In this presentation, I will use the Bible and Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’ to examine key scenes from Director Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film The Godfather. Thanks.
Clip 1:
The film opens with Don Corleone hosting his daughter’s wedding. According to Sicilian custom, a Don cannot refuse any reasonable request on the day of his daughter’s wedding.A mortician named Bonasera stops by to ask the Godfather to avenge his daughter whose jaw is wired shut after being beaten by 2 young White men. The Don is insulted by this request but agrees to avenge the young woman after the mortician humbles himself and shows the proper respect by addressing him as ‘Godfather.’ Family and marriage are extremely important to God so the film opening with a wedding is no coincidence.
The opening scene introduces the Don’s 3 sons: Fredo, Sonny, and Michael. Santino or Sonny is the oldest of the 3 and next in line to assume his father’s empire. But, to the Don’s dismay, Sonny is hot-tempered and an unfaithful husband. Fredo, the middle son, has a good head for business, but he is weak when it comes to alcohol and lacks the masculine force essential to be a Don. Michael, the youngest son, possesses his father’s intelligence, discipline, and force; he’d make the perfect successor to his father. However, he wants nothing to do with the Family business and to distance himself further joins the army and marries a White woman instead of a Sicilian. The fact that he, Michael, has pledged his loyalty and his life for a country and not his own father is, in a sense, infidelity. Nevertheless, the Godfather, though disappointed by this, is patient with this wayward son. Clip 5: Mark 3:25: “And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand” Virgil Solozzo is an up-and-coming figure in the New York underworld. He meets with the Don to talk business. Solozzo wants to sell drugs and he needs the judges and prosecutors that are under the Don’s control. The Don’s answer to Solozzo’s deal is no. However, Sonny is also in this meeting and perks up at Solozzo’s deal, which would mean a big profit for the Corleone Family. This break in the wall of the Family is no wider than a strand of hair but Solozzo catches it and, in his mind, he believes that he can strike a deal with Sonny if the Don were out of the way. This division among the Corleone ranks is exploited by Solozzo later.
Sonny, in this clip, violates the following warning by Sun Tzu from The Art of War, Chapter 6 Weak Points and Strong, “In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them; conceal your dispositions, and you will be safe from the prying of the subtlest spies, from the machinations of the wisest brains.” Sonny openly contradicts his father and plants in Solozzo’s mind the seed to murder the Don. Clip 6: The Art Of War, Chapter 9: The Army On The March “The sudden rising of birds in their flight is the sign of an ambush at the spot below. Startled beasts indicate that a sudden attack is coming.” In this scene, the Don has his son Fredo to drive him to the market to buy some vegetables. The Don’s regular driver named Paulie Gatto called in sick for the 3rd time in a month and on this occasion, when he happens to call in sick, the Don is ambushed and shot 5 times as he runs to the car calling out for his son Fredo who is armed but so startled and inexperienced that he can’t get a shot off before the gunmen get away. Paulie Gatto is a seasoned soldier and would have had the composure to shoot the gunmen but, again, he is, conveniently, sick. Art Of War, Chapter VIII: Variation Of Tactics “When in difficult country, do not encamp. In country where high roads intersect, join hands with your allies. Do not linger in dangerously isolated positions.” This is the mistake the Don makes on 2 fronts: 1, he knows for himself—and he is also warned by Hagen, his lawyer, that saying no to the Turk Solozzo will mean trouble. This is why the Don put off meeting with Solozzo until after his daughter’s wedding because he knew telling the Turk no would mean trouble. And, as Hagen pointed out to the Don, there is too much money to be made selling drugs, as Solozzo wants to do. The Don controls many judges and prosecutors and these judges and prosecutors can give light sentences to those caught and convicted of selling narcotics—this is why Solozzo needs the Don. The other Families also want in on the drug action and this isolates the Don, who doesn’t care for drugs at all. The Godfather violates Sun Tzu’s warning not to “encamp” in “difficult country” because all of his businesses are unprotected and of easy access. The Don’s 2nd mistake according to Sun Tzu was not following the precept that “In times of peace, prepare for war; in times of war, prepare for peace.” The long years between wars has made the Don careless and sloppy. Solozzo points this out later when he asks the Don’s lawyer if he could have gotten to the Don 8 years ago.
