3,632 words 
Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic The Godfather is one of the most commercially successful, critically lionized, and culturally influential films of all time. It is also filled with important political insights that are useful to the Right.
Based on Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel of the same name, The Godfather was filmed on location in New York City and Sicily. It stars Marlon Brando as the godfather Vito Corleone, Al Pacino as Vito’s youngest son Michael, James Caan as his oldest son Santino (“Sonny”), John Cazale as middle son Fredo, Coppola’s sister Talia Shire as daughter Constanza (Connie), Robert Duvall as adoptive son Tom Hagen, and Diane Keaton as Michael’s fiancée and later wife Kay Adams.
Everything about The Godfather is first-rate: Coppola’s bravura directing, the acting, the script by Coppola and Puzo, the cinematography of Gordon Willis, and Nino Rota’s immortal music.
The Godfather is even more impressive when you learn that at every step Coppola had to fight against Paramount to prevent them from ruining it. In a different timeline, The Godfather would have been set in Kansas City in the 1970s, with Burt Reynolds or Ryan O’Neill playing Michael Corleone, and a soundtrack of pop songs. It might have happened if they had hired Peter Yates, Richard Brooks, or Arthur Penn to direct it. All had been considered for the job.
The Godfather begins in 1945. Don Vito Corleone is a Sicilian immigrant who has become the head of one of the East Coast’s largest mafia families. His daughter Constanza is getting married to Carlo Rizzi. Large numbers of friends and family have gathered. It is a Sicilian tradition that a father cannot refuse a favor asked of him on his daughter’s wedding day. Don Vito is a powerful man, so naturally, he has many visitors.
Amerigo Bonasera, an undertaker, has come to ask Don Corleone for help. Bonasera is a prosperous, assimilated Italian-American immigrant. He believed in America, including the American justice system. His only child is the goddaughter of Don Corleone’s wife. He did not ask his child to date only Italian boys. He let her assimilate as well, by dating an American boy. But this boy, along with a friend, beat her severely and put her in the hospital. The criminals were caught and convicted, but the judge gave them suspended sentences. Bonasera is outraged and asks Don Corleone for justice. He wants them dead, for which he will pay anything he is asked.
Don Corleone’s response is surprising. He is a businessman. Crime is his business, but when offered a business deal, he acts offended. Why? Because Don Corleone is not a globalist. He will do business with his family and friends of his family, but he doesn’t do business—especially criminal business—with just anyone, even a fellow Italian-American who is not his friend. The Don wishes to keep his criminal activity within the bounds of family and friendship. He has a natural preference for his own. He is not a citizen of the world. He does not accept America’s universal laws.
Bonasera has a history and a connection with Don Corleone but he has not pursued friendship with him, because he wanted to assimilate. He wanted to submerge himself into the broader American community. Above all, that means following the law. Thus, he could not afford a friendship with a criminal.
If, however, Bonasera asks for the Don’s friendship, the Don will give him justice. He won’t kill them, because Bonasera’s daughter is still alive. But he will have them beaten up. However, Don Corleone will not take money for justice. Thus, when Bonasera humbles himself and asks for the godfather’s friendship, Don Corleone says, “Someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, accept this justice as my gift on my daughter’s wedding day.” The Don does not wish to exchange services for money. He wishes to exchange the gift of justice for a debt of gratitude, for a favor that he may never ask. Justice is a sacred thing. So it seems appropriate to reserve it for the gift economy rather than the monetary one.
There are some deep political lessons here.
First of all, the Corleone crime family is a pre-political form of life. At the core is a blood family. Surrounding it is their crime “family,” who are bound to the Don and his children through friendship and quasi-feudal forms of patronage. This mafia does business with the wider society, some of it legitimate, some of it criminal. They are willing to break the law rather than submit to it because they are a society unto themselves. If they wished to assimilate, they would follow the law.
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Second, Bonasera learns that just because he has shed his ethnic partialities, that does not guarantee justice. When the men who assaulted Bonasera’s daughter are given suspended sentences, the unspoken assumption here is that the judge sided with his fellow Americans against an outsider, the child of an immigrant. The true horror is the possibility that assimilating to America did not make Bonasera and his daughter Americans, on equal footing with all the others. Instead, it just made them blind and willing victims of a different ethnic group. If Bonasera had remained ethnocentric, he would not have allowed his daughter to date the boy who assaulted her. By dropping ethnocentrism, he harmed his daughter and gained . . . nothing.
