THE GODFATHER and THE GODFATHER PART II have been among the most resonant in cinematic history. Their stature as Great Movies owes not only to artistry but social, cultural, and political significance. Like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in relation to science-fiction movies, they were unlike all previous movies in the gangster genre in subject, style, and suggestion.
Most gangster movies featured misfit outlaws rapidly rising to the top, only to crash and burn in infamy(and a bit of glory) from an excess of vanity and greed; in contrast, THE GODFATHER films were about men with survival instincts and staying power: Qualities of patience, diligence, intelligence, and empathy(albeit for nefarious reasons). They generally weren’t hotheads.

The centrality of the hothead in the classic Gangster Movie was a win-win for the studios. Hotheads are exciting, bursting with bad boy exuberance, the sort of outsized personalities that draw in the crowds. But as they were almost always destined to fall sooner-than-later, they could be peddled as ‘morality lessons’, aka crime-doesn’t-pay, to assuage the scolds.
Over time, the formula became so repetitious that the gangster movie fell out of fashion. And, few thought to capitalize on the other side of gangster life, deemed too dull and boring for crime movies: Mob activities interwoven with accountants, lawyers, judges, labor leaders, and the dreary machinery of local politics. (Even the much esteemed GOODFELLAS met with limited box office, and THE IRISHMAN, a film just as remarkable, went nowhere. Both were immersed in the mundane aspects of gangsterism.)
Likewise, most Westerns have been about gunslingers at the expense of other kinds of people who were more instrumental in the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny; but then, the appeal of the Western is the freedom, equally promising and dangerous, at the dawn of settlement. And guns are more fun than pens or hammers on the big screen.

As a further consideration, a more banal representation of the gangster world might have been incriminating of, thus more dangerous to, the establishment. It was one thing to show gangsters as a bunch of bootleggers and hoodlums mowing down one another. It would have been quite another to show how organized crime was intricately interwoven with the activities of legal, financial, and political spheres. Instead of simple rise-and-fall tales of hothead gangsters, the public would have been confronted with the dilemma of criminal operatives worming into the system and rubbing elbows with the respectable elements of society, i.e. gangsters need not self-destruct but thrive in cahoots with politicians, bankers, labor bosses, and even the clergy(that, like politics, hardly cared about where the donations came from).
If the classic Gangster Movie emphasized the outlier nature of its outlaws(supposedly at odds with the mostly decent and law-abiding citizens of their ethnic community), a more realistic assessment of the gangster world implied that penchant for criminality was more hardwired in some cultures than others, a troubling prospect for the Italian-American community and the more liberal-minded voices opposed to ethnic prejudices.

As it happened, Mario Puzo wrote a best-seller, a landmark in American fiction. There had been countless novels about crime, but THE GODFATHER was different. Puzo was too talented a writer to crank out just another piece of pulp about hoodlums. But then, he was too desperate to agonize over a serious piece of literary fiction — his second novel took him ten years to write. His earlier and more literary attempts, THE DARK ARENA and THE FORTUNATE PILGRIM, a minor masterpiece of the Immigrant Experience, garnered good reviews but made little money, and besides he was a degenerate gambler burdened with debts. He also had a family to take care of and chose to ‘sell out’ his considerable talent to churn out a work with all the bells and whistles of a best-seller. Of course, Puzo being Puzo, a man of literary passion, he found himself immersed in the subject and producing a work far more impressive than was initially conceived.

In actuality, Puzo only had indirect contacts with the mob through relatives and friends/acquaintances(some involved in gambling) and relied mostly on government reports and newspaper archives. Being an outsider to mob culture, his fictional account owed a good deal to the tropes and conventions he’d absorbed from countless novels, pulp and serious(usually about families than criminals). THE GODFATHER novel was inspired more by literary tradition than literal facts. His brand of somber sensationalism was aimed for middlebrow sensibility. He combined the brutal and grisly details of the underworld(mostly gleaned from news archives and books), a Machiavellian intuition of mobster strategizing, and literary craft that could render any character more interesting than he is.

Had THE GODFATHER been a truthful novel about organized crime, the characters and their activities would have come across as shabbier and cruder, like the hoodlums in Martin Scorsese’s GOODFELLAS and THE IRISHMAN. If truth is any criterion for art, one could argue that THE GODFATHER, novel and film, fail miserably. But if myth-making is an art in its own right, Puzo’s novel has a place alongside the works of Henryk Sienkiewciz, Margaret Mitchell, Edna Ferber, and Ayn Rand.

As a runaway success in book form, it hardly stirred up controversy in the Italian community, not even among the mobsters, surely not the most avid readers in the world. No matter how successful a novel, it rarely generated the kind of anxiety and excitement it might in movie form, which explains why certain novels(deemed a bit racy) never made it to the big screen or were fundamentally altered to pass the censors: PEYTON PLACE and LOLITA, for example.
The various ‘decency’ organizations in the US were less worried about the impact of books than of movies(and of course TV), which came under heavier censorship, that was until the late Sixties. When word got around that Puzo’s best-seller would be turned into a movie, certain members of the Italian-American community, not least mafia types posing as concerned citizens, chose to turn it into a socio-political issue. It was also a reflection of a time when identity politics took on a whole new meaning with the Civil Rights Movement. If the eggplants got much mileage by making a big fuss, why not the olives too?