This scene also foreshadows later scenes in the movie by depicting life and death simultaneously. The Don is laid out after being shot five times and is surrounded by fruits and vegetables in a scene that is almost identical to a latter scene where he eventually dies in a garden while playing his his grandson. Clip 7: Art Of War, Chapter 10: Terrain: “Ground that can be abandoned but is hard to reoccupy is called entangling. From a position of this sort, if the enemy is unprepared, you may sally forth and defeat him. But if the enemy is prepared for your coming, and you fail to defeat him, then, return being impossible, disaster will ensue.” In this scene, having attempted and failed to kill the Godfather, Solozzo seeks a truce to keep Sonny from seeking revenge. Solozzo believes that he and Sonny can strike a deal to go into the drug business, which the Godfather opposed on moral principles. Having failed to kill the Don, Solozzo realizes that he must try again, this time, however, he won’t have the element of surprise in his favor. Clip 8: Hebrews 11, 1—3: “ Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” After finding out about the attempted murder of his father, Michael goes by the hospital and discovers that the men assigned to protect his father have been taken off their detail. Michael gets the help of a nurse to move his father’s bed to another room; whoever removed the security detail was going to return to kill his father. The Don is completely vulnerable in this scene, unable to protect himself, completely powerless.
A visitor stops by the hospital with flowers. Enzo had heard about the shooting and came to show his respect and gratitude for the Godfather’s help in keeping him from being deported. He and Michael stand out in front of the hospital. A carload of men cruise by slowly. Michael, as unarmed and as vulnerable as his father in his hospital bed, tells Enzo to reach inside his coat like he has a gun. The car speeds off. This scene is the perfect example of faith being “the evidence of things not seen” because we see 1st the Godfather, stripped of all protection, being protected by his son, Michael, who just happens to stop by the hospital at the precise time that Solozzo’s killers are going to finish him off. When Michael kisses his father and tells him that he is going to be fine, the Don’s smile conveys the fact that he has no doubt that he is going to be OK. Michael’s faith kicks in by the act of “faking” like he has something that he doesn’t have, which is the essence of faith—believing in something invisible as though it were real. To further reinforce this point, when the car speeds away from the hospital, Michael’s hands are steady, unlike Enzo’s hands which are shaking. Clip 9: John 1, Verse 29: “The next day, John[a] saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Captain McCluskey, a dirty cop on Solozzo’s payroll, pulls up to the hospital and is so angry upon seeing Michael has 2 officers to hold him and punches him in the jaw, breaking it. Sonny plans to assassinate Solozzo and Michael volunteers to kill both Solozzo and the police captain, McCluskey, who is Solozzo’s bodyguard. Michael, an army veteran and war hero, goes from being a private citizen to a participant. He also sees the hypocrisy of America in that she can be bought and paid for with drug money as symbolized through the relationship between the police captain and the drug dealer he protects.
But their relationship is a reflection of his own relationship to his father who is also invested in illegal activities. It comes down to which world he wants to be a part of: a world in which he isn’t respected and even despised and walked on; or, a world where a man like his father is respected and controls his own destiny, a world where he isn’t a puppet dancing on strings held by others as he was as a U.S. soldier fighting wars started by others.
This scene is a crossroads in which he leaves his old life—his wife, his neutral status—and starts down the path to his ultimate destiny. Also, like Jesus, Michael represents the Lamb or innocence in this particular scene in which they are setting up a meeting between Solozzo and a member of the Corleone Family. Michael seems the perfect choice to represent the family because he is considered a “civilian” and not directly involved in family operations. Therefore, he is the perfect agent to “take away the sins of the world” by eliminating Solozzo and McCluskey. Clip 10: A meeting is set up for Solozzo and Michael Corleone to negotiate a truce. Solozzo is afraid for his life after failing to assassinate the Don and invoking the wrath of Sonny. But in letting the Corleone Family know the site of the meeting, Solozzo commits a grave error: Art Of War, Chapter 6, Weak Points and Strong: “The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known, for then the enemy will have to prepare against a possible attack at several different points; and his forces being thus distributed in many directions, the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will be proportionately few.”
If Solozzo hadn’t have allowed the Corleone Family to know the time and place of the meeting, the chances of an ambush would have been diminished because they—the Corleones—wouldn’t have known where, how, or what time to plant the gun that Michael uses to kill both Solozzo and Captain McCluskey.
Clip 11: In this scene, Sonny visits his sister, Connie, who has a black eye after fighting with her husband, Carlo. Sonny leaves the safety of the compound, finds Carlo, and beats him up.