This opening scene contains the story of the whole Godfather trilogy in a nutshell. Michael Corleone’s overriding goal was to assimilate to American society. But by dropping ethnocentrism, he harmed his family and gained . . . nothing.
At the end of The Godfather Part II, we have a flashback to December of 1941. Japan has attacked Pearl Harbor, and America has declared war. The Corleone children and some of their associates are seated around a table. When it is mentioned that 30 thousand Americans have volunteered for the military that day, Sonny says, “They’re saps because they risk their lives for strangers.” Michael responds, “They risk their lives for their country,” to which Sonny replies, “Your country’s not your blood—you remember that.” Michael says, “I don’t feel that way” then reveals that he has joined the military to fight for America.
Sonny is like his father. His moral concerns don’t extend beyond his family and friends. He is “in” America but not “of” it. He thinks that Americans are strangers. He thinks people who fight for strangers are “saps.” Michael is right to point out that the men who fight for America don’t see other Americans as strangers. They see them as fellow countrymen. They have a larger sense of community and moral responsibility.
Sonny’s response that “Your country’s not your blood” is pregnant. A real nation, of course, is related by blood. Therefore, Sonny is right: by blood, he is Sicilian. So is his brother. By blood, neither of them is American. But Michael wants to assimilate, and Sonny does not.
Michael’s first attempt at assimilation is to join the Marines and risk shedding blood for America.
Michael’s most fundamental assimilationist gesture is to marry Kay Adams, a quintessential WASP, and have children with her. In a world in which nationhood is ultimately about blood, assimilation means marrying into the larger society and mixing one’s blood with the blood of the founders. “Adams” is very much a founders’ name. (John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams were the second and sixth presidents of the United States.)
At first, Michael wants nothing to do with the family business. Later he promises Kay to make the family business “legitimate,” which means following the law rather than breaking it.
In the third film, we also see him cozying up to the Catholic church, which in his community is the ultimate font of legitimacy.
The tragedy of The Godfather saga is that the “legitimate” institutions that Michael embraces—America and the Catholic church—are utterly corrupt. They have no legitimacy to confer. Moreover, in chasing this illusory legitimacy, Michael breaks the law over and over again. But the bitterest irony is that he destroys much of his family in the process.
Michael was the youngest son, so there was no pressure for him to take part in the family business. Thus there was no real objection to him going to college or even into the military. But Michael was drawn into the family business when his father was almost assassinated due to the corruption and incompetence of his henchmen.
Shortly after Connie’s wedding, Don Corleone was approached by Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo, a Sicilian heroin dealer, asking for cash and legal protection to go into business on the East Coast. Don Corleone refused because his political friends would abandon him if he involved himself in such a distasteful business. Again, Don Corleone doesn’t do business with just anyone. Shortly after the meeting, Don Corleone’s bodyguard calls in sick. Sollozzo’s gunmen shoot the Don five times, wounding him gravely. Sollozzo also kills one of Corleone’s henchmen, Luca Brasi, and kidnaps Tom Hagen to dictate terms to him.
Going to war like this seems impulsive, unless Sollozzo has reason to think that the Corleone family is fundamentally weak without the Don and will be easily bullied into submission. There’s some justification for this. Sonny, the eldest, is a natural leader and a formidable enemy. He would also have to be removed. But he’s impulsive, so that might be easy to arrange. After Sonny are Fredo, a vain weakling; Michael, who wants out of the family; and Connie, a woman. Tom Hagen is an adopted son, of German-Irish ancestry, so he would be unlikely to end up running the family. Beyond that, he has no taste for conflict. He’s a deal-maker, which is why Sollozzo kidnaped him in the first place. Sollozzo has little reason to take the Corleones’ henchmen seriously, either, after killing Brasi.
One evening, when Michael goes to visit his father in the hospital, he finds the ward empty and his father unguarded. A nurse tells him that the police have sent everyone away. Obviously, the Don is going to be assassinated, and the police are in on it. At the very least, the Don’s own men are weak and incompetent. Michael quickly takes action. He moves his father’s bed to another room, contacts Sonny for reinforcements, and uses a well-wisher to help bluff the killers into thinking that the Don’s guards are still on duty, so they drive on by.
When Michael tells his father, “I’m with you now,” he’s not just saying that he’s by his bed. He’s saying that he is joining the family business. He’s going to take care of his father, since the people who are currently in charge obviously can’t.
Having saved his father’s life, Michael moves to eliminate the threat: Sollozzo.
