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.

Michael Corleone steals a page out of Sun Tzu's playbook: an analysis of The Godfather Part 2

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.”