Clip 12: Following the attempted assassination of the Don, Sonny orders the Family’s button-men to “go to the mattresses” against the Tattaglia family. To equalize the attempt on the Godfather’s life, Sonny orders the hit of Bruno Tattaglia, the eldest son of his family. Since then, Sonny has been under lock and key in the Corleone compound, occasionally venturing out with bodyguards to see his mistress, Lucy Mancini. Later, Carlo beats Connie, who is pregnant, with a belt. Sonny flies out of the Corleone compound in a rage and drives over to straighten out Carlo again. But this time he is gunned down at the tollbooth on the Jones Beach causeway. One of the gunmen even kicks him in the face so that he can’t have an open-casket funeral. Sonny’s downfall is his lack of emotional discipline:
Art Of War, Chapter 9: The Army on The March: “he who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them.” Proverbs 25 Verse 28: “Like a city that is broken down and without walls is a man whose spirit is without restraint.” Art Of War,Chapter 1: Laying Plans: “If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.”
It also never occurred to Sonny that the so-called fights between his sister and her husband were deliberately staged to smoke him out into the open where the enemy could get to him: Chapter 6, Weak Points and Strong: “If the enemy is taking his ease, harass him; if quietly encamped, force him to move; if well supplied with food, stare him out. Appear at points that the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected.”
Chapter 6, Weak Points and Strong Points: “If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is to attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve. If the enemy is the invading party, we can cut his line of communications and occupy the roads by which he will have to return…” Clip 13: This scene opens on a Sicilian countryside, as a shepherd is steering a herd of sheep downhill and Michael and two bodyguards are moving uphill in the opposite direction. Michael becomes acquainted with his father’s homeland and discovers a beautiful young woman, a virgin, named Appolonia. He is struck by the “thunderbolt” and forgets about the danger he escaped in America. He even forgets about his wife.
Clip 14: Art Of War, Chapter 11: The Nine Situations “Walk in the path defined by rule, and accommodate yourself to the enemy until you can fight a decisive battle. “At first, then, exhibit the coyness of a maiden, until the enemy gives you an opening; afterward emulate the rapidity of a running hare, and it will be too late for the enemy to oppose you.”
In this scene, the Don is fully recovered from the gunshots he suffered earlier in the film and calls the heads of New York’s 5 Families to a meeting in the conference room of a bank that he owns— unofficially. At this meeting, the Don calls for a truce between himself and Frank Tattaglia, both of whom lost sons in the war following the murders of Captain McCluskey and Virgil Solozzo. Sonny ordered the hit on Bruno Tattaglia in whose nightclub Luca Brasi, the Godfather’s top enforcer, had been executed. In retaliation for Bruno’s death, Sonny’s life was taken. The Don wants to ensure Michael’s safe return from Sicily to America.
The Don knows that the Tattaglia and Barzini Families have spies in Sicily hunting for Michael. So, in this meeting, the Don gives his famous “Iron Curtain” speech where he promises that he won’t be the one to break the peace and afterwards, to seal this treaty, he and Tattagla embrace. The Don knows that to secure his son’s safe return to America that he must lay low for the time being humble himself, and suffer insults and trespasses against his territories until he can build the family back up to full-strength. It is not in the movie, but the book describes how the Don engineers Michael’s return to America. There is a young man named Felix of the Bocchicchio Family, which is different from the other Families in the respect that their trade is in supplying themselves as hostages. Disagreements among Families are leveraged with Bocchicchio hostages. If one side fails to uphold its promise in this arrangement, the other side could kill its hostage. The Bocchicchio Family would then turn its wrath on the side that broke the promise that had the hostage killed. This is how the Bocchicchios got paid. But Felix Bocchicchio was different and possessed enough intelligence to not want to be in his Family’s trade.