Sollozzo wants a meeting. Michael wants to kill him. However, Sollozzo’s personal bodyguard is a corrupt police captain named McCluskey. Sonny and Tom reject the idea of killing a police captain. It would unite the other mafia families against the Corleones. But Michael insists. McCluskey is corrupt. The Corleones have journalists on the payroll. (Of course!) Why not kill McCluskey and smear his name in the press? Michael wins the argument, kills both men, and is whisked away to Sicily to hide from both the mob and the police.
Michael’s idyll in Sicily is one of the best parts of the movie. Thus far, The Godfather has been an overwhelmingly gloomy and claustrophobic movie: dark interiors and nighttime exteriors predominate. Half the movie looks like it is shot through a glass of bourbon or chianti. Sicily, however, is a land of vast green and blue spaces flooded with sunshine.
While in Sicily, Michael’s desire to assimilate to America seems to waver. Is he returning to his roots? Or is he entirely rootless, with an overriding desire to assimilate to wherever he goes? In any case, he forgets about Kay and marries a chaste and gentle Sicilian girl named Apollonia. Does Michael wish to remain in Sicily? Or does he plan someday to return to America with Apollonia? Does he think she will be a more suitable wife for a mafia don?
Whatever plans Michael has are rendered moot, first by the murder of Sonny, whose hotheadedness was masterfully played to separate him from his bodyguards. It is one of the most brilliant murder sequences in cinema history. Then, before Michael can return home, Apollonia is killed by a bomb meant for him.
Fortunately, the old Don has sufficiently recovered to try to pick up the pieces. He calls a meeting of the heads of the leading families to end the war. This brilliant scene is set in the boardroom of a bank. Don Corleone reiterates his opposition to the drug trade. But, in the interests of peace, he is willing to share his political influence with the families that wish to deal narcotics. Don Barzini emphasizes that Don Corleone can present a bill for such services. “After all, we are not Communists.” There is a chuckle and a wide shot of the board room with the American flag standing in the corner.
This is significant, because until now, Don Corleone has preferred to keep his favors in the economy of gifts rather than money. To him, at least, some things are more important than money. He’s not a communist, but neither is he a capitalist. But now the other families have used the equivalent to gunboat diplomacy to open Don Corleone to their market: money for drugs and money for favors. He’s a capitalist now. He’s been assimilated.
Another gangster also speaks against the drug business. He too regards it as dirty, but the money is too tempting to forego. As a compromise, he proposes regulating the drug trade to keep it away from schools and children. He wants to sell it to “the colored. They’re animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.” A deal is struck. In Don Barzini’s words: “The traffic in drugs will be permitted, but controlled.” You hear this language in every drug legalization debate today.
When Michael finally returns to America, he is his father’s only possible successor. Fredo is weak, and Tom is not Sicilian. He’s also proven that he is strong and smart enough for the job. Apollonia is dead, so his mind turns again to Kay Adams, whom he marries. Kay is not a suitable wife for a mob boss, but that’s okay, because Michael wants to make the family business “legitimate” anyway.
Going legit, however, proves tricky. Michael has a five-year plan. During this time, he and Kay have two children, a son and a daughter. The Corleones have an interest in a Las Vegas casino run by a Jewish gangster, Moe Greene. Michael wants to buy Moe out and run the casino. Fredo is already working there. He sends Carlo and Tom to join him.
To make the move to Nevada, however, the Corleones must disentangle themselves from various East-Coast business associates, both their subordinates, Salvatore Tessio and Peter Clemenza, and their rivals, Emilio Barzini and Philip Tattaglia, who were the Corleones’ principal opponents in the recent gang war.
Michael anticipates another war. So does the Don. This is another reason why Michael sends Tom to Nevada: Tom is conflict averse, and Michael needs a “wartime consigliere.” His father will do just fine.
The Don has spent his life examining men’s characters. He weighs every angle of every situation. He says, “Women and children can be careless, but not men.” Carelessness is what cost Sonny his life. Because Barzini clearly presided over the peace conference, the Don is convinced that he was behind the attempt on his life. He warns Michael that one day, someone he trusts will offer to host a meeting with Barzini, guaranteeing his security. When Michael goes to that meeting, he will be assassinated.
Soon after, the old Don dies. At the funeral, Michael is approached by Tessio, who offers to arrange a meeting with Barzini and provide security. Michael agrees to a meeting after the baptism of Connie’s new son, for whom Michael will stand as godfather. In one of the most riveting sequences in cinema history, Coppola cuts back and forth between the baptism—in which Michael professes his Christian faith and rejects Satan and all his works—and the assassinations of Barzini, Tattaglia, Greene, and a couple of other mafiosi, as well as one or two innocent bystanders, just to remind us that these fascinating, colorful people are, at the end of the day, still disgusting savages.
