How the Godfather was able to bring Michael back to America: a review and analysis

The Godfather is a 1972 film by Director Francis Ford Coppola that follows New York crime boss Don Corleone, the challenge to his empire, and his youngest son Michael’s rise as his successor. 

The film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert DuVall, James Caan, John Cazale, Talia Shire, Abe Vigoda, Sterling Hayden, and Diane Keaton. The Godfather was co-produced by Albert S. Ruddy and Robert Evans with Alfran Productions and distributed by Paramount Pictures in wide release on March 24, 1972. The music is by Nino Rota, cinematography by Gordon Willis, and the editing by William Reynolds and Peter Zinner. The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning 3 for Best Actor (Brando), Best Adapted Screenplay (Puzo and Coppola), and Best Picture. 

The film begins on the wedding day of Don Corleone’s daughter, Connie. According to Sicilian custom, a Don cannot refuse any reasonable request on the day of his daughter’s wedding and there are many in attendance seeking favor from the most powerful of New York’s 5 Dons. Of all the guests, there is 1 whom the Don is most happy to see and yet the 1 whose rejection weighs most heavy on his heart: his 3rd and youngest son, Michael, who abandoned him and the Family business to join the U.S. Armed Forces and then going on to date a White woman--an Irishman--outside of his culture. The Don is powerful but not immortal; he needs a successor, someone worthy to take the Corleone Family into the future. Michael’s oldest brother Santino--or Sonny as his father nicknamed him--is a superb wartime general but hot, temperamental, impulsive, and unfaithful to his wife! This last flaw is significant to the Don who is notoriously strait-laced about marital fidelity. His middle son, Fredo, has a good head for business but his weaknesses for alcohol and women and lack of personal force would make for an unworthy Don. 

A blessing disguised as a curse comes in the form of a very dangerous man--who happens to be a Turk--named Virgil Sollozzo. The Don earned his great wealth with the trucks he owned, running bootleg whiskey and selling this whiskey at speakeasies which he also owned. Now, after Prohibition, most of the Don’s revenues come from numbers and gambling. Virgil Sollozzo wants to sell narcotics in New York and needs 2 favors from the Don: $1 million dollars in cash and the judges, prosecutors, and politicians indebted to the Don to ensure that those who are caught selling dope receive the light sentences that would prevent them from snitching. In return for both, Sollozzo promises the Don a 300% return on his million dollar investment to which Sonny, without forethought nor respect for proper protocol, perks up at this proposition, interrupts his father, and creates a crack in the Family wall. Sonny catches himself quickly but not quick enough. The Don’s answer to Sollozzo’s deal is no, but Solozzo believes he can make a deal with Sonny with the Godfather out of the picture. 

All Michael Corleone ever wanted was to be accepted as an American citizen; this is why he joined the Marines. But Michael’s American Dream dies after his father is gunned down  in the streets. Michael realizes that every man has but 1 destiny, and his has always been to be at his father’s side. 

The Godfather is more than a crime story. Among its themes are family, faith, reincarnation, hypocrisy, and Christian symbolism. But the dominant theme of this film, in my opinion, is life and death and how both are intertwined throughout the film as Family power and destiny are transferred from Don Corleone to his son Michael. 

In the scene where Solozzo’s men shoot the Don, pay attention to where this scene takes place and where the Don ultimately dies at the end of the film. The scene where he is shot is set in a market where he is surrounded by life in the form of fruits and vegetables; in the garden scene where he dies playing with his grandson, the Don is also surrounded by life in the form of vegetables and his grandson who embodies new life and reincarnation as the Don is reborn through his son Michael’s takeover of the Family. Another instance of the life and death theme in the film occurs as Michael attends the baptism of his godson as, simultaneously, his soldiers decapitate the heads of New York’s 4 crime Families, with the rite of baptism symbolizing the act of dying and being reborn. 

Another theme in the film involves hypocrisy, not only in Kay’s perception of Michael’s Family but also in  the racist attitudes Italians (in the film) have towards Blacks; this despite the fact that throughout this film and its sequel, Italians themselves are on the receiving end of bigotry. When the Don calls the meeting to seek a truce with the Tattaglias to ensure his son Michael’s safe return to America following the deaths of Sollozzo and police captain McCluskey, the issue of where to sell the drugs comes up and 1 of the Dons at this meeting suggests selling their drugs in the Black community: “They’re animals, anyway, let them lose their souls,” this Don says; in The Godfather sequel, the Nevada senator cuts loose with a string of ethic slurs directed at Michael and Italians in a closed door meeting with Michael over a gaming license for 1 of Michael’s casinos. I go into more depth on these and other themes in the film in an analysis called Michael Corleone steals a page out of Sun Tzu’s playbook in my Youtube playlist Perspectives on Cinema.