Felix attended law school, married a nice American White woman, and after getting his law degree and having difficulty finding work, got involved with a friend who worked at a prestigious law firm. This “friend” asked Felix for a favor, for Felix to use his law skills on a complicated bankruptcy scam. There was a one-in-a-million chance of getting caught, this friend promised, but when Felix did get caught he took the whole rap. His friends got reduced sentences by telling the court that Felix strong-armed them into going along and Felix did 5 years in prison. As soon as he got out of prison, he got a gun, found the 2 men who’d framed him eating in a restaurant, and blew their brains out. He waited on the police to arrive at the scene, confessed to the murders, went to trial, was found guilty, and sentenced to die in the electric chair. Someone from his family went to the Godfather for help.The Don sent his lawyer to the prison to make Felix an offer: to see to the comfort of his widow and the education of his children in exchange for confessing to the murders of the police captain and Solozzo whom Michael had killed. Felix confessed to everything with details supplied to him through the Don’s lawyer. Once the switch was thrown and Felix was dead, the Don sent for Michael’s return to America. Clip 15: Art Of War, Chapter 9: The Army on the March: “Pass quickly over mountains, and keep in the neighborhood of valleys” “The Godfather’: “Every man has but one destiny” Michael is still in exile in Sicily after murdering a New York police captain and a drug dealer. He marries a young Sicilian woman named Apollonia and a local Don indebted to the Godfather lets them stay in his villa but only for a short time. Enemy spies are also in Sicily and Michael can’t stay in one place for long. His car is booby-trapped with a bomb that kills his new wife and this death of an innocent is his baptism, or rebirth, into his father’s world and seals his destiny to take over the Corleone empire. The Biblical metaphor here is that his love for Apollonia represents the one thing that could come between himself and complete devotion to his father. Apollonia’s death and the poverty of his homeland enables Michael to fully understand his father’s determination to not be a puppet on a string. Also, as explained in the previous clip, the Don has cleared the way for Michael to return to America and if Apollonia had not died, Michael may not have made the decision to return to America and stand by his father. Throughout this film, death and life are 2 sides of the same coin. Clip 16: Amos 3:3: “Two cannot walk together unless they be in agreement” Mark 6:24: “Man cannot serve 2 masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other.” Mark 2:22: “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” Michael returns to America and his wife, Kay, sees him for the first time in years looking less like the American-looking Michael who’d left and more like his Sicilian father. In this scene, Kay represents the America Michael strived to be a part of and now, after the death of Apollonia and acceptance of his father’s world and ideology, Michael is more distant from her now and Kay feels this disconnnection. But traces of his former love of Kay remain and he wants to somehow make their relationship work. Where before he tried to become a part of her greater society by rejecting his father, joining the army, and marrying her, a non-Sicilian, he now wants her to forsake her world for his world. Kay rejects his world and rejects him and this is made very clear in the sequel when she aborts his son. This conflict is the unifying thread from this point in the storyline and throughout the sequel. Clip 17: As I’ve demonstrated earlier, Christian symbolism is the key to understanding this film. The resurrection and the inseperable relationship between life and death are cyclical in this movie. When Sonny was murdered, the Don rose from his deathbed; when Apollonia was murdered, Michael was reborn, in a sense, and embraced his family, his father, and his own unalterable destiny. Now, in this clip, we again see the Christian symbolism of life, death, and the resurrection as represented by the Godfather dying while playing in a garden with his grandson. A fitting and perfect death, surrounded by life. Also, as 2 objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, the Godfather’s death marks the birth of a new generation under his son Michael. Clip 18: Art Of War, Chapter 4: Tactics “The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.”
Weak Points and Strong: “All men can see the individual tactics necessary to conquer, but almost no one can see the strategy out of which total victory is evolved.” Again, in this clip we see the duality of life and death as Michael attends the baptism of his godson as his soldiers kill off the heads of the other 4 New York Families. By the time the godson is baptized and the heads of the 4 New York Families are executed, Michael emerges in all of his glory as the undisputed Don of Dons, the spiritual reincarnation of his father, Vito Corleone. By pretending to be weak, closing the Family’s New York businesses, and moving everything out to Vegas, Michael and his Family were not only underestimated, but their enemies became arrogant to the point of letting their own guard down as the Bible says in Proverbs 16 and verse 18: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” Clip 19: Matt. 13 Verses 37-42: “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; 38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; 39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. 40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. 41 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; 42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” Michael settles all Family business in New York by punishing the traitors in the Family. First, Carlo Rizzi, Connie Corleone’s husband who had Sonny killed; then, Tessio, the Godfather’s own Caporegime, or Lieutenant, who had also, like Carlo Rizzi, sold out to Barzini. The Family accounts in New York are all settled now and we see the cycle of life and death once again repeated as Michael takes the empire his father created to Las Vegas, Nevada. Clip 20: In this scene, we see the seeds being sown for the Family’s slow disintegration. To appease his wife, Michael denies any involvement in the execution of New York’s 4 Families. When she sees Michael through a doorway, having his hand kissed by his bodyguards, he reminds her, according to Mario Puzo’s novel, “Of statues in Rome, statues of those Roman emperors of antiquity, who, by divine right, held the power of life and death over their fellow men. One hand was on his hip, the profile of his face showed a cold proud power, his body was carelessly, arrogantly at ease, weight resting on one foot slightly behind the other. The capo regimes stood before him. In that moment Kay knew that everything Connie had accused Michael of was true (that Michael had murdered her husband, Carlo). She went back in the kitchen and wept.”