When the ceremony is over, the traitor Tessio is coolly dispatched. Then Michael confronts Carlo Rizzi, Connie’s husband, whose child has just been baptized. After Michael reassures him that he will do nothing to harm his sister’s husband, Carlo admits to helping Barzini set up Sonny. Michael then sends him off to Las Vegas, but as soon as he sits down in his car, Clemenza pops up from the back seat and garrotes him. It is another brilliantly staged and filmed murder.
The movie ends in Michael’s office with a tearful Connie demanding to know if Michael has killed her husband while Kay looks on in shock. Michael denies it and sends Connie away. When Kay presses the issue, Michael tells her that just this one time, she can ask him about his business. When she asks him if he killed Carlo, he coldly tells her “no.” (Earnest men often discover to their horror that some women want to be lied to, as long as it is done convincingly.) As Kay leaves to fix Michael a drink, three of Michael’s assassins enter. As one bows to kiss Michael’s hand, another closes the door on Kay. The End.
Michael’s plan to kill all his enemies, including his brother-in-law, is brilliant, but he seems to have lost sight of his original goal, which was to make the Corleone family legitimate. But, as we will learn in the sequels, that was a pipe-dream anyway.
First of all, there was never any question of making amends for their crimes or giving up their ill-gotten wealth. They were simply looking to launder their wealth and find a new set of business partners who were less likely to murder them. Second, it turned out that mafia-style corruption was everywhere: “legitimate” industries, governments, even the Catholic church. Did Michael seriously believe that the “gaming” industry of Nevada was less mobbed up than the olive oil business in New York? Or was Kay merely naïve enough to believe it? (Is this another self-deception that Michael wishes to abet?)
Killing his brother-in-law to help the family is a bit like burning a village to save it. Did he really think his sister and her children would just get over it? He traded a contrite traitor for an active enemy, installed right in the heart of his family, who may nurse fantasies of revenge and raise her children to share them. I think the old Don would have regarded that as “careless.”
The Godfather is a tragedy worthy of the ancients. But Michael learns nothing, because he repeats and deepens the same tragic errors in both sequels. It is a tribute to Coppola’s genius that the second and third movies don’t turn into farces.
The Godfather offers a deeply cynical critique of America, which comes into clearer view in the second movie. The Corleone family, for all their criminality, hold fast to an important truth: blood and friendship matter. The most important things in life are born and fostered in within the circles of family and friends. Another key truth is that the most important things should be kept outside the monetary economy. And even when they do business, they won’t do business with just anybody. Nor will they buy or sell just anything.
But America has something to offer as well. It is a vast and prosperous high-trust Anglo society, poles apart from Sicily, which was backwards and impoverished in part due to the clannishness displayed by the Corleones and other mafia families. Most Sicilians sought to assimilate into America. Others, like the Corleones, sought to exploit America’s openness and high-trust, demanding fair treatment from Americans whenever it was advantageous but never reciprocating. Whenever the Corleones had a benefit to confer, they would instead give preference to their own clan.
The mafia, in short, is parasitic, not unlike Jews, Indians, Gypsies, and other highly ethnocentric tribes with dual ethical codes that subvert, corrupt, and plunder open, high-trust societies. This is why “mafia” is now a generic term for any group that plays a collectivist game in an individualist society, i.e., any group that cheats. Such groups must either be assimilated (if desirable) or expelled. The project of Italian unification, which began in the nineteenth century, has still not fully digested the mafia.
You can’t build a nation from people like the Corleones. But if you already have a nation, they provide you with some important lessons on why and how you should keep it. The position of the Corleones vis-à-vis America is analogous to the position of blood-based nations to global ideologies and institutions like liberalism, the capitalist market, and the Christian religion. Such ideologies promise prosperity, security, peace, and legitimacy to those who put aside their partial attachments, drop their guard, and submit to universal rules. But what if this is merely a way to turn the different nations of the world into blind and helpless victims of other nations that pose as avatars of the universal? What if, by straining toward the universal, we lose everything important about us . . . and gain nothing in the end?
49 comments
The 1970s sure was the heyday for FF Coppola. He had the magic touch, until he didn’t.
I was surprised recently when my son wanted to watch The Godfather. He had never seen the film and I had not watched it in many years. I popped in the dvd and we enjoyed it together.