Of course, given the history of the gangster genre, as either pulp fiction or B-Movie, the ethnic anxiety(and exploitation thereof) was easily understood. It was especially true of THE GODFATHER that wasn’t merely about individual miscreants but about the larger culture. It was one thing to portray lone Italian-Americans as criminals, the black sheep of the family but the entire culture/community? Unlike Classic Gangster Genre hoodlums, usually shady individuals or members of a rogue organization, the entire Corleone clan was in the ‘business’, as were the other ‘families’. The Italian-American FAMILY wasn’t supposed to be in the ‘business’, at least in the popular imagination. Indeed, a convention in the Classic Gangster Movie was to have a mother type or priestly figure bemoan the gangster as a black sheep of the community, a pariah who’s lost his way.
In the Gangster Movie, the mob is like a sick and twisted parody of the family and/or the church. Unlike Western outlaws, the mob was organized and hierarchical, relatively elaborate for a gang of misfits. It had a strict chain of command, loyalty oath, and even a sense of honor(among thieves). It was a ‘black’ family for those who rejected or were rejected by their real families. They had no use for respectable society and vice versa.

Then one can appreciate the disturbing implications of THE GODFATHER, in which the entire family is in the business. Sure, the women keep to their spheres, but even they know and accept(and justify) what their fathers, brothers, and husbands are up to, regarding it as ‘being strong for the family’.
THE GODFATHER novel would have been problematic with publishers in an earlier time. The movie would have been impossible. Both, especially the film, reaped the benefits from the socio-cultural changes of the post-war years, especially in the Sixties. Ironically enough, some of the appeal was in nostalgic reaction to the ‘radical’ changes as the Corleones embodied the kind of ‘values’ and attitudes threatened by the youth-oriented licentiousness of the Sixties. THE GODFATHER is about growing up and being, above all, for one’s own family and culture despite(or especially because of) the unavoidable compromises with a rapidly changing America that weakens all communities and traditions in the name of individualism and careerism.

Given what they knew of the sordid Gangster Genre and the seedy & ugly realities of the gangster world, a good number of Italian-Americans surely expected the worst from THE GODFATHER the movie. A movie about an Italian-American family immersed in ‘business’ with and against similar families and going about resolving their differences not only with guns but with ropes and knives(with dead fish and horse thrown in for good measure).
Given their limited imagination, how could they have known what Francis Ford Coppola had in mind? They could be forgiven their worst nightmares as NO ONE, probably even Coppola himself, had any idea of how it would turn out. The studio itself had little faith in the project and, had it not been for Coppola’s insistence, would have rushed out a hack-job to make a quick buck from Puzo’s best-seller.
Indeed, to reduce the production cost, the original idea was to ditch the period setting and contemporaneously update the story(in which case the result might have been something like THE GRADUATE + organized crime).
Until then, Coppola had been noticed(with hope and derision in equal measure) as an ambitious upstart in the industry, the leading Young Turk of the Film School generation and its most articulate spokesman, but he hadn’t directed anything of consequence, something that might convince studio heads that the future of movies lay in the hands of college graduates. Coppola was more appreciated as a writer, as he’d won the Academy Award for the screenplay of PATTON.

The studio, with its conflation of the gangster genre with B-movies and box office flops, decided to make ‘another’ gangster movie only because of the success of Puzo’s novel. They were banking on the notoriety of the best-seller(than anything special or outstanding about the prospective film itself) to draw in the audience. Like all exploitive enterprises, the idea was to make it cheap, sell it fast, and take and money and run. One of the reasons the studio opted for Francis Ford Coppola was it figured the ‘kid’ would be easy to boss around; in his eagerness to be working in the industry, he would do as told. As things turned out, Coppola possessed not only the soul of an artist but the instincts of a consummate salesman, and he somehow managed to corral the executives into his way as the only way. Still, the anxiety(often boiling over into exasperation) lingered to the final day of the production that a lot of money would be lost because Coppola didn’t make the film fast and cheap enough.

And certain Italian-American organizations, ironically with mafia involvement, were convinced that the eye-talians would be collectively defamed as a bunch of crime-ridden goombas. The movie critics may have been curious about the project, especially with Marlon Brando chosen to play the Don and with Coppola at the helm as one of the first(if not the first) film-school directors, but virtually no one expected the phenomenon that it became.

It also came to mean different things to different groups. For the young and cynical, THE GODFATHER films, especially Part II, reflected the political malaise of the Vietnam War era and the worsening Watergate scandal. It was admired as an exposé and indictment of the greed and corruption at the heart of American power and wealth, and Francis Coppola, something of a political liberal, did nothing to dissuade such a view.
For others, however, the films, especially the first, were almost an affirmation of what had been either forgotten or maligned amidst the social transformations of the Sixties. No wonder THE GODFATHER is Patrick Buchanan’s favorite film. It was also, more or less, the perspective of the author Mario Puzo who, even if a liberal, was an Old School Democrat more interested in real-life advantages than idealistic pies-in-the-sky. For Puzo, the corruption and compromises of ‘business’ were just part of reality, something one had to deal with as ineradicable or part-of-life, like immunity learns to deal with germs. His view was rather like Rodney Dangerfield’s in BACK TO SCHOOL.