The opening scene introduces the Don’s 3 sons: Fredo, Sonny, and Michael. Santino or Sonny is the oldest of the 3 and next in line to assume his father’s empire. But, to the Don’s dismay, Sonny is hot-tempered and an unfaithful husband. Fredo, the middle son, has a good head for business, but he is weak when it comes to alcohol and lacks the masculine force essential to be a Don. Michael, the youngest son, possesses his father’s intelligence, discipline, and force; he’d make the perfect successor to his father. However, he wants nothing to do with the Family business and to distance himself further joins the army and marries a White woman instead of a Sicilian. The fact that he, Michael, has pledged his loyalty and his life for a country and not his own father is, in a sense, infidelity. Nevertheless, the Godfather, though disappointed by this, is patient with this wayward son. Clip 5: Mark 3:25: “And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand” Virgil Solozzo is an up-and-coming figure in the New York underworld. He meets with the Don to talk business. Solozzo wants to sell drugs and he needs the judges and prosecutors that are under the Don’s control. The Don’s answer to Solozzo’s deal is no. However, Sonny is also in this meeting and perks up at Solozzo’s deal, which would mean a big profit for the Corleone Family. This break in the wall of the Family is no wider than a strand of hair but Solozzo catches it and, in his mind, he believes that he can strike a deal with Sonny if the Don were out of the way. This division among the Corleone ranks is exploited by Solozzo later.
Sonny, in this clip, violates the following warning by Sun Tzu from The Art of War, Chapter 6 Weak Points and Strong, “In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them; conceal your dispositions, and you will be safe from the prying of the subtlest spies, from the machinations of the wisest brains.” Sonny openly contradicts his father and plants in Solozzo’s mind the seed to murder the Don. Clip 6: The Art Of War, Chapter 9: The Army On The March “The sudden rising of birds in their flight is the sign of an ambush at the spot below. Startled beasts indicate that a sudden attack is coming.” In this scene, the Don has his son Fredo to drive him to the market to buy some vegetables. The Don’s regular driver named Paulie Gatto called in sick for the 3rd time in a month and on this occasion, when he happens to call in sick, the Don is ambushed and shot 5 times as he runs to the car calling out for his son Fredo who is armed but so startled and inexperienced that he can’t get a shot off before the gunmen get away. Paulie Gatto is a seasoned soldier and would have had the composure to shoot the gunmen but, again, he is, conveniently, sick. Art Of War, Chapter VIII: Variation Of Tactics “When in difficult country, do not encamp. In country where high roads intersect, join hands with your allies. Do not linger in dangerously isolated positions.” This is the mistake the Don makes on 2 fronts: 1, he knows for himself—and he is also warned by Hagen, his lawyer, that saying no to the Turk Solozzo will mean trouble. This is why the Don put off meeting with Solozzo until after his daughter’s wedding because he knew telling the Turk no would mean trouble. And, as Hagen pointed out to the Don, there is too much money to be made selling drugs, as Solozzo wants to do. The Don controls many judges and prosecutors and these judges and prosecutors can give light sentences to those caught and convicted of selling narcotics—this is why Solozzo needs the Don. The other Families also want in on the drug action and this isolates the Don, who doesn’t care for drugs at all. The Godfather violates Sun Tzu’s warning not to “encamp” in “difficult country” because all of his businesses are unprotected and of easy access. The Don’s 2nd mistake according to Sun Tzu was not following the precept that “In times of peace, prepare for war; in times of war, prepare for peace.” The long years between wars has made the Don careless and sloppy. Solozzo points this out later when he asks the Don’s lawyer if he could have gotten to the Don 8 years ago.