I first read The Godfather all the way back in High School and it was my favorite book then as it still is today. As great as the film is, there are things in the book that clarify things that the film leaves out such as the scene where the Don calls the truce to ensure Michael’s safe return to America after being exiled to Sicily for murdering Sollozzo and police captain McCluskey. The film--for length and budget considerations--does not explain how the Don engineers Michael’s return to America. Remember, he--Michael--is guilty of murdering a police Captain making him eligible for the death penalty. Here is how the Don was able to pull this off: 

There is a young man named Felix of the Bocchicchio Family, which is different from the other Families in the respect that their Family’s trade is providing hostages to the other New York Families as pledges. Disagreements among the various Families are insured by Bocchicchio hostages. If one side fails to honor its part in this type of negotiation, the offended Family kills its Bocchicchio hostage. The Bocchicchio clan would then turn its wrath on the Family that broke the pledge and not the Family that killed its hostage. This is how the Bocchicchios get paid. But Felix Bocchicchio is different and believes that he possesses enough intelligence to survive without his Family, similar to Michael Corleone’s position prior to murdering Solozzo and the police captain. 

Felix attends law school, marries a White woman, and--after getting his law degree and having difficulty finding work--gets himself involved with a friend who works at a prestigious law firm. This “friend” asks 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 promises Felix, but when Felix does get caught, his 2 accomplices, both White males, testify against him and receive reduced sentences by telling the court that Felix--preceded by his Family’s violent reputation--strong armed them into going along with him. Felix gets a 5 years prison sentence. As soon as he gets out of prison, he gets a gun, finds the 2 men who’d framed him--both, at the time, eating in a restaurant--and blows their brains out. Felix waits on the police to arrive at the scene, confesses to the murders, and goes to trial where he is found guilty and sentenced to die in the electric chair. A family member goes to the Godfather for help and afterwards the Don sends his lawyer, Tom Hagen, 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 him confessing to the murders of the police captain, McCluskey, and Virgil Solozzo, both of whom Michael had killed. Felix confesses to everything with details Hagen provides him. Once the switch is thrown and Felix dies, the Don sends word to Sicily for Michael to return home to America.

There are other interesting scenarios in the book that the film leaves out but overall the film is pretty faithful to the book. Both Mario Puzo--the book’s author--and Coppola co wrote the script separately and later together incorporating elements that worked and leaving out elements that didn’t work. The sequel cannibalized off elements in the book that weren’t used in the 1st film such as Don Corleone’s backstory including him as a small boy fleeing Sicily and his pre-Don existence as a grocery clerk and the chain of events that lead to him becoming a Don. Elements new to the sequel that did not come from the novel are the storylines involving Jewish mobster Hyman Roth and Fredo’s assassination. 

When I look at how great the The Godfather is, it is hard to imagine that at the time the film was being produced, the studio considered getting Elia Kazan to direct it instead of Coppola because the studio was concerned about whether Coppola--a young and inexperienced director at that time--could handle a film with The Godfather’s $7 million dollar budget which was a fortune at that time. Elia Kazan is a great director--directed some of the greatest films ever--but I wonder how committed he would have been, as a Greek, in preserving the integrity of the Corleone Family's Italian casting (with the exception of James Caan, who is Jewish). Producer Robert Evans’ hiring of Coppola came out of his desire to make The Godfather “ethnic to the core.” It’s also hard to imagine how The Godfather would have been with Lawrence Olivier playing the Don instead of Marlon Brando. Olivier was considered for the role but turned it down to star in Sleuth which came out the same year as The Godfather, in 1972. From the outset Mario Puzo had Brando as his pick for the Don who may not have gotten the part had Olivier accepted it; the studios were reluctant to hire Brando due to the man’s temper and him coming off a couple of unsuccessful films. It’s also hard to imagine how the film would have been had James Caan been cast as Michael Corleone instead of Al Pacino. Originally, Paramount did not want Pacino playing Michael because they thought that he was too short but, again, Coppola was able to get Pacino the role who the director felt looked Sicilian. 

Even after almost 50 years, The Godfather still ranks as the best film of the gangster genre and 1 of the best films--if not THE best film--ever made in many polls. When I think of gangster films, my all-time top 3 are The Godfathers 1 and 2, and Sergio Leone’s 1984 epic Once Upon A Time In America. If I had a top 4, I would include Scorsese’s 1990 film Goodfellas. I have had The Godfather on DVD for a while and just upgraded to blu ray and to be honest, the picture and sound quality are identical unlike the sequel which is a definite improvement on blu ray.