Great review with solid WN insight.
Thanks, stay tuned for essays on Part II and Part III.
May I recommend reading the book? I picked up a copy while in high school and ending up spending the whole weekend reading it. Just couldn’t put it down.
The movie follows the book closely while trimming out some of the slower parts. However, the book goes into a lot more detail regarding the Italian immigrant experience and the mindset regarding the authorities, assimilation and other rival minorities.
In toto, a great book and a great movie (both part I & II not so much III)
Puzo’s book is a must read. I read the book after watching the film in the early 70s. The book is also more sexy than the movie. For obvious reasons FF Coppola had to sanitize (omit) some of Sonny’s shenanigans.
Great writing, excellent insight. The problem with folks who are high trust is that they are high trust without verifying. And so we end up here, surrounded on all sides by those who couldn’t give a shit less about our values.
Thanks, that is well-said. Trust, but demand reciprocity.
Are you saying that we should trust people but also let them know that someday, and that day may never come, we’ll call upon them to do a service for us?
Pay attention when Tom finally calls in that favor after Sonny gets killed. Vito tells Tom to call the undertaker, and Tom just picks up the phone and starts dialing like he knows the guy’s number by heart. Um, why? Did he have occasion to call Bonasera on some sort of routine basis? That really seems unlikely to me, even when you’re in a business where body disposal is a regular part of the challenges you face.
Maybe he was dialing the information line for Bonasera’s number.
This is movie-making, not real life. In real life, it might take maybe a couple of minutes at least to find the number (flipping thru the phone book; walking to a desk to find and riffle thru a pile of business cards; asking your boss if he happens to know the number, etc.). Films would last a good many hours if everything was totally realistic, not to mention boring and irritating to watch.
Sorry for the cliche, but we have to suspend disbelief. Kind of like imperfect rhyme in poetry.
Great article. I’ll always stop and watch a little bit when it’s on tv. Not sure if it’s in the original or part two, but Michael asks his mother if he can lose his family. She reassures him you can never lose your family. I believe they may have been thinking about it in different ways, but it reinforces the idea that family is what you need and treasure. I’ve always viewed I and II as the ultimate morality play as Michael is innocent and above the others up until it hits too close to home. Then his cold and calculating manner makes him the perfect Don. Of course both fellow mobsters and dirty cops try to take him down to no avail. I look forward to the coming reviews. I’ve never fully viewed III so I’m curious how it rates. Bravo!
That is Part II. Working on an essay on that for next week.
Speaking of blood, imagine Dennis Hopper explaining the origins of Sicilians to the Corleones…
I suppose a True Romance reference was inevitable.
Well-written. I’ve shared it with a few people…
One social organizing model in the context of another social organizing model is just a criminal enterprise.
Sicily transplanted to America = just a criminal enterprise. And vice versa.
To study this without the ethnic complexity, I recommend Kevin Costner’s underrated Let Him Go. In that film, the blood-and-soil type identitarians are all un-hyphenated Americans. And of course, they are “disgusting savages”. They have to be, narratively, to justify the story line.
There must be some kind of golden ratio or eternal principles for establishing harmonious equilibrium to form and keep a high trust society navigating turbulent currents that apply to architecture or cooking as well as assimilation. Proper ingredients, timing, temperature, and quality skills of a kitchen general Ramsay/firm but fair state management. Racial homogeneity of good stock (ethnostatally proWhite shorn of undesirable dross/cheap labor swarms) worked unrushed (immigration cap) at appropriate temperatures (private domain/public duty balance), enhance to palate’s preference (individual pleasures heeding glut spoil) to not burn the food nor society down (diversity injections/ziomoney power).
This was probably the best film review I have ever read. Thanks!
Wow, thanks. There are a lot more. Just click the author’s name, and whole list will appear.
This great review plumbs the film much more than Mark Weber’s insightful verbal review, which tends to glorify the Corleones and place all the blame on America. His review makes a nice companion piece to the one he does of the novel, The Great Gatsby.
But are Italians, generally, who come to America better off maintaining their ethnocentrism? What about Germans and Dutch? They just became Americans, even though they spoke different languages. I can’t think of a single Little Germany or Little Holland in this country. They are founding peoples, almost as much as the British. I think it is a strength of the film, and a sign of objectivity and self-knowledge on the part of the director and writers, that Kay gets to tell Michael off.
Fantastic article, I knew I was in for a treat when I saw that “Trevor Lynch” had written a 3,000 word essay on one of my all-time favorite films. I’ve seen I and II probably close to 30 times and III about 15 times, and I still discover new things each time I watch one of them. I especially think III is underrated, despite the viscerally negative reaction it got from critics at the time.
Couple of questions/observations about I (I’ll have some questions about II when Mr. Lynch publishes that article), for all you fans of the franchise out there: (1) Did McClusky just not care? I’m sure cops could probably get away with a lot more back then than they can now, but to just openly serve as the bodyguard for an up and coming gangster seems kind of risky. How was he planning on explaining the fact that he was constantly shadowing Sollozzo?; (2) How did Vito figure out “it was Barzini all along” just from that one meeting? Was it because of Barzini’s position at the table? Was it because he led the discussion about drugs? Or because he sided with Tattaglia so quickly and easily? Seems like someone as clever as Vito would have had ways of figuring this out prior to Sonny getting killed. What happened at the meeting to solidify this realization?
I appreciated the changes Coppola made from the book, which focused far too much on Johnny Fontaine in my opinion. Plus the movie has a much more epic and sweeping tone to it than Puzo’s book, which reads kind of pulpy. I do wish they’d delved more into Luca Brasi’s brutality in the film, but he probably didn’t want to make it overly graphic.
I am not sure how Don Corleone concluded that Barzini orchestrated everything with Sollozzo. Until that point, they thought Tattaglia was the main sponsor of Sollozzo. But when Barzini presided over the meeting, spoke more than Tattaglia, and represented Tattgaglia’s position, at the very least it looked suspicious.
It is a nature of Italian culture, “keep your enemies close” enough to understand them or unravel them for a clearer truth. They do not need to follow someone else’s preset law to establish positive prove of intent, they develop enough proof by studying “thee opponent’s” involvement, values and ability to discard honorable boundaries to attain their goals.
“Don Barzini emphasizes that Don Corleone can present a bill for such services. “After all, we are not Communists.” There is a chuckle and a wide shot of the board room with the – American flag standing in the corner.
This is significant, because until now, Don Corleone has preferred to keep his favors in the economy of gifts rather than money. To him, at least, some things are more important than money. He’s not a communist, but neither is he a capitalist. But now the other [assimilated] families have used the equivalent to gunboat diplomacy to open Don Corleone to their market: money for drugs and money for favors. He’s a capitalist now. He’s been assimilated.”
Once this profile [Barzini’s] is established they just listen and “read between the lines”. Since preemptive action is required, they don’t wait for the jury to come in and delay their chance for survival. This has worked both ways; Under jurisdiction’s controlled by people who do not prioritize your best interest or security, Laws should not always be respected. After all, the Cosa Nostra started as a second underground government to help people against the official governments suppressing them, (before the organization started to capitalize on greed). In the movie “Find me guilty” with Vin Diesel, we see how the legal system in America bends moral laws with statutes like RICO to enable them prosecution indictments simply with evidence of association, like a group picture at a party. This is done because they lack the ability to establish more positive proof with traditional evidence. This was also done pre RICO in the early century for simply being of Italian ethnicity [Sacco and Vanzetti]. Laws also do not always protect immigrants, and Italians, like Japanese and Chinese, were never good at humiliating themselves with public protests.
Now before I indulge any more information I will stop and quote the Don’s words to Solozzo, “I’m sorry but I tend to spoil my children and sometimes they tend to speak when they should listen.” Nice article.
I especially think III is underrated, despite the viscerally negative reaction it got from critics at the time.
Thank you. I am sick to death of Godfather III being considered a washout (by one serious movie reviewer a “complete disaster”) and that it’s mostly Sofia Coppola’s doing.
Maybe it’s not saying much but Sofia Coppola did no worse than the Negro actresses in Gone With the Wind attempting to portray 19th century southern house servants. But no one calls GWTW a loss or near loss for that reason. Show me a film that does not have flaws and problems; Godfather III, though having a few of those, more than redeems itself after all is said & done. I thought the original version of Godfather III was better than the rejigged construction, wherein Michael jes’ keeps on a-sufferin’ apparently into eternity. And while we’re here, GF I & II are painful to watch in some aspects as well.
As someone said, “Being the worst Godfather movie is like being the dumbest guy in Mensa”.
I actually like Part III the best. Stay tuned. Next week I turn in my review of Part II. Then I need to put my attention toward accounting for a while.
Nice to hear that! I think that the opera aspect is what bumps it up and if some people don’t know that particular opera, or don’t like opera style singing, it may put them off. Opera in Godfather III is kind of meshed and blended in with the story & plot to some degree.
Michael’s son Tony sings a (not opera connected) song (The Earth Burns) in Sicilian to his father, which is a nice touch. That scene is a highlight, for me anyway.
I especially like Coppola’s version of “The Great Gatsby” starring Robert Redford. In the last scene as Gatsby is wheeled out, the camera focuses in on Gatsby’s pinky ring, reminding the viewer that in the end—Gatsby was just a gangster. Please review this movie next.
Thanks, I am going to revisit that movie later this year.
Could you also look a Coppola’s “American Graffiti,” America’s last gasp at innocence? Thank you.
Just a quick note in case some people think Coppola directed American Graffiti, Coppola produced it, George Lucas directed it.
Thank you, an oversight on my part.
Such a great movie.
Coppola wrote the script but did not direct.
I’m tired of people acting like we can just eradicate crime altogether. Newsflash: it’s always going to exist. Eradicating crime prostitution drugs is just never going to work. So, given that reality, I’d rather have the mafia than foreign ones infiltrating our country. At least they are white and and because crime will always exist it is better than the alternative: non-white criminal groups. I’m not saying I condone crime or think it’s okay, but if I had to choose, I’d rather have the mafia than some Nigerians or Turkish cartel setting up shop here. It’s just common sense.
Has the author read the brilliant essay by Sam Francis entitled (I think, this from memory) “Crime Story: The Godfather as Political Metaphor”? That essay originally appeared in Chronicles in the early 90s, maybe 1992 (I know I probably could Google, but so can others). I’d already been reading Francis for many years, but that essay blew me away, and catapulted my respect for him to an entirely new plane.
I had been vaguely aware of the terms Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft from grad school, but Francis made them come alive to me for the first time by twinning them with Don Corleone and America, the former embodying the older, feudal order of the West based on blood, honor and status; the latter embodying modernity, based on contract, transience and anonymity. I had to that point seen myself as a defender of what the 19th century classical liberal jurist Henry Sumner Maine had referred to as the “society of contract”, assumed to be superior to its historical predecessor, the “society of status” (though I was always an opponent of mass immigration, which I saw, however, as a government-abetted outside invasion of the “society of contract” – which for me at that time was synonymous with “the free society” – as opposed to a logical extension of it). The Francis essay, as I reflected upon its implications, made me aware for the first time of the possibility that really existing liberty might be better preserved in a feudal closed society than in a capitalist open one.
Sam Francis was a great mind. I especially liked “Race and the American Prospect,” which he edited. There are thirteen great essays within, but I especially liked “Race and the South,” by Sam G. Dickson.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/crime-story-the-godfather-as-political-metaphor
Reminds me of the following from ag burn’s World of Hesiod, but perhaps this kind of unity through giving up some tribal instincts is very difficult and rare. Ironically, the only “tribes” left in America are non white. But maybe too burn is writing with a liberal democratic bias, because he praises the “suckers”:
and, above all, they (Athens) had achieved a united Attica. How striking a feat this was can be realized by comparing the Athenian achievement with those of other states; Boiotia, Argos, even Sparta. In the first of these we find willing union of a group of cities, indeed, but always a certain friction: suspicion on the part of the lesser cities about the intentions of Thebes, and at Thebes, the acknowledged leader, both a natural human desire to increase the city’s own power— ttXgovgktglv—and an equally human self-righteous impatience of “ disloyal ” elements, and a readiness to use force to compel them to fall in with “ the common policy of Boiotia ,\1 And thus, a vicious circle….
…Only by Athens, in the whole history of Greece in its prime, was the whole strength of the free men of over a thousand square miles of country ever wielded as one unit by one government which all men felt to be their own. Hence came the extraordinary vigour and resilience of the Athenian power in the heroic and tragic days of Perikles; and the first step towards this was taken by the men who united Attica, before history began. It was a magnificent feat of forbearance. …
…What usually happened when a Greek city expanded is shown by the behaviour of Epidauros, requiring Aiginetans to come over to the mainland to have their lawsuits tried, or Corinth in the Megarid commanding her colonists and subjects to attend the mourning at the funerals of their Bakchiad rulers. Credit is due to those nobles of Athens who made no such arrogant demands; and credit also to those nobles of the other townships who surrendered their own sole local sovereignty for the greater good and undertook to fight if need be under a commander from a township 40 miles away, and in other men’s border wars. How men cling to sovereignty, even when the economic and other advantages of a partial surrender of it are plain for all to see, the modern world is witness; as also the failure of other Greeks to do what Athens did.
Pg 194
Fantastic review. The Godfather really is an excellent film that’s grown on me – I’ve seen it thrice and enjoyed the third time much more than the first.
As an ethnonationalist I certainly had a strong distaste for Michael Corleone’s relationship with Kay Adams. I found his marriage to the Sicilian woman much more natural and right. An endogamous marriage in one’s ancestral homeland is something many of our ancestors got to experience but modernity has taken from us. The bomb that explodes his marriage mirrors how modernity has exploded the natural order.
Sicaro he a bit of this theme at the end:
it wasn’t personal
to me it was
I like the “Sicaro” movies as well, it is Josh Brolin’s performances that make them work.
it’s funny cause I only knew the sequel and liked it ok. I just saw the original and saw the scrawny white lady on the cover and thought, oh no, not another girl boss. But I liked it but her character is just so obnoxious in the context of a kill squad. No way a trout-shouldered lady is doing this stuff it’s so gay gay gay.
What is interesting is that brolins character and others say in essence “we have to cause things are so bad”
and brolin specifically says it’s cause 20%“Americans”want drugs so we have to manage it.
missing is the total nothingness that is American identity. Brolin would snarl at you if you said America is a European nation and brown had to go. Nope, must be a bureaucratic nation and so kill squads are necessary
The position of the Corleones vis-à-vis America is analogous to the position of blood-based nations to global ideologies and institutions like liberalism, the capitalist market, and the Christian religion. Such ideologies promise prosperity, security, peace... But what if this is merely a way to turn the different nations of the world into blind and helpless victims of other nations that pose as avatars of the universal?
Good question, Mr. Lynch, and a fine review of a classic. I didn’t realize until recently that you are the house movie reviewer for C-C.
Whites could use a movie where their kinsmen are portrayed as the protagonists for once, but there is no chance of that coming out of Hollywood.
You might consider reviewing The Order that was released last month but already out of theaters. Apparently, it can now be rented from Amazon for $10 or purchased for $20, here: Watch The Order | Prime Video It’s rated with 4.5 stars, and claims to be based on a true story, but is full of anti-White inaccuracies, meant to smear idealistic Bob Mathews and his crew that in real life had declared war on the evil anti-White System that we are all familiar with.
We see a hall of White men and women and we see behind the speaker’s podium the words National Alliance Convention and a Swastika. And here we get the conflation they engage in—Pierce had moved well past Rockwell’s use of National Socialist symbols and never would have had unfurled the Swastika (not that he rejected this hallowed symbol but due to him being a canny man). He also had no truck with Christianity and the so called Identity Movement and its spurious and puerile resurrection of the late nineteenth century British-Israeli fantasy. But their “devil” is in their details and one must say chapeau for them having done their homework. For the voice that introduces Richard Butler (who never spoke at a National Alliance Convention) is unmistakable—make no mistake about it my brothers. In the credits they list the voice as “nazi speaker”
That is Douglas Mercer describing the wildly made-up, propagandistic scene, that can be seen in this clip: National Alliance Convention Scene | THE ORDER (2024) Exclusive Movie CLIP HD
Screenshot of phony convention: https://whitebiocentrism.com/download/file.php?id=3875
In the credits they list the voice as “nazi speaker” but to anyone who has heard Pierce’s voice via Kevin Alfred Strom’s seminal AI voice reconstructions, the voice is plain as day, the voice is clear as a bell, the voice is unmistakable—it is the voice of William Pierce, they have ventriloquized him.
I always liked William L. Pierce’s voice. I have many of his broadcasts on cassette.
Thanks, Shang, for recalling Sam Francis’ course in Amerikan Realpoltick.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/crime-story-the-godfather-as-political-metaphor/
One of my kids can’t sit through a movie, or even a 30-minute TV show. But Godfather I was on the TV one day and we were watching with one of his brothers. Amazingly, he got interested in the story and watched the entire thing – all 3 hours – and loved it. That was an interesting point of validation that it truly is an incredible film – a true piece of art.
Great article Greg – I love all you TL pieces and I’ve loved listening to your recent podcasts on Lynch.
Thank you. Hope you enjoy the piece on Part III.
Just understand, when Sollozo goes to the restaurant meeting; he tries to make a deal with Michael to kill Vito. It’s buried in the Sicilian doubletalk.
Fredo, obviously, had a similar conversation offstage much later on.
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