This scene also foreshadows later scenes in the movie by depicting life and death simultaneously. The Don is laid out after being shot five times and is surrounded by fruits and vegetables in a scene that is almost identical to a latter scene where he eventually dies in a garden while playing his his grandson. Clip 7: Art Of War, Chapter 10: Terrain: “Ground that can be abandoned but is hard to reoccupy is called entangling. From a position of this sort, if the enemy is unprepared, you may sally forth and defeat him. But if the enemy is prepared for your coming, and you fail to defeat him, then, return being impossible, disaster will ensue.” In this scene, having attempted and failed to kill the Godfather, Solozzo seeks a truce to keep Sonny from seeking revenge. Solozzo believes that he and Sonny can strike a deal to go into the drug business, which the Godfather opposed on moral principles. Having failed to kill the Don, Solozzo realizes that he must try again, this time, however, he won’t have the element of surprise in his favor. Clip 8: Hebrews 11, 1—3: “ Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” After finding out about the attempted murder of his father, Michael goes by the hospital and discovers that the men assigned to protect his father have been taken off their detail. Michael gets the help of a nurse to move his father’s bed to another room; whoever removed the security detail was going to return to kill his father. The Don is completely vulnerable in this scene, unable to protect himself, completely powerless.
A visitor stops by the hospital with flowers. Enzo had heard about the shooting and came to show his respect and gratitude for the Godfather’s help in keeping him from being deported. He and Michael stand out in front of the hospital. A carload of men cruise by slowly. Michael, as unarmed and as vulnerable as his father in his hospital bed, tells Enzo to reach inside his coat like he has a gun. The car speeds off. This scene is the perfect example of faith being “the evidence of things not seen” because we see 1st the Godfather, stripped of all protection, being protected by his son, Michael, who just happens to stop by the hospital at the precise time that Solozzo’s killers are going to finish him off. When Michael kisses his father and tells him that he is going to be fine, the Don’s smile conveys the fact that he has no doubt that he is going to be OK. Michael’s faith kicks in by the act of “faking” like he has something that he doesn’t have, which is the essence of faith—believing in something invisible as though it were real. To further reinforce this point, when the car speeds away from the hospital, Michael’s hands are steady, unlike Enzo’s hands which are shaking. Clip 9: John 1, Verse 29: “The next day, John[a] saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Captain McCluskey, a dirty cop on Solozzo’s payroll, pulls up to the hospital and is so angry upon seeing Michael has 2 officers to hold him and punches him in the jaw, breaking it. Sonny plans to assassinate Solozzo and Michael volunteers to kill both Solozzo and the police captain, McCluskey, who is Solozzo’s bodyguard. Michael, an army veteran and war hero, goes from being a private citizen to a participant. He also sees the hypocrisy of America in that she can be bought and paid for with drug money as symbolized through the relationship between the police captain and the drug dealer he protects.
But their relationship is a reflection of his own relationship to his father who is also invested in illegal activities. It comes down to which world he wants to be a part of: a world in which he isn’t respected and even despised and walked on; or, a world where a man like his father is respected and controls his own destiny, a world where he isn’t a puppet dancing on strings held by others as he was as a U.S. soldier fighting wars started by others.
This scene is a crossroads in which he leaves his old life—his wife, his neutral status—and starts down the path to his ultimate destiny. Also, like Jesus, Michael represents the Lamb or innocence in this particular scene in which they are setting up a meeting between Solozzo and a member of the Corleone Family. Michael seems the perfect choice to represent the family because he is considered a “civilian” and not directly involved in family operations. Therefore, he is the perfect agent to “take away the sins of the world” by eliminating Solozzo and McCluskey. Clip 10: A meeting is set up for Solozzo and Michael Corleone to negotiate a truce. Solozzo is afraid for his life after failing to assassinate the Don and invoking the wrath of Sonny. But in letting the Corleone Family know the site of the meeting, Solozzo commits a grave error: Art Of War, Chapter 6, Weak Points and Strong: “The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known, for then the enemy will have to prepare against a possible attack at several different points; and his forces being thus distributed in many directions, the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will be proportionately few.”
If Solozzo hadn’t have allowed the Corleone Family to know the time and place of the meeting, the chances of an ambush would have been diminished because they—the Corleones—wouldn’t have known where, how, or what time to plant the gun that Michael uses to kill both Solozzo and Captain McCluskey.
Clip 11: In this scene, Sonny visits his sister, Connie, who has a black eye after fighting with her husband, Carlo. Sonny leaves the safety of the compound, finds Carlo, and beats him up.
