the joe-college head of a respectable family, he's going to be an even more war-time don

i mean they say he's a war hero or something don't they?

Oh I only think Connie is naive that her dad wouldn't have blessed it (I think jury's out), Kay is sure as fuck naive about everything Michael does lol.

Didn't the Don say in the hospital bed that he had "big plans" for Michael? "Senator Corleone!" It seems like he was always going to play a part in family business but on the respectable side.

I think book said Michael had a Purple Heart?

There's also the scene where Sonny makes fun of him for wanting to kill Sollozzo and he's like "I was in the army yo I ain't afraid of no blood".

Being a politician and representing Italians would make Vito proud.

Going off to fight a war for a government that made life hard for Italian immigrants, on the other hand...

That's why Sonny was comfortable with letting him handle a gun. xpost

But yeah Vito never wanted Michael to be the Don. He wanted Sonny, but realized he was terrible at it, and Fredo was an idiot.

Guessing Sonny probably still would have been given the position if he hadn't died and Michael hadn't stepped up.

underrated lol: "i knew santino would have to go through all this. and fredo-- well. fredo was-- well."

[makes same philosophical face he makes during screaming crossfade from facade of hollywood mansion]

The other one being Tattaglia combing what's left of his hair

Fredo's not dumb, not like everyone says. He's smart, and he wants respect.

i guess what i'm getting at is (a) yes, when mike's at the hospital and it's gangster-action time he realises he can do it and he into it (bcz it's war stuff and he already knows war stuff) but (b) there's still gnna be a psychic cost if even he has superb skills hiding it (inc.from himself)

less pomo godfather more ptsd godfather

[makes same philosophical face he makes during screaming crossfade from facade of hollywood mansion]

― difficult listening hour

lol this is one of my favorite moments. Twenty years later the arc of his perf in The Freshman is Brando making that whaddya-gonna-do face for 104 minutes.

He's not an animal, despite what that undertaker says

and yah vito wants to insulate michael so that he can be a kind of jfk. the culmination of an immigrant project. "that's my family, kay-- it's not me" isn't a rebellion (whether michael thinks it is or not)-- to be him, and not his family, is precisely the role prepared for him. that's why the "where's michael?" moment, waking up in the hospital bed, is tragic. (later, michael will-- in some weird third-order-removed entirely allusive and metaphorical way!-- kill jfk.)

less pomo godfather more ptsd godfather

tomato tomahto!

Yes, the look on his face where he finds out Michael killed Sollozzo and is now firmly "in it" is heartbreaking, him dismissing everyone.

what if it was 1977 and Michael was engaged to Annie Halll

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, November 6, 2022 10:44 AM (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Damn you all, now I want to rewatch these movies

Looking at the script - it's interesting how the term 'pezzonovante' ('big shot') gets used by Michael and Vito, mostly as a term of disparagement for the 'legitimate' big shots, but Michael also comes close to owning it at one point.

FABRIZIO
(in Italian) Somebody told us you were a real important...how do you say...a pezzonovante. A big shot.

MICHAEL
(in Italian) I'm the son of a pezzonovante.

refs of various kinds by other chars to michael's wartime exp (including churchillian clemenza helping to psych him up for the solozzo hit by invoking munich) run all thru the movie and mark s otm re: irony of this being both key symbol of michael's "legitimacy" and part of what has trained him to be the only capable leader of the family's illegitimacy. (same note's hit in the irishman, every time someone says "you know, it's like in the war" to him.)

(then michael turns his family into a national-security state within a national-security state)

while Donald Sutherland in a trenchcoat watches them from a park bench.

"Very, very few people know about this, okay?"

mike, it would be like trying to kill the president!

I don’t doubt their involvement Al but at a lowah level

had never noticed pezzonovante motif! because i never knew what they were saying. gambling is a harmless vice forbidden by the mumblemumble of the church. but yeah michael's response to "senator corleone... governor corleone..." is "another pezzonovante!" i wonder if he thinks vito is being naive.

he lights a cigarette for Enzo and realizes that he's stayed steady and calm through the whole thing

he does this again in cuba, for fredo, after watching the latter fumble for a match while pretending to try and remember whether he's met johnny ola

speaking of which--

I really believe he had no inclination Fredo was involved. His reaction when Fredo lets Johnny Ola's name slip strikes me as genuine shock and dismay.

unsure when he begins to suspect fredo but it's no later than the banana daquiri scene, where fredo actually begins to confess but is interrupted by a waiter. when johnny ola shows up michael makes a point of introducing them and asking again if they've met. certainly true that he's heavily affected when all doubt is removed tho! as we watch him react to fredo's self-incrimination we hear sen. geary (offscreen) saying (of superman's dick) "i've seen it and i still don't believe it!"

Interesting--I've seen it so many times, and I'd never really considered that. Watched the scene again, and the way Michael's smile drops at 2:57 suggests you're right. But he still shows a lot of affection for Fredo two or three times during their conversation, affection that might be hard to fake if he'd made up his mind. So...definitely suspecting, but not yet sure?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfpXRgQNDEA