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The Craft of The Godfather

Hemmed In: Kay Adams and Her Changing Fashions

in Character Studies/The Craft of The Godfather

By Emma Hager

Anna Hill Johnstone, the costume designer for The Godfather, knew how to make male antiheroes into fashion icons. In the mid-’50s, she outfitted the cool of Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront and of James Dean in East of Eden. On The Godfather—for which she received an Oscar nomination—she turned Al Pacino (dubbed “the midget” by producer Robert Evans) into an icon of slow-burning glamour with his dark three-piece suits and his tilted homburg hat.

Given that women speak all too rarely in the film, it’s especially important that we dwell on how their clothes speak for them.

What is often gravely overlooked is how much Johnstone’s genius—meticulous, deliberate, pointed—shaped the women’s fashions in the film. This is not surprising given how much the film trades in the currency of masculinity. Women in the film—or at least the idea of them—act as magnets of male ambition, motive, and desire. From a symbolic standpoint, that’s a powerful position to be in, but it’s also a problem that The Godfather’s women serve mostly as conduits for a story about men’s feuds and men’s business.

Given that women speak all too rarely in the film, it’s especially important that we dwell on how their clothes speak for them. We need to pay attention, when we can, to the pouf of a sleeve or the hem of a dress; they offer a lexicon cut from different cloth, whose words are quite revealing.

Corleones, meet Kay

Our first glimpse of Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) is from behind. She’s just arrived at Connie and Carlo’s wedding with her beau, Michael Corleone, a Marine back from the War. Michael, in a display of patriotism or of rote performance, wears his brown and boxy uniform. It’s well-tailored and simple—stoic, even, what with its precise hems.

Next to Kay, Michael and his uniform nearly disappear, swallowed by the aimless enormity of her gown. Because it’s orange-y-red with polka dots, parachuted at the sleeves, and generously petticoated, the gown would swallow Kay entirely, too, if it weren’t for its fitted waist. The burgundy belt is there as if to say there’s a person, here, underneath it all.

Kay has not dressed inappropriately for the wedding; there’s plenty of lace and tulle and crinoline to go around. Corleone women and guests jaunt about the scene, too, in garments of similar volume, yet the mostly pinks and otherwise pastels of their dresses offset Kay’s red look entirely. If all the other women look similarly elaborate and cartoonish, it’s in a different way. They’re like cakes, tiered and frothy, and Kay the sole tablecloth upon which to place them. This is an outdoor ceremony, after all, and her large look enough to be a picnicking surface.

It would be easy to dismiss this sartorial difference as one of mere taste; one might conjecture that Kay has chosen her dress from a different page of the Saks catalog. But this is a film whose aesthetic choices are excruciatingly deliberate, reflecting its grave polarities (good vs. bad) and ultimatums (life vs. death). Matters of taste are also ones of allegiance. And so it is through Kay’s laughably floppy gown, what with all its unwitting kitsch, that we’re first encouraged to be skeptical of the viability of Kay’s position in the family. Sure, the dress has an Americana charm, recalling Sunday drives and Wonder Bread, and may suggest an aspirational innocence, or a WASP-y posture, but already the contrasts are too stark to be easily resolved.

There will be no seamless synthesis into the family, nor will Kay ever be a raw and ready object of desire. Her beauty is sensible, lucrative; it frames her New Hampshire, Baptist upbringing, to which Michael turns, initially, as a means of Americanizing his life.

The Apollonia Distraction

To be naturalized, in some ways, through Kay, is a decent goal. But there’s still the immediate and irresistible allure of Apollonia Vitelli (Simonetta Stefanelli), Michael’s young and virginal bride whom he meets while hiding in Sicily. Her beauty is bewitching, her eyes rich and mysterious, her lips plush and pink. And Michael, upon seeing Apollonia for the first time as she comes traipsing up a dusty trail, goes still; he has been, in the words of his bodyguard, “struck by a thunderbolt.”

Indeed, our first glimpse of Apollonia — perhaps because it is also Michael’s — is a carnal yet unfussy one. Her burgundy dress, knee-length and loose but still generous to her feminine contours, takes up the movement of the wind. Its lightness means it could blow up, or off, at any moment, like she’s something to be undone. Unlike Kay’s saccharine and synthetic wedding ensemble, Apollonia’s dress, with its airiness and earthen tone, complement the browns and reds of the scorched Sicilian landscape. She’s of the earth, pure, and a desire for her is only natural. Michael has returned to his family’s point of origin, and the relative ease with which he dons the ubiquitous newsboy hat and flowy, peasant blouse — as opposed to his stiffness in the stiff Marines suit — finds its assuring companion in the nonchalance of Apollonia’s garment.

To my mind, if Kay recalls the sort of competent women played by the actress Theresa Wright in the postwar period, then Apollonia is a sort of Lolita figure. She’s Michael’s own kind of Nabokovian nymphet.

Nowhere in the film are we confronted with the archetypal contrasts of these women more than in an abrupt scene cut from one woman to the next, which cuts across geography and cloth. We start, in one moment, with an intimate scene between Michael and Apollonia. It’s the evening of their wedding, which occurred earlier in the day, and they appear now in white in their bedroom. Michael is in an unbuttoned dress shirt; Apollonia in an ivory negligee. He inches toward her. And while she’s initially hesitant with all the qualms of inexperience, the pencil-thin straps of her negligee fall away from her shoulders. They kiss.

Back in America, Kay Can’t Get Through

The camera cuts abruptly, back to America, where Kay exits a red and yellow taxi outside the Corleone compound. She’s on a mission. She wants to get in touch with Michael, though Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), who meets her at the compound gates, refuses to pass on her letter to for fear of being further implicated in Michael’s hiding.

Kay’s ensemble here is signature to her. It sticks to the register of her previous looks: she wears a rounded, red coat and a matching hat. The tablecloth-like quality of her first look is preserved through the polka-dotted blouse. But when it’s set against the backdrop of the preceding scene, which is doused in Apollonia’s wanton energy, the outfit choice is made jarring. The tailoring is sure and strong, but the coat’s ketchup-like color is almost droll. This is not the crimson of desire; she must pursue Michael, find him out, though he retreats to the bosom of Apollonia.

Assuming, Subsuming

Eventually, Michael returns to the United States; Apollonia dies in an accident. Lust, like happiness, is mostly fleeting. There’s business to do and an American posture to assume again. Kay is, as mentioned, integral to this Americanization. It’s fitting that their first reunion, since Michael’s Sicily tenure, occurs outside the school where Kay is employed.

Michael emerges from a smooth, black car in a smooth, black overcoat; Kay struggles to keep the schoolchildren in line. She’s got on a trench coat — just more beige than a sea-foam green — a knitted skirt set, brown loafers and a string of pearls. She’s styled her hair into a bouffant, and it’s the most pronounced and animated aspect of her new, otherwise demure look. Gone are the tomato reds and roadside dining patterns.

While Kay’s power, to the extent we can conceive it as such, has never been a sexual one, this outfit helps to eradicate all previous hints of vibrance. Kay’s function is more pragmatically strict than ever, and Michael’s marriage proposal to her is more an admission of defeat—of how he’s working in a mode of ‘damage control’—than it is a demonstrated commitment to some ineffable bond. Kay professes it’s “too late” when Michael expresses his tenderness in the form of an addendum: “and I love you.” Only it’s not about that, of course, and anything beyond the transactional is muted — just like the green of Kay’s coat.

The Shadow of Doubt

The film closes with a closed door. The last shot is of a defeated-looking Kay, who stands in the frame of Michael’s office, looking longingly into its interior. Inside, there’s a world to which she’s not welcome. Kay cannot stay, and eventually one mafioso shuts the door on her; the shadow is increasingly cast upon her face until we get only her vague outline.

It’s a peculiar and compelling choice for an ending since it privileges the female as its object, but is explicitly exclusionary in its shutting the door on her. But perhaps this makes perfect sense for Kay, and more so when we consider her “purpose.” Michael has fully assumed his role; Kay has given him children. A transaction complete. A door closed.

In her final outfit, Kay’s features do not stand out, and it’s as if she has faded into the role of herself.

As the men buckle down for business , we see  Kay buttoned up in a golden-beige shirtdress. It’s a fitted garment, for the most part, with only a slight flare of the skirt rendering any semblance to the comic largeness of her first look. Her hair has the same champagne glow as the fabric. Kay’s features do not stand out, then, and it’s as if she has faded into the role of herself.

Uncertainty and doubt invade the last shot, take over Kay’s face, but at least the lines of her dress are stiff and sure. A domestic armor.

Emma Hager (‘18) is a senior at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studies English literature. Regrettably, she still has yet to read Middlemarch.

 

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The Sound of Nostalgia: Nino Rota’s “Godfather Waltz”

in The Craft of The Godfather/Tropes and Leitmotifs

By Rebekah Gonzalez

Nino Rota once said, about his work as a composer, “They reckon my music’s just a bit of nostalgia plus lots of good humor and optimism? Well, that’s exactly how I’d like to be remembered.”

It is ironic, then, that his best-known work is the score to The Godfather—a film that, on the surface, offers violence and loss rather than “good humor and optimism.” Yet Rota’s Godfather score draws out aspects of the film that lie beneath the surface— its dark humor and its nostalgia —and helps give the film’s nostalgia its emotional pull and complexity. As a period film, its story set in the mid-1940s, though filmed through the scope of a 1970s camera, The Godfather cannot help but become subject to the yearning for a time before. That general nostalgia is amplified through another more specific nostalgia found within the film—the nostalgia that gives a charge to Vito and Michael Corleone’s relationship. This type of nostalgia is concerned with the future, but a future that has been tenuously predetermined.

It’s as if “The Godfather Waltz” says, “I never wanted this for you, Michael,” before Vito Corleone himself can say it.

Rota, we’ll see, translates the nostalgia of the father-son relationship into the music of the Main Title or “The Godfather Waltz.” Rota focuses on the dualities of the relationship. While the song serves as a roadmap for Michael’s future, it simultaneously explores Vito’s struggle with granting the reins of his deadly business to his son. The film seems to be cognizant of what the future holds, but while Coppola makes the audience, as well as the characters in the film, work towards this ending, Rota surreptitiously clues them in through his Main Title. It’s as if the “Godfather Waltz” says, “I never wanted this for you, Michael,” before Vito Corleone himself can say it.

***

(Nino Rota, “The Godfather Waltz,” from the soundtrack to The Godfather)

The film opens with a black screen, making the viewer’s first engagement with the film a purely auditory one. The trumpet plays the main melodic line of the waltz as the title of the movie appears and fades from the screen. After it plays through it once, Bonasera’s monologue begins. The only two characters on screen are Bonasera and Vito Corleone. It is clear that Vito is in a position of power. This is the first time the trumpet is attached to a scene with Vito. However, the connection is not made clear until the next time we hear the trumpet line at 46:05, when Vito is shot. As the dying Vito slides off his car and onto the ground, the melody is played at a higher key, making the powerful line of music sound frail.

At this point, it is clear that the trumpet is meant to represent Vito. It is never played when Vito is not somewhere in the shot. Directly after, the film dissolves into a shot of Radio City Music Hall, where Michael and Kay are leaving after watching a show. Although the trumpet fades away before Michael is on screen, this placement of the theme puts Michael in close proximity to his father’s haunting song. It also important to note that this is the last time we see Michael living a carefree and “normal” life; one not centered around the family business.

When Rota has the main melody played by oboe, not the trumpet we associate with Vito, he foreshadows how the role of Don will be passed onto Michael

The waltz is next used is at 58:08, and for the first time we hear past the trumpet solo. The trumpet solo is skipped and Rota instead uses an oboe to play the main melody. This choice solidifies the sense that the trumpet represents Vito, who has been sidelined by the hit on his life: the instrument that stood for him has gone quiet, and now other instruments must take up his theme. There is another dissolve into a shot of Michael; he is sitting outside looking down at his shoes. This time, instead of the trumpet solo fading out, the music continues into the traditional waltz portion of the piece: we sense, through the playing of theme, how the future of Vito’s business and legacy hangs over Michael’s head. During this particular moment of the waltz, the main melody has moved, once again, to the oboe. This orchestration foreshadows how the role of Don will be passed onto Michael, even though none of the characters expect it at this point in the film.

***

While Michael is hiding out in Sicily, the Waltz does not follow him there, which is surprising given its folkloric elements. At 1:20 on the soundtrack version of the “Godfather Waltz,” Rota has an accordion play a couple of bars of the main melody before switching back to the oboe. The use of the accordion can directly be associated with Italian folk music. This moment in the score foreshadows Michael’s stay in Sicily. It would seem logical, then, that this specific moment in the piece would be used in tandem with the scene that it is derived from. However, its absence speaks to the physical separation between Michael and Vito, and roots the Waltz to the specific nostalgia found in their father-son relationship. Vito is upset when he learns that Michael has committed murders in the name of the family business.

We might say that, just as the film uses its geographical locations to show that they are physically separated, Rota’s score— specifically the fact that the “Godfather Waltz” is not played—expresses that the two are also emotionally separated at this point in the film. More generally, we might observe that, despite being the main theme of the film, the “Godfather Waltz” is used strikingly sparely across the film. This scarce use of the theme aligns with the scarce number of scenes that Michael and Vito share alone. Because these scenes are rare, they also become packed with meaning and purpose.

It is also important to note that the waltz is never used during a scene in which Michael and Vito are alone. Rather, the waltz is placed in between scenes that transition from Vito to Michael. It is used to link their two characters as well as to dramatize the tension between the two of them while Michael is on his way to becoming the Don. The tension is not personal, but it does affect their relationship. There seems to be a barrier, which derives partly from Vito’s pride and partly from their lack of alone time, which keeps Vito from speaking directly with Michael.

Through the waltz, Rota is able to verbalize, through the melancholic minor mode of the theme’s melody, what Vito struggles to tell Michael. The Waltz formulates Vito’s emotions throughout the film until he can say them himself, in a scene that Coppola added during filming because he felt that the two of them—and the film itself—needed this moment of emotional connection. It is not until we are over two hours into the film that Vito tells Michael that he once pictured his son as “Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone,” and confesses that “I never wanted this for you.”

***

The “Godfather Waltz” is not heard again until the film’s closing scene. Although it is not technically considered the “Godfather Waltz,” the Finale draws upon the same waltz structure as well as the melody. The trumpet—lonely no more—blends with the rest of the orchestra as Michael’s hand is kissed and as he’s called, for the first time, “Don Corleone”; the swell of the music underlines that he has fully transitioned into his father’s position of power. The return of the trumpet also suggests that the trumpet was never associated with Vito himself, but rather with Vito as the Don. This, along with the cyclical structure of the waltz, alludes to the possibility that the family’s power might revive itself in this way again and again. Looking toward the past while announcing an eminent future, Rota’s “Godfather Waltz” establishes the particular nature of the Corleone family’s power: rooted in a never-ending nostalgia, and ever-seeking renewal.

Rebekah Gonzalez is a senior at UC Berkeley, where she is majoring in English and minoring in Music and Journalism. As the head of photography at the B-Side, a student-run music publication, she covers live concerts around the Bay Area. When she is not at a show, she spends her time thinking and writing about music.