Clip 12: Following the attempted assassination of the Don, Sonny orders the Family’s button-men to “go to the mattresses” against the Tattaglia family. To equalize the attempt on the Godfather’s life, Sonny orders the hit of Bruno Tattaglia, the eldest son of his family. Since then, Sonny has been under lock and key in the Corleone compound, occasionally venturing out with bodyguards to see his mistress, Lucy Mancini. Later, Carlo beats Connie, who is pregnant, with a belt. Sonny flies out of the Corleone compound in a rage and drives over to straighten out Carlo again. But this time he is gunned down at the tollbooth on the Jones Beach causeway. One of the gunmen even kicks him in the face so that he can’t have an open-casket funeral. Sonny’s downfall is his lack of emotional discipline:
Art Of War, Chapter 9: The Army on The March: “he who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them.” Proverbs 25 Verse 28: “Like a city that is broken down and without walls is a man whose spirit is without restraint.” Art Of War,Chapter 1: Laying Plans: “If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.”
It also never occurred to Sonny that the so-called fights between his sister and her husband were deliberately staged to smoke him out into the open where the enemy could get to him: Chapter 6, Weak Points and Strong: “If the enemy is taking his ease, harass him; if quietly encamped, force him to move; if well supplied with food, stare him out. Appear at points that the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected.”
Chapter 6, Weak Points and Strong Points: “If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is to attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve. If the enemy is the invading party, we can cut his line of communications and occupy the roads by which he will have to return…” Clip 13: This scene opens on a Sicilian countryside, as a shepherd is steering a herd of sheep downhill and Michael and two bodyguards are moving uphill in the opposite direction. Michael becomes acquainted with his father’s homeland and discovers a beautiful young woman, a virgin, named Appolonia. He is struck by the “thunderbolt” and forgets about the danger he escaped in America. He even forgets about his wife.
Clip 14: Art Of War, Chapter 11: The Nine Situations “Walk in the path defined by rule, and accommodate yourself to the enemy until you can fight a decisive battle. “At first, then, exhibit the coyness of a maiden, until the enemy gives you an opening; afterward emulate the rapidity of a running hare, and it will be too late for the enemy to oppose you.”
In this scene, the Don is fully recovered from the gunshots he suffered earlier in the film and calls the heads of New York’s 5 Families to a meeting in the conference room of a bank that he owns— unofficially. At this meeting, the Don calls for a truce between himself and Frank Tattaglia, both of whom lost sons in the war following the murders of Captain McCluskey and Virgil Solozzo. Sonny ordered the hit on Bruno Tattaglia in whose nightclub Luca Brasi, the Godfather’s top enforcer, had been executed. In retaliation for Bruno’s death, Sonny’s life was taken. The Don wants to ensure Michael’s safe return from Sicily to America.
The Don knows that the Tattaglia and Barzini Families have spies in Sicily hunting for Michael. So, in this meeting, the Don gives his famous “Iron Curtain” speech where he promises that he won’t be the one to break the peace and afterwards, to seal this treaty, he and Tattagla embrace. The Don knows that to secure his son’s safe return to America that he must lay low for the time being humble himself, and suffer insults and trespasses against his territories until he can build the family back up to full-strength. It is not in the movie, but the book describes how the Don engineers Michael’s return to America. There is a young man named Felix of the Bocchicchio Family, which is different from the other Families in the respect that their trade is in supplying themselves as hostages. Disagreements among Families are leveraged with Bocchicchio hostages. If one side fails to uphold its promise in this arrangement, the other side could kill its hostage. The Bocchicchio Family would then turn its wrath on the side that broke the promise that had the hostage killed. This is how the Bocchicchios got paid. But Felix Bocchicchio was different and possessed enough intelligence to not want to be in his Family’s trade.
