Any Serious Godfather fans out there?

Killed him harder

 

Michael already knew he was going to have Carlo killed. He ALWAYS believed Sonny's death was Carlo's doing! ('Connie', Talia Shire says as much directly) It really did not matter what Carlo said.
Michael just wanted confirmation of who was behind the power struggle, Barzini or Tattaglia.


As an aside:
In my view of it. What makes the Godfather so compelling as drama is the way that Francis and the others involved, take what was essentially, Mario Puzo's pulp fictionesque, over the top, over-sexed novel, of a bunch of hoodlums and underneath that over the top story they weave into that fabric, a fact based story with fictional elements and a complex level of familial Shakespearean angst and depth.

 

To be fair to Puzo he played a big part in the transfer from novel to screen, he did win the Oscar (along with Coppola) for best adapted screenplay. He also fully intended the novel to be aimed at the mass market, he needed to make some money quickly and the more 'serious' novels he had wrote so far weren't making him any... so he lowered his artistic values and went for it.

What Coppola did was quickly get to the meat of the story and excised all the plotlines from the novel which had no real bearing on the central plot. Such as a lot of the Fontane back story, Sonny's girlfriend with the 'downstairs' issue etc. But the characters and their traits of The Don, Sonny, Michael et al were already there in the orignal novel and mostly translated to screen without any changes.

 

Indeed, regardless of what Carlo said he was a dead man. Michael was just dotting the I's and crossing the T's by this point. If he had any slight doubt (and as I mentioned earlier I think the novel indicates he did) then this would also be put to rest but ulitmately by this point Michael's mind was made up.

Other than the Don himself and potentially Tom Hagen, everybody underestimated Michael. For a lot of people that would be a fatal mistake. Carlo should have got the hell out of there once it became clear the Don would live and Michael would take over. He clearly didn't think Michael could be so ruthless...

 

is it like the cool thing to hate #3? LOL

 

I agree. Very well explained.
Even if Carlo was perhaps not as implicated in Sonny's betrayal as it seems on the surface, Carlo seemed to have had pretensions of ambitions that Michael could not abide or tolerate. ALL competition must be eliminated. ("Not everybody Tom. Just my enemies.")
Plus Carlo had openly displayed a needless and cruel 'lack of respect' for Michael's sister, another 'sin' Michael could never abide.

To me the absolute most compelling scenes in the 2 movies, and what reveals the underlying themes are when Michael asks both his mother and his father at different times about 'family' and 'responsibility'.
The one scene where Don Vito explains to Michael women can be careless, but men cannot be.
And the other scene later, where Michael asks his mother if it's possible if one can lose their 'family'.
In my mind, the whole saga of this man, and this family turns on those two scenes in particular.

 

Tattaglia was a pimp. He never could have out fought Santino.

 

Yes, and in his endless quest to protect the 'family' he pretty much loses all of his close family. His Wife leaves him, he has his brother killed. His sister whilst she respects Michael and comes to understand her role in the family cannot surely love him anymore. His children, at best, must view him as a cold and distant father. He pretty much does his best to alienate Tom Hagen and unlike The Don gains respect purely from fear.
The Don's respect was built primarily through trust, yes there was fear there as he could be as ruthless as Michael but only when it was the last resort. People loved The Don, respected him and would do anything for him. It is hard to imagine anybody saying they loved Michael by the end of Part II and whilst people would do what he asked there was a different primary motivation than when doing it for The Don.
So in the end Michael succeeds in the basic sense that he has protected the 'family' but at a huge cost for him personally because on his journey he loses sight of what family really means and how he has allowed himself to be completely consumed by power.

 

This is all hardly a self-contained issue in the saga, but speaks to the unraveling of the family unit in modern times. The story parallels skyrocketing divorce rates and what makes Godfather I and particularly II so compelling is the way it painstakingly juxtaposes the previous generation's approach to the institution of marriage and the concept of family, honor and loyalty. When Michael says "times are changing" to his mother after she says "but you can never lose your family," he isn't kidding. He doesn't mind being ruthless to hold onto whatever he can of the old ways. But in doing so, the tighter he grips, the more it slips through is fingers.

 

These are my thoughts, as well. Perfect summation!

 

Michael doesnt know for sure. But Michael does know that calls were made from a pay phone near Carlos house to Barzini/Solottozo, thats why Michael suspects Carlo.

 

It always puzzles me why Michael came back to Kay after returning from Sicily. It seems a spectacularly bad choice, as she both disapproves of the mob life and isn't accustomed to look the other way at such things. Of course it seems that there are at least four to five years that are missing from the story (Michael returned to America a year before approaching Kay, and a couple of scenes later they have a three year old boy), and that rather diminishes Michael's character arc in my opinion. We hardly if ever see a comfortable, warm relationship between Michael and Kay - he's always kinda creepy toward her and she's always holding him at arm's length. Knowing the huge weight of responsibility on his head, he should have chosen a wife that knew the score.

Also, I rather wonder what the aftermath of Apollonia's murder was - did the Sicilians insist on Michael's departure once murderous infamy followed him from America? The direct fallout from that incident would have been interesting to see. I'm aware that in the book, Michael tracked the murderer down in the U.S. and had him executed on the same day that the mob bosses were eliminated.

 

I brought this up in a different thread recently (didn't know this thread existed): Can anybody here clearly explain the scene in Part II where the Rosato Brothers try to kill Pentangeli in the bar, only to have it broken up by a nosy policeman? The movie makes it out like it was an ingenious plot by Hyman Roth to turn Pentangeli against Michael...yet everything about that scene suggests that Pentangeli was truly supposed to be killed.

My only conclusion is that Francis goofed. Any other ideas?

 

I see the Michael who returns from Sicily as a cold and loveless person. After the bucolic beauty of his time in Sicily, and his passionate love with Apollonia, Michael is dead inside.So it makes sense that he would attempt to resume a previous relationship, as opposed to a new one for which he would have to generate new emotion and energy. I've also always felt that by marrying a non-Italian, it's also an early attempt to try to present himself to the world as a regular businessman.

It is Kay's decision to go back with him that truly puzzles me, not Michael's. What's in it for her? After all that time? She could have had developed a normal life in that time. I think these two films are masterpieces but they do leave open this question, despite their earliest scenes together - they never characterize the relationship between Michael and Kay as passionate, or even particularly understanding and sympathetic. A very different (yet also brilliant) gangster film Goodfellas establishes the wife's attraction to the power, boldness, and danger associated with her boyfriend/husband's activities. The Godfather doesn't really give us any reason why Kay would want to be with Michael again, except for what they had years before, but when he returns from Italy, right away, it's clear he's a different man.

 

I think that's a fair question, I'm curious also. There is no doubt that, whatever they planned to do to Pentangeli, they are genuinely interrupted in an unplanned manner by the policeman. I guess it's possible that they only intended to drag him to a back room and torture and beat him, though it originally seemed otherwise to me. But it doesn't make much sense for them to implicate Michael (who says "hello") only to then kill him.

 

Excellent insights. Yes, it always seems that Kay regrets accepting Michael almost from the minute it happens. She knows she's being taken for a ride, and still doesn't decline to do so.

It's so ironic that pre-Sicily Michael refused to say "I love you" to Kay. The first time he says, "I love you" to her, it's almost a "tell" that he has crossed over into the world where everything's a lie except the duty to revenge his family.

 

Since it does make no sense that they would falsely implicate Michael and then kill Pentangeli, I have to believe it was Roth's plan to have him nearly killed so he would be angry enough to sing (which, of course, he did, because "Roth played this one beautifully").

 

But there's no way the policeman was in on the plot, because he exchanges gunfire with the Rosatos.

 

There are definitely some unclear plot sequences in Godfather II...……...The Hyman Roth character doesn't jive with my understanding. An extremely wealthy mobster who lives in a modest home in Miami, and is living his last days (poor health) fighting for control...…..why? For what? He knows he doesn't have much time left. It doesn't make sense to me why he would go against the Corleone family late in life.

 

The policeman definitely is not in on it. But I think the Rosato Brothers were under orders from Roth to convince Frankie that they meant to kill him on Michael's behalf. It is a brilliant plan to get him to flip on Michael, and if it fails Roth is (in theory) not implicated and continues the front of being Michael's mentor.

 

I haven't re-watched the movie recently yet, but my off-the-cuff answer is that when you've spent your whole life fighting a bloody war for money and power, there's never enough money and power. And he can't resist kneecapping the Corleone family one last time. It isn't logical, it's an ego-driven, power trip thing.

 

Roth's modest home and easy-going nature are as much a front as his "I have a short time left on Earth" and "I'm a retired investor living on a pension" fronts. The Corleone family is his biggest competition in Havana and in Vegas. If he can wipe them out, he "wins". He suffers from the same power issues as Michael.

 

I guess I don't have the mindset of a mobster.

 

But how can Pentageli flip on Michael if he's dead? It's just way too murky to be anything but a small flaw in an otherwise perfect movie.