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Navigating Coppola’s Maze: Editing in The Godfather

in The Craft of The Godfather

By Sarah Rivka

A film is written thrice — in pre-production through screenwriting, in production through shooting, and in post-production through editing. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather was written (and re-written) in the editing room by a total of six editors, only two of whom, William Reynolds and Peter Zinner, were credited. Coppola’s biggest struggle, edit-wise, was to reduce the film to a length that Paramount Studios could stomach.

According to Harlan Lebo in The Godfather Legacy, “By the time principal photography was completed, Coppola had shot 500,000 feet of potentially usable footage, or more than ninety hours of material.” Coppola repeatedly removed and replaced scenes, often to “appease the studio,” resulting in the edit becoming a “maze,” with multiple scenes sliced and abandoned on the cutting room floor. (Lebo 188) The work was an epic exercise in reduction that won Reynolds and Zinner a nomination for the 1973 Academy Award in Editing.

The essence of cinema is editing. It’s the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.

— Francis Ford Coppola

Completing their labyrinthine edit, Coppola and his team managed to create contrasting rhythms that amplified violent scenes. Through its varying rhythmic tools—from continuous action to hard cuts and cross dissolves—The Godfather lulls the audience into submission in order to intensify the impact of violent action when it arrives. The rhythm of the film’s editing thereby mirrors the rhythm of the Corleone family, which strives to maintain an equilibrium but often resorts to violence in order to reach it.

***

Rather than employ a non-linear editing style where time is out of order (as famously done in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction), The Godfather is edited in continuous action, with scenes passing in chronological order from start to finish. Coppola’s use of continuous action helps create his lulling ambiance. As we sit in scenes for long periods of time—scenes in which no violence occurs—we fall into the balance of the Corleone family carrying out business. Rhythmically, the majority of the film exhibits this slow, brooding pace.

Within said rhythm, one editing tool that Reynolds and Zinner employ is the transitional cross dissolve. A cross dissolve is the overlapping of two images in either two different scenes or the same scene. In contrast to hard cuts, where there is no visual overlap, cross dissolves are a way to slow down action, creating a gradual and therefore comforting effect.

This lulling and brooding ambiance causes the dispersed moments of violence to feel increasingly terrifying. When those moments of violence arise, both the film and viewer are bombarded by a rush of adrenaline. In the gruesome scene of Woltz finding his prized horse’s severed head at the foot of his bed, for instance, we open with multiple cross dissolves over exterior shots of his home, sprinkled with the sound of morning crickets. This establishes an idyllic morning before the horror. Similar to other parts of the film, it is a calm before a storm.

a series of cross-dissolves
uncut take of Woltz in bed, waking up

After the idyllic California cross-dissolve setup, the horse’s head is revealed through a long take. Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis has suggested, famously, that “[m]usic is the space between the notes. It’s not the notes you play; it’s the notes you don’t play,” and a similar principle applies to the language of film. A lack of cuts is often more powerful than countless dramatic splices. Had Reynolds and Zinner employed quick cuts here, the horrific reveal of Woltz’s severed horse’s head would read as a modern-day slasher film, which Coppola specifically aimed to avoid so that The Godfather would not fall “[t]oo much into the Corman Horror film tradition.” (Coppola, The Godfather Notebook)

The long take of Woltz waking up, discovering blood, and finding the horse’s head, all within the same shot, creates a sickening feeling that the audience can’t escape. We are forced to experience pain in real-time with Woltz. There are a couple of rhythmic beats resting on the head, making it all that much more terrifying and visceral. The shot holds on the horse’s head for the first two beats of Woltz’s scream, exacerbating the visceral nature of the horse’s killing. We do not cut until after two screams.

While Woltz screams, we visually cut farther and farther back to static shots, amplifying his sense of loss and powerlessness in this predicament. In contrast to the idyllic cross dissolves of exterior shots at the opening of this scene, these hard cuts at the scene’s finish intensify the sense of discomfort.

hard cuts moving outward: Woltz’s shock

***

Two scenes that further underscore the potential of a long take without edit are Bonasera’s opening monologue and Connie’s confrontation with her husband Carlo. In the opening monologue, we fade in and there is no hard cut, or any cut for that matter, for four minutes. The first hard cut of the film is when Marlon Brando’s character of Vito is revealed. Because this is The Godfather’s primary cut, it signifies his prominence as a character.

Bonasera’s opening monologue—a long take
first cut of the film, revealing Don Corleone

The scene in which Connie struggles to confront Carlo also showcases the power of allowing a long take to play without editing. We follow her from the kitchen, to the dining room, to the parlor, back to the kitchen and into the hallway with the knife—and all without any cut. There is no edit until after she is holding the knife; at that moment we cut to her going in the bedroom. Just as when we experienced Woltz finding his horse’s head, we are stuck in real time with Connie, vicariously trapped in her pain. This scarcity of edits also allows the actors to fully actualize their performance, further intensifying the audience’s experience.

Connie’s fight with Carlo—a long take

***

No scene in The Godfather is more famous, editing-wise, than the baptism scene—the film’s bravura climax. This scene utilizes the editing technique known as cross-cutting, or parallel editing. In parallel editing, two or more scenes are woven together. These two scenes may be occurring simultaneously or happening at various times, in a montage manner. While it is likely that the baptism and murders occur within a similar time frame, the sense that the film may be breaking, for the first time, from its continuous action underlines this scene’s importance.

hands on Connie’s baby being prepared for baptism; hands on a gun being prepared for a murder

The use of parallel editing allows for stark juxtapositions—sharp contrasts in tone, and often in concept. Michael is becoming a godfather in two senses—to his niece, and to his mafia family. We open in the church, far away and cutting closer and closer in to Connie’s baby (played by Coppola’s now director-daughter Sofia). The first cut we see dramatizing this contrast takes us from the hands of Michael and Kay, holding Connie’s baby, to the hands of another adult, holding a gun. This is the first juxtaposition where the audience can draw parallels between the two worlds in which Michael vows himself to live. Had Reynolds and Zinner edited these as separate scenes, not back-and-forth, the audience would not have the same thematic guide from the filmmakers.

We cut from the gun’s preparation to Michael, whose composure illusrtates how he ruminates, coldly, on the imminent deaths. The baby meanwhile has gone from crying to a state of calmness; there’s a slow in the editing and a pause—another calm before the storm. As the organ builds, Michael says “I do” to renouncing Satan, his sins, and becoming godfather, of baby and mafia. The parallel pre-killing cuts quickly together and the baby is once again wailing, furthering the emotional impact. As seen below, the first parallel cut where he renounces Satan is followed by a murder.

the first parallel edit between Michael’s renunciation of Satan and a ‘hit’ that he’s ordered

We then cut back to Michael, who says “I do renounce him.” Afterwards, we are pulled into another murder. Along with the organ soundtrack, this cross-cutting creates a rhythm that punctuates each murderous beat. Between each of the following murders, there is at least one cut back to Michael, suggesting his responsibility for the action carried out in his family’s name.

The other four murders that Michael ordered—each punctuated with shots of Michael in between 

***

In their maze of an edit, Coppola, Reynolds, and Zinner crafted a film of varying rhythmic qualities, allowing it to return to an equilibrium after moments of high tension and violence. The film’s lulling rhythm is reflective of the balance that Michael Corleone struggles to achieve for his family. In his mafia world, these moments of violence are inevitable—and he often succumbs. Rather than editing these scenes into ones that glorify horror, Reynolds and Zinner made them cogent and visceral. The Corleone family, we sense, is stuck in a labyrinth of their own making, perpetually attempting to restore stability and without an exit in sight.

Sarah Rivka (Cal ’19) is a junior majoring in Linguistics with a minor in Creative Writing. She recently returned to school after traveling and working as a freelance video editor. Outside of class, she spends time at UC Berkeley’s radio station DJing soul, jazz, rocksteady, highlife, poems, pop, and more under the moniker Feel Good Weird.

Works Cited

Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather Notebook (New York: Regan Arts, 2016).

Harlan Lebo, The Godfather Legacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997).

 

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A Bitter-Suite Romance: Michael and Kay’s Hotel Scene

in Anatomy of a Scene/The Craft of The Godfather

By Max Sala

Many scenes in The Godfather—Connie and Carlo’s wedding, the baptism and assassination montage—are full of self-conscious bravura, but it’s the quieter, shorter scenes that lend the film its emotional depth and narrative intrigue. Consider Michael and Kay’s hotel scene: lasting seventy-five seconds, and with only 9 lines of dialogue, this scene courses by, brief and seemingly unexceptional. The episodes that follow—Michael’s visit to his father at the hospital, McCluskey’s assault on Michael—eclipse this scene and perhaps push it to the back of the viewer’s consciousness.

But let us return to the hotel. If we inspect the scene’s formal features—those of sound, mise-en-scène, and cinematography—we can see how those features help establish a narrative problem for the couple’s relationship. Indeed, even without a close analysis, the tension between Michael and Kay is striking. This scene is the first time they experience that tension, but it lingers and refuses resolution, even at the film’s end. In this way, the hotel scene functions as a crucial marker within The Godfather’s plot, a harbinger of the clanging discord that comes to define Michael and Kay’s relationship.

***

The transition to the scene establishes an atmosphere of tension. Two unidentified men drive Michael into the city to meet Kay at the hotel. The camera jump-cuts from a shot of Michael in the backseat to the car’s bumper. We watch the car pass a flashing yellow streetlight on its right side. It is nighttime, the road is clear, and the only sound effects we hear are the tires hissing against the asphalt. This shot lasts only twelve seconds but establishes a sequence and tone. The direct sound of the tires seems menacing and heightens the peril of events so far—Vito Corleone’s attack, Paulie Gatto’s assassination.

A slow dissolve transitions us into the hotel room and is joined with a sound bridge, Irving Berlin’s “All My Life.” This song—a slow-tempo ballad often performed by a female vocalist addressing her lover—presents a surprising counterpoint to the preceding events, easing us into the scene and suggesting an emotional uplift in the narrative. It overlaps with the dialogue and is part of the film’s diegesis: the song seems to play somewhere in the background. The music is muted and subtle, softly complementing the dinner’s romantic atmosphere—a small round table and white tablecloth; red wine and steak; Kay’s lipstick-red blouse with a sweetheart neckline and puffed sleeves, Michael’s oxford shirt and tie. A lamp in the corner provides diffused light that illuminates Kay’s face. Her cheeks look cherubic; her skin, soft and warm.

These details of the mise-en-scène recall, and seem to recreate, the moment between Michael and Kay at Connie and Carlo Rizzi’s wedding, when they were eating by themselves with red wine and a white tablecloth, in formal attire, under soft-quality outdoor lighting. Berlin’s song plays with the romance of that moment and underscores these formal features, establishing an intimate and enchanting mood:

I just want the right to love you

All of my life

Just the right to take care of you

All of my life

His lyrics suggest a storybook-like romance, a budding passion that charges each person’s enduring commitment to one another. The brass section’s dreamy crescendos, the percussion section’s dramatic yet steady beat: these musical features seem to frame Michael and Kay’s relationship through the sweet dreamwork of Tin Pan Alley.

Alas, these formal features only suggest intimacy; they actually function as ironic counterpoints to the scene’s undercurrents of discord. In fact, what we are watching is the dissolution of a romance, or at least the dissolution of the more idealized romance that the film initially depicts. This dinner is sour.

***

Consider the conversation between Michael and Kay. Initially, fifteen seconds of silence precede their dialogue. Besides the background music, we only hear sound effects of their meal—forks scraping plates, clothes rustling, the dull thud of