Felix attended law school, married a nice American White woman, and after getting his law degree and having difficulty finding work, got involved with a friend who worked at a prestigious law firm. This “friend” asked Felix for a favor, for Felix to use his law skills on a complicated bankruptcy scam. There was a one-in-a-million chance of getting caught, this friend promised, but when Felix did get caught he took the whole rap. His friends got reduced sentences by telling the court that Felix strong-armed them into going along and Felix did 5 years in prison. As soon as he got out of prison, he got a gun, found the 2 men who’d framed him eating in a restaurant, and blew their brains out. He waited on the police to arrive at the scene, confessed to the murders, went to trial, was found guilty, and sentenced to die in the electric chair. Someone from his family went to the Godfather for help.The Don sent his lawyer to the prison to make Felix an offer: to see to the comfort of his widow and the education of his children in exchange for confessing to the murders of the police captain and Solozzo whom Michael had killed. Felix confessed to everything with details supplied to him through the Don’s lawyer. Once the switch was thrown and Felix was dead, the Don sent for Michael’s return to America. Clip 15: Art Of War, Chapter 9: The Army on the March: “Pass quickly over mountains, and keep in the neighborhood of valleys” “The Godfather’: “Every man has but one destiny” Michael is still in exile in Sicily after murdering a New York police captain and a drug dealer. He marries a young Sicilian woman named Apollonia and a local Don indebted to the Godfather lets them stay in his villa but only for a short time. Enemy spies are also in Sicily and Michael can’t stay in one place for long. His car is booby-trapped with a bomb that kills his new wife and this death of an innocent is his baptism, or rebirth, into his father’s world and seals his destiny to take over the Corleone empire. The Biblical metaphor here is that his love for Apollonia represents the one thing that could come between himself and complete devotion to his father. Apollonia’s death and the poverty of his homeland enables Michael to fully understand his father’s determination to not be a puppet on a string. Also, as explained in the previous clip, the Don has cleared the way for Michael to return to America and if Apollonia had not died, Michael may not have made the decision to return to America and stand by his father. Throughout this film, death and life are 2 sides of the same coin. Clip 16: Amos 3:3: “Two cannot walk together unless they be in agreement” Mark 6:24: “Man cannot serve 2 masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other.” Mark 2:22: “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” Michael returns to America and his wife, Kay, sees him for the first time in years looking less like the American-looking Michael who’d left and more like his Sicilian father. In this scene, Kay represents the America Michael strived to be a part of and now, after the death of Apollonia and acceptance of his father’s world and ideology, Michael is more distant from her now and Kay feels this disconnnection. But traces of his former love of Kay remain and he wants to somehow make their relationship work. Where before he tried to become a part of her greater society by rejecting his father, joining the army, and marrying her, a non-Sicilian, he now wants her to forsake her world for his world. Kay rejects his world and rejects him and this is made very clear in the sequel when she aborts his son. This conflict is the unifying thread from this point in the storyline and throughout the sequel. Clip 17: As I’ve demonstrated earlier, Christian symbolism is the key to understanding this film. The resurrection and the inseperable relationship between life and death are cyclical in this movie. When Sonny was murdered, the Don rose from his deathbed; when Apollonia was murdered, Michael was reborn, in a sense, and embraced his family, his father, and his own unalterable destiny. Now, in this clip, we again see the Christian symbolism of life, death, and the resurrection as represented by the Godfather dying while playing in a garden with his grandson. A fitting and perfect death, surrounded by life. Also, as 2 objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, the Godfather’s death marks the birth of a new generation under his son Michael. Clip 18: Art Of War, Chapter 4: Tactics “The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.”
Weak Points and Strong: “All men can see the individual tactics necessary to conquer, but almost no one can see the strategy out of which total victory is evolved.” Again, in this clip we see the duality of life and death as Michael attends the baptism of his godson as his soldiers kill off the heads of the other 4 New York Families. By the time the godson is baptized and the heads of the 4 New York Families are executed, Michael emerges in all of his glory as the undisputed Don of Dons, the spiritual reincarnation of his father, Vito Corleone. By pretending to be weak, closing the Family’s New York businesses, and moving everything out to Vegas, Michael and his Family were not only underestimated, but their enemies became arrogant to the point of letting their own guard down as the Bible says in Proverbs 16 and verse 18: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” Clip 19: Matt. 13 Verses 37-42: “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; 38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; 39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. 40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. 41 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; 42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” Michael settles all Family business in New York by punishing the traitors in the Family. First, Carlo Rizzi, Connie Corleone’s husband who had Sonny killed; then, Tessio, the Godfather’s own Caporegime, or Lieutenant, who had also, like Carlo Rizzi, sold out to Barzini. The Family accounts in New York are all settled now and we see the cycle of life and death once again repeated as Michael takes the empire his father created to Las Vegas, Nevada. Clip 20: In this scene, we see the seeds being sown for the Family’s slow disintegration. To appease his wife, Michael denies any involvement in the execution of New York’s 4 Families. When she sees Michael through a doorway, having his hand kissed by his bodyguards, he reminds her, according to Mario Puzo’s novel, “Of statues in Rome, statues of those Roman emperors of antiquity, who, by divine right, held the power of life and death over their fellow men. One hand was on his hip, the profile of his face showed a cold proud power, his body was carelessly, arrogantly at ease, weight resting on one foot slightly behind the other. The capo regimes stood before him. In that moment Kay knew that everything Connie had accused Michael of was true (that Michael had murdered her husband, Carlo). She went back in the kitchen and wept.”
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