For some THE GODFATHER was a story of a great fall while for others it was a story of a great rise. Of course, it was both, a classic illustration of “gaining the world while losing one’s soul”, i.e. Michael wins in ‘business’ but loses in the ‘personal’. THE GODFATHER PART II was especially molded to favor Coppola’s take over Puzo’s.
This ‘tragic’ aspect has been key to the films’ stature as masterpieces: Not just the politics of the ‘business’ but its ‘spiritual’ costs, where even when you win, you lose. If the Classic Gangster genre stuck with the rule “Crime Doesn’t Pay”, THE GODFATHER films demonstrate how crime can pay — Michael Corleone defeats his rivals and even bests the US government — but only at the cost of one’s soul.

If old Gangster Movies seemed simplistic in their insistence that crime mustn’t pay, THE GODFATHER films showed how it could be otherwise, especially if organized crime enjoys a depth of network in the larger ethnic community and has wormed itself into legitimate areas of business and politics. That said, there is the tragic cost of crime, its irreparable damage to personal life and one’s self-respect. Deep down inside, for all his rationalizations, there’s a sense of Michael having betrayed himself and ironically even his father for whom he ended up joining the ‘family business’. Michael’s act of fealty by killing Sollozzo and the police captain was most certainly not what his father wanted. There lies the tragedy. (Sollozzo is useful as a metaphor: The thing that must be named, exposed, or removed for any kind of real solution. As Michael says, ‘business’ with Sollozzo is out of the question as the drug-lord is only stalling for time for another attempt on the Corleones. So, whatever the risk, the Sollozzo Problem must be dealt with in a real way. In the US, the ‘sollozzo’ is Jewish Power. From ample evidence on how it has dealt with Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians, Russians, Western Whites, and etc., it should be obvious by now that the only Jewish Position is ‘our way or the highway’, which means all negotiations and compromises are bound to be meaningless as Jewish Power eventually wants everything to go its way, all the while accusing the rivals or perceived enemies of its own pathology.)

But is it truly tragic, borne of a deep and dark rumination on the nature of power? Or, is it a contrived piece of moralism, little more than a clever twist on the pat truism of “crime doesn’t pay”? Was it a sop to the ‘guilt’ anxiety of the audience that was having too good a time, an assuring reminder that hell awaits those who steal heaven on earth? Have the cake and eat it too. Root for Michael to beat the competition and capture the throne, only to slap oneself on the wrist with the admonition, by golly, it’s all very bad for the soul.

THE GODFATHER films were a departure from the gangster genre, and some even argued, including Coppola himself, that they’re more about a family involved in organized crime than the crime world itself. It’s about fathers and sons, mothers and sons, husbands and wives.
In a broader sense, it is also about politics at both the literal and metaphorical levels. THE GODFATHER films lurk in the overlapping spaces between the underworld of crime and the ‘over-world’ of law, which makes one wonder if the institutions of governance and law enforcement are more a restraint on or a facilitator of criminality. (Of course, there’s the third option, perhaps most depressing of all: the arms of the law are corrupt in and of themselves regardless of their connections with criminality. Isn’t it interesting that, even as mafia-related organized criminality was largely suppressed in the US, the deep state turned into one big criminal outfit, about which nothing can be done because it operates within the laws of its own making. Hardly better, what had once been deemed obscene, illegal, insane, and/or dangerous have become part of ‘legitimate’ enterprise: spread of gambling, drug legalization, pornification of childhood that is two degrees away from pedophilia, businesses built around facilitating illegal immigration, and etc.)

At the metaphorical level, the mafia(though never called any such in THE GODFATHER films) could be appreciated as a useful Machiavellian model of how power and wealth really operates in the US(or any domain for that matter). As metaphor, it is in equal measure powerful & damning and specious & self-serving. Of course, corruption has always been a part of every system, but it’s been convenient for certain criminally-prone ethnic groups to argue that they merely did in the underworld what the WASPS and Northern-European-stock Americans did in the ‘overworld’. (Of course, blacks have an even lamer excuse: “Muh slavery and shit.” Gotta loot them Air Jordans cuz long long ago their ancestors done picked cotton for massuh.)
In other words, certain ethnic groups turned to crime because the doors were shut to them in the legitimate spheres. Or, they did the dirty work for the ‘legitimate’ types who kept their own hands ‘clean’, much like how the political establishment in Japan recruited the Yakuza as muscle.
But there’s no getting around the fact that certain ethnic groups have been more inclined to corruption and criminality than other groups, and in the US, the most famous three have been the Italians, the Irish, and the Jews. As it happened, the Irish came to control much of the urban ‘machines’ — city hall, fire departments, police departments, the electoral process, and etc. — and accumulated sufficient ‘clout’ that they could ease off from outright criminality. And the Jews, with their smarts and networks, could amass great power via finance, media, academia, law, & etc, and use them as platforms for ethnic muscle. Who said you couldn’t act like a ‘gangster’ in the ‘legitimate’ world?

In the literal sense a gangster is a criminal operative, but behaviorally it can be anyone looking for the angles to cheat and steal. (You gotta see the angles, as Bernie Bernbaum in MILLER’S CROSSING says.) Jordan Belfort of THE WOLF OF WALL STREET ran an investment firm and stole more in a year than most gangsters do in a lifetime. And, news reports suggest that much of the Deep State is essentially a Jewish Supremacist mafia outfit.
Because Jews and the Irish moved into and dominated more lucrative fields — to be sure, Jewish Power, more fluid and flexible, kept on growing whereas Irish-American clout cratered with the loss of the local political machines — , it was left to the Italian-Americans to dominate the underworld, and as such, the Italian-Americans became the face of organized crime in the US. Of course, it also owed to Jews running the media and making another ethnic group take the blame for mob activities. To this extent, the eye-talians were like the fall guy in the equation.

But, especially following the release of THE GODFATHER films, the fear of the ‘blame’ gave way to the pride of ‘fame’, as few movies made an ethnic group as colorful, captivating, admirable, and even noble as THE GODFATHER films did for the Italian-American community. (Besides, in the Rock n Roll era of youth rebellion and ideological cynicism, it was ‘cool’ to be outcasts or outlaws. And given the new rhetoric of power-this and power-that, soon to morph into the discourse of ’empowerment’, what mattered more than anything was being ‘strong’ for your people. It was evident in the rise of Black Power politics, even justifying riots and looting, and in the ascendancy of Jewish Power that would culminate in the open gangsterism of Neocon-ism.)

It’s rather odd. According to the official narrative, slavery was the worst stain on American History, and furthermore, the American system, being committed to the Rule of Law, cannot tolerate transgressions against its principles. And yet, the two most ‘iconic’ American movies have been GONE WITH THE WIND(that romanticized Antebellum South and its struggle in the Civil War) and THE GODFATHER films(that romanticized an ethnic crime family that lives by the rule, “Your country ain’t your blood.”)
It implies that, as appealing and inspiring as the idea of the US as the land of the free, rule of law, and equal opportunity may be, there is something within human nature that finds it rather unrealistic, naive, and generic, therefore craving, if only subconsciously, for the firmer bonds of family & clan and assurance of hierarchy(as opposed to the alienation of individualism). One part of us wants to see ourselves break free as individuals, but another side of us wants to see ourselves in a ‘brotherhood’ serving something ‘greater’ than ‘myself’. Of course, American War Movies try to have it both ways: In TOP GUN, the hero is both a dutiful patriot who salutes his superiors and something of a cowboy who rides a fighter jet as his sky horse.

Paradoxically, THE GODFATHER’s powerful sense of Italian-ness made it as appealing to non-Italian-Americans as to Italian-Americans. Apart from the ‘exotic’ appeal, the ethnic peculiarities of the Italian-American mob families remind non-Italian groups of what makes their own selves different from the generic sense of ‘colorblind’ American-ness. The film’s Italian-ness can be observed as a uniqueness or be appreciated metaphorically as what makes each racial, ethnic, or religious group different and special. In other words, as Italian(or Sicilian) as the families in THE GODFATHER are, Hindus are Hindu, Jews are Jewish, Mexicans are Mexican, and etc.
Indeed, even as the Corleones are depicted as besting the Jewish mobsters in the films, with Moe Green getting bumped off in the first film and Hyman Roth in the second, Jews need not strictly see THE GODFATHER films as Machiavellian paeans to Italian-American triumphalism, especially given the actual historical outcome of ethnic competition in the US since the end of World War II. The Italian-Americans, like the rest of goy America, became just another bunch of hapless dogs to the Jews. American goyim are now either the attack dogs or the lapdogs of Jews but never the master. On that note, the Corleones can be regarded as crypto-Jews or crypto-any-ethnicity vying for power and privilege in the US. So, when M. Night Shyamalan says THE GODFATHER is the greatest movie ever, he could be admiring it from his own ethnic angle.

Ironically enough, the social, cultural, and political trends of the Sixties led to louder calls for both universalism and tribalism. The Civil Rights Movement was purportedly about equal rights and treatment of blacks and all other Americans on the basis of the ‘content of the character than the color of the skin’, and yet, there was no getting around the BLACK element of the movement, especially with MLK bellowing and hollering like only a Negro could. And it wasn’t long before the Civil Rights Movement gave way to various Black Power movements that, instead of calling for more mere acceptance and equal treatment, emphasized the need for black identity and pride, a sense of roots and vision. Contrary to popular conception, MLK was not about colorblind policies of meritocracy but preferential treatment for blacks as redress for past discrimination. Blacks going from universalism to tribalism inspired other groups to do the same, and it wasn’t long before people were yapping about Brown Power and Red Power(and even Pink or homo power). And Jews, especially with the rise of Holocaust Consciousness and Zionist Pride(over the Six Day War), emphasized tribal identity over assimilation into the Anglo-American model.

There was something schizoid about demanding White-Bread America(or Anglo-Germano-America) to treat everyone with equal justice and dignity while also calling on blacks, various non-white groups, and the white ethnics to give the Middle Finger to the WASP stock(as the foundation of the country). Even as the WASP elites were excoriated for their exclusivity, it became a point of pride for non-WASPs to maintain their own purity tests. In the film GOODFELLAS, one must be 100% Italian to be ‘made’. So, some ‘goomba’, who might fume about his ilk being excluded from some lily white club, would have no problem with only true-blue Italians being led into the backroom.

Already, even among white ethnics, there was the buzz that being generically American wasn’t necessarily to one’s advantage in a society where victim-narratives were becoming fashionable. Indeed, some whites got a head start in this by pretending to be ‘part-Indian’.
For others, what had been a reason for humiliation became a reason for pride. The WASP establishment excluded or belittled your grandparents or parents? What had been hurtful became boastful, and there’s some of this in THE GODFATHER novel and the films as well. Certain swarthy or non-Protestant white ethnic groups could also turn up the knob on their victimology. “Italians and Irish were not considered white” or “Anti-Catholicism was America’s oldest prejudice.”

On a darker note, American cultural attitudes about criminality began to change as well. Granted, the romanticization of the outlaw was nothing new as the American popular lore and legends were rife with exciting and even heroic tales of Southern avengers(like the James and Younger Gang) and Western Outlaws. But they tended to be regional than national — what was heroic to certain segments in the South was utterly villainous to others — and/or part of vulgar culture, that of the ill-educated whose idea of literature was dime-store novels. It just wasn’t part of respectable culture. Also, even as the classic gangster flicks made the underworld exciting, they stuck with the iron law that “crime doesn’t pay”.
In their time, real-life hoodlums like Al Capone had many associates and partners(even in the legal world) and became objects of public fascination(and even secret admiration), but no one believed he was a Good Guy or justified in his criminality(despite his spending sprees to appear as a modern Robin Hood).
The group most closely associated with justified violence against the main thrust of Americanism was the Indians who, upon their utter demise and passing from history, came to be mythologized in the popular imagination. It was a luxury that White America could afford because the American-Indians-as-a-threat-to-public-peace was no more. With the pacification of the West, no white man ever needed to fear again of being raided, scalped, and fed to fire ants by red savages. Even so, most Western movies still cheered on the cowboys, whose heroism largely derived from their handiwork with Winchester 73’s against the ‘Injuns’.
The Jews in Hollywood sure as hell saw nothing wrong with Manifest Destiny as it was a boon for Jewish immigrants as well. (Only after World War II and the ascendancy of the Holocaust Narrative did some Jews draw parallels between what the Nazis did and what the Paleface did, that is until some noticed parallels between the fate of the Indians and that of the Palestinians.)

It was in the Sixties that crime and violence came to be justified in ways unthinkable in earlier times. One reason was the easing of censorship, especially in the movies. Another was the change in attitude, not least due to Rock n Roll that drew inspiration from savage black energies and idolized youthful rebellion. Another was the fusion of radical politics and popular culture, most famously in Arthur Penn’s rendition of BONNIE AND CLYDE, a film that went from notoriety to a kind of nobility. Initially dismissed and even denounced by many critics as ugly and irresponsible, the naysayers were soon mowed down by its defenders, and then the radical community rationalized the hoodlums as modern-day robin hoods. And with Clyde going from impotent to erect, the violence-as-liberation took on a Freudian as well as a Marxist tone. And even though the criminals were all captured, wounded, or killed in the end, the blood rapture engulfing the handsome duo made their deaths seem almost transcendent. It was expanded upon two years later in THE WILD BUNCH(directed by Sam Peckinpah).

It was the kind of climax denied to the hoodlums in the Classic Gangster Movies. The anti-hero of SCARFACE wimps out at the end. The one in LITTLE CAESAR pitifully mutters, “Is this the end of Rico?” James Cagney’s Cody at the end of PUBLIC ENEMY is dropped off at a door, dead and bandaged. The closest thing to an orgasmic ending in the Classic Gangster Movie was perhaps James Cagney’s shouting “Made it Ma, Top of the World!” just before immolating himself into gangster Valhalla in Raoul-Walsh-directed WHITE HEAT, released in 1949 on the eve of momentous changes in American Cinema in the next decade with the advent of figures like Elia Kazan. Still, the fact that Cody calls out to his mother at the end pop-psychoanalyzes criminality as the product of stunted emotional development, an immaturity trapped in the cops-and-robbers and hide-and-seek mentality of children.
In contrast, Bonnie and Clyde die as fully-developed and matured lovers, as if the violence is a culmination of their psycho-sexual actualization. It was unapologetic, even more so than Orson Welles’ revised(and explosive) ending of THE TRIAL and the atomic-orgy finale of DR. STRANGELOVE(deemed acceptable as satire). And if the final violence(of the execution) of IN COLD BLOOD turned the tables on the state(of being cold-blooded killers too) and if the final violence of COOL HAND LUKE opted for Christo-symbolism, BONNIE AND CLYDE felt no need to justify its glorification of the killer duo who went out in a blaze of cathartic glory.

As much as the Counterculture types loved to mock and ridicule the militarist mindset(in films like CATCH-22, M*A*S*H, and HAROLD AND MAUDE), they were drawn to the violence inherent in radicalism. The peaceniks were as likely as not to have posters of Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara(and the Black Panthers). In that regard, BONNIE AND CLYDE and PATTON had more in common than people at the time realized as both were unapologetic romanticisms of violence(even though the grim fates of Clyde’s brother and his wife are depicted in harrowing realism). It’s also telling that many of these movies were set in the past, adding to their mythic allure: The Great Depression, World War II, or the immediate post-war period than contemporary times. One of the few exceptions was THE GRADUATE that, though short on actual violence, was as, if not more, outrageous than most gangster movies. Indeed, the setting of suburban affluence made the transgression all the more impactful. The only physical violence involves Benjamin Braddock(Dustin Hoffman) elbowing Mr. Robinson in the gut and shoving away a bunch of fellows while Elaine is bitch-slapped by Mrs. Robinson(Ann Bancroft), but in a way, Ben ends up out-gangstering all the hoods in the gangster genre by violating the sacred space of matrimony and running off with the bride after the wedding was finalized. Instead of a bad boy doing bad things in a bad world, it was a good boy doing a bad thing in a good world, though by the film’s end, one wonders what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’. Gangsters killing gangsters is just business as usual. And the murder in Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, though shocking, isn’t surprising given that a maniac is involved.
In contrast, Ben is neither gangster nor psycho but a well-raised and high-achieving college graduate. So, his actions seem more outrageous, more out of character with his social milieu. Ironically, his healthier feelings for Elaine cause more problems than his disreputable fling with Mrs. Robinson as the older woman. Whereas his desire for Mrs. Robinson was mere lust, addictive at worst, his yearning for Elaine is love, the stuff of obsession(and madness). Still, his quest seemed less like a prince in shining armor saving a damsel from distress than like an ethnic gangster crashing the party and running off with the prize. After all, Benjamin was the co-transgressor with Mrs. Robinson in the adulterous affair, and the order he violated was middle class respectability itself, the very foundation of modern civilization. If the gangsters in THE GODFATHER have a rule against harming civilians, Benjamin trampled all over them.

In some respects, the violence in THE GODFATHER films was more disturbing than in other New Hollywood films(from 1967 to 1975). While works such as BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE WILD BUNCH, FRENCH CONNECTION, and DIRTY HARRY were considerably more violent, they came with redemptive, cathartic, and/or moral value. It was about lawmen going the extra mile to get the lowlifes(as in DIRTY HARRY, a morality tale despite the cynicism) or outlaws finally meeting their maker in a sensational(BONNIE AND CLYDE) or redemptive(THE WILD BUNCH) manner.
In contrast, the violence in THE GODFATHER was just ‘business’, albeit with an operatic touch, especially in the annihilation of the heads of the Five Families. It was neither morally affirming nor emotionally satisfactory. It was just the established ritual of doing ‘business’, like a butcher carving lamb for the Christmas season.
In the aftermath of the attempt on Vito Corleone(Marlon Brando) and the killing of Sonny Corleone(James Caan), THE GODFATHER certainly shows the tragic toll of the violence on family members, but there’s no getting around the fact that it’s part of doing business, and what is done to the Corleones, the Corleones do onto others, with the saving grace that all sides try not to target ‘civilians’, which is what makes the killing of the whore(to blackmail Senator Geary) the most unsettling thing in Part II(though animal-lovers may make a case for the innocent horse in Part I).

Still, despite the cold ‘business’ realism in THE GODFATHER films, there may be a kind of moral refuge in their tragic arc, further emphasized in Part III(though perhaps not canonical). True, Michael gained the world, but didn’t he lose his soul? Sure, he vanquished his enemies and overcame all obstacles, but didn’t he lose his family(if not in body than in affection or respect)? (In part three, Michael Corleone has gone legitimate and is bigger than ever and even regains a measure of respect from his estranged ex-wife Kay but then loses his daughter.) If the Classic Gangster Movies insisted that crime doesn’t pay, THE GODFATHER showed otherwise but with the caveat of losing one’s soul and dear ones.

Arguably, the moralism of THE GODFATHER films is more damning than the old Boy Scout formula that good guys always win while bad guys always meet their comeuppance. The old formula assures the physical defeat of villainy, whereas THE GODFATHER films assure the spiritual defeat of villainy. The hoodlums in the old gangster movies meet their doom but remain defiant and unrepentant to the end, whereas Michael Corleone, in the closing moments of THE GODFATHER PART II, knows he’s a condemned man in his heart and home despite his success in ‘business’. He even managed to prevail over the machinations of Hyman Roth(though only by a hair’s breadth via the ‘Sicilian thing’ with Pentangeli’s brother, accentuating the crucial X-factor of cultural psychology and its secret codes), but the old Jewish gangster nevertheless set in motion the forces that would hollow out Michael’s family life(and turn a most loyal mafia don against him).

But, is this tragic aspect of THE GODFATHER films convincing? At the level of drama, yes, largely owing to the powerful performances, intensity of focus, and somber tone. (The novel and the film share more-or-less the same melody but diverge in tonal qualities.) Emotionally, THE GODFATHER films are less about Michael’s growing ‘business’ savvy than its impact on his personal life and inner-being. Even as he takes the enterprise far beyond what his father had envisioned or imagined possible, the stakes and actions involved threaten to topple the complex barrier between the ‘business’ and the ‘personal’. He blows up in rage three times in Part II(with Pentangeli, Hagen, and Kay), betraying the level of stress building beneath the cool exterior. Still, outbursts are more like exploding grenades than volcanic eruptions(as was the case with Sonny Corleone). In any case, the rage humanizes Michael as it shows he’s not all cold steel. He holds back his anger in relation to Fredo, and it proves to be far more dangerous.

Now, it’s too simplistic to assume that Michael’s soul-loss owes to his involvement in the criminal world. After all, Vito Corleone was a gangster for most of his adult life, but he had a loving family and was much respected, as well as feared, by those around him. His gangster operation didn’t feel like a funeral home, which is the case with Michael.
Ironically, one could argue that it’s Michael’s burgeoning contacts with the ‘legitimate’ world and mainstream America that is more soul-robbing than his immersion in the Italian-American crime world. Recall that he seemed to gain a kind of soulfulness during his stay in Sicily following the killings of Sollozzo the ‘Turk’ and Police Captain McClusky. He took in the sights and sounds, the scents and the sun. And his love for Apollonia was deeper than anything he’d felt with Kay. Reconnecting with crime-saturated Sicilian society actually made Michael seem more human, more personable. The death of Apollonia, more than anything, seemed to harden his heart(even more than the news of Sonny’s murder some time back). At any rate, Sicily, for all its corruption, violence, and poverty, made Michael more relaxed and approachable.

It was his marriage to Kay the Anglo, the upright(and increasingly uptight) American woman, that rendered Michael rather cool and dispassionate, i.e. ‘soulless’. For all his genuine affection(and even genuine love) for her, he seems divorced from his true roots and elements, indeed compelled to be what his reawakened Sicilian self has come to hold in disdain. In the film, the old school hoodlum Pantangeli comes across more positively than Senator Geary who oozes with slimy hypocrisy(like Mitt Romney). It’s almost as if the films are hinting that the soul needs roots more than goodness, e.g. a crook with roots has more soul than a law-abiding citizen without roots. It’s almost like a twist of the Christian notion that faith is more important than virtue; or a vile lowlife who robbed, raped, and murdered but gains faith in Jesus shall be saved whereas an all-around do-gooder and nice guy who nevertheless lacks faith shall be cast into heaven. Are roots more important than goodness? Perhaps. It’s been said Northern European societies are high in trust and civic virtues, but they seem to be fading from history in their anemic rootlessness. (In a sense, the Anglos do win out because the modernity that they wrought comes to bleed out the other groups as well, rather like Frank Pentangeli’s preferred ethnic music turned into “Pop Goes the Weasel”. One could argue that the biggest threat to Michael Corleone wasn’t gangsterism and/or the failure of legitimacy but modernity itself. Consider all those law-abiding Americans who ‘lost’ their families one way or another due to the influence of modernity that severed them from their roots and community. Even had Michael chosen a lawful path as a doctor or some professional, he might have ‘lost’ his family just the same, much like the father in the film AMERICAN PASTORAL based on the Philip Roth novel; the man broke no law but lost his daughter to 60s radicalism and lost his wife to la-dolce-vita decadence. Today, a perfectly decent law-abiding man could marry a woman who seems so nice but, affected by ‘woke’ ideology, believes her son is a tranny and demands that he be allowed to undergo gender-reassignment treatment. What is a husband/father to do in such a situation? In many states, to be ‘law-abiding’ means to pretend that trannies are real ‘women’, or else be fired from one’s job or fined for big bucks. It’s no wonder THE GODFATHER is Pat Buchanan’s favorite. Even putting aside all the crime-stuff, the films, especially Part 2, show the impact of modernity on family and culture. The great-grandson of Michael Corleone, though completely legitimate, could be faced with a wife like Kay screaming at the top of her lungs, not about criminality but about his insufficient deference to St. George Floyd and his trepidations about his daughter’s desire to have her breasts removed to become a ‘boy’.)

Ultimately, Michael is emotionally undone not by his ‘business’ activities but the lack of understanding and disapproval from his non-Sicilian wife. Had Apollonia lived and been his wife in the US, Michael would have had her full support, like Vito from Mama Corleone, and Michael would have been a far happier man(even if he committed a lot more crimes). But, being married to the well-educated, relatively liberal, and rather priggish Kay(as a model of respectable America that immigrant groups aspire to assimilate into), Michael finds himself in the impossible position of doing his ‘business’ and pleasing his wife who never stops reminding him that his ethnic ‘family’ has yet to become fully ‘legitimate’. (Later when she admits to having whacked the unborn son, her speech about the ‘Sicilian thing’ sounds like Senator Geary’s putdown of the Italians.)

Arguably, Michael would have been soul-robbed even had he succeeded in cutting all ties to the underworld. After all, it is modernity itself, criminal or not, that robs people of the traditional ties and familial bonds that gave them meaning. Even as a respectable man in a perfectly legal world, Michael would have become atomized and deracinated as just another Good American and would have witnessed this process go even further with his children. (Consider the final scene in THE HEARTBREAK KID where the Jewish Charles Grodin character has managed to break through the ‘brick’ wall of WASP society and marry the blonde daughter. He got inside but now has to be one of them, the bloodless white-bread folks, the Ideal Stepford Whites.)
Look around at our globalized society today, and some of the most soulless, bloodless, and pointless people are upper-middle class professionals who never broke the law. (Such types are the same everywhere, like the affluent Koreans in PARASITE.) They’re culturally zero with no meaningful identity and purpose beyond their jobs and what junk they watch on TV. To that extent, THE GODFATHER films convey both the eagerness for and the anxiety about assimilation among immigrant groups. The desire to become Good Americans in ‘the greatest country in the world’ and the fear of losing something deeper and more meaning in a Faustian bargain of sorts.

While the tragic arc of THE GODFATHER saga works beautifully due to the film-making mastery of all involved, it appears to be made of clay upon closer inspection. It’s a testament to the power of art that it can overwhelm the audience with its vision and passion, much like the centrality of music over plot in opera. The effect is such that the audience is carried along without asking too many questions. (Of course, propaganda works much the same way. Consider the sweep of BLM and Covid despite their basis on hyperbolic moral panic and medical hysteria. In such a climate, rationality and factuality became thought-crimes, what with even the elements of the so-called Dissident Right doing the bidding of Jewish Supremacists behind both.)
As such, the overall impact of THE GODFATHER films derives more from artistry than from sober analysis. The tragic theme concerns the near-impossibility of freeing oneself from the sins of one’s family and washing the bloodstains off one’s hands, at least if one possesses anything like a conscience.
The Corleones manage to avoid jail but they are lifers just the same as their connections and their deals draw them further into the ‘business’. It’s like Macbeth cannot walk back from what he did, the murder of his king; he can only move forward in the hope of a clear path to power, but there are obstacles at every turn. Likewise, given what others suspect, the enemies he’s made, the dirt on him that others have, his dark associations, his checkered reputation, and tensions within the family(mainly due to the killing of Carlo and passing over his older brother for the role of head of the family), the closer Michael comes to the prize, the more he feels caught in a trap.

The whole situation has been further complicated by the fact that the very actions that eventually robbed Michael of his soul were, in their moments, the ‘right’ things to do. The Corleones possess genuine virtues as well as vices. Even the most anti-criminal mentality can understand why Michael was obligated to do whatever necessary to protect his father Vito, an unusual gangster who is as wise and kind as calculating and ruthless(when he has to be).
Following the attempts on his father’s life(as Michael soon discovers that a second hit was in the works at the hospital), Michael could have chosen to remain ‘straight’ for the sake of his future as a Good American, but would a truly devoted and dutiful son have done that? In a way, Michael did the honorable and even moral thing by taking out the men who tried to murder his father(and would likely have tried again).

Michael didn’t so much face a choice between good and bad but between good/bad and good/bad. Either way, he would have done right and wrong. Had he remained ‘straight’ and law-abiding, he would have done ‘good’ as an American, but he would have done ‘bad’ as a son.
And then, there was the next obligation with him filling the shoes of his older brother, Santino or Sonny. Had Sonny lived, he would have remained the head of the family, and perhaps, Michael could have somehow eased back into ‘civilian’ life. But with Sonny dead and with his father too old and frail(having barely survived an assassination), who else could have taken over the family?
Tom Hagen is smart enough but isn’t the boss-type, and besides, he’s not Italian; therefore, his leadership would have caused problems with the other families. As for Fredo, there was just no way.
Then, Michael had no choice but to be ‘strong’ for the family. He did the wrong thing as a ‘Good American’ but the right thing as a son and member of the family, not merely of blood kin but of the ‘brotherhood’. Michael was no less bound to his family than George Bailey to his father’s business in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. In both cases, it’s not only about right-versus-wrong but personal honor, family obligation, and the expectations of those around you, the people you grew up with and came to regard as members of a tight-knit community. Of course, the Baileys are do-gooders whereas the Corleones are do-badders, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do, as Rocky Balboa said.

The tragic overtones of THE GODFATHER films, like music in an opera, vastly exaggerate one aspect of the story at the expense of others. While the story could be regarded tragically, as indeed was Coppola’s choice, such an interpretation is at best only implicit in Puzo’s telling, i.e. traces of tragedy can be gleaned throughout the novel but not in sufficient amount for damnation, which must be credited to Coppola in the film version.

All stories necessarily emphasize certain factors and themes over others, and the style goes a long way to influence our response to the substance. If we go by the chords of Coppola’s narrative melody, THE GODFATHER films feel true as a story of a good man who gained the world but lost his soul, a man who built an empire but destroyed his family. Furthermore, one could argue he gave up an empire of his own to enter the larger empire, where the rules of the game are different and in bigger hands.
As Pentangeli says to Tom Hagen near the end of THE GODFATHER PART II, the Corleone family was like the Roman Empire but it will be no more. Not because Michael lost but precisely because he won and got what he wanted. He beat the odds to make himself ‘legitimate’, but in moving from the underworld to the ‘overworld’, the former had to be left behind, doomed to disintegrate and fade away. What had once been the springboard for the family’s fortunes became a drag on Michael’s higher ambitions. But the things he did or the time he took to make it to the finish line estranged his wife(even to the point of aborting Michael’s son), alienated Pentangeli(the last connection to the Corleone Family of old), and tarnished his reputation in the showdown with Hyman Roth(who’s in the same league as Michael in terms of power and influence). Even with ‘legitimacy’, Michael can never wash away the stains of his past connections.
Something else must be sacrificed in the leap to the legitimate world. For all the problems of the underworld, its members were bound by something more than contracts and self-interest. Though there were traitors in the family, there were also men willing to go to hell and back for the Corleones, e.g. Luca Brasi. No such culture of loyalty exists in the ‘legitimate’ world.

Coppola’s tragic angle is largely through the Christian and liberal lenses. Though hardly a practicing Catholic(like Martin Scorsese), Coppola couldn’t have missed the Biblical overtones of the story of a man who, in gaining wealth and power, loses something far more precious. As for the liberal perspective, the story becomes an immigrant tragedy: Sicilian-Americans in the New Land trapped in their traditions and tribal loyalties that prevent genuine assimilation into America and its values of the Rule of Law and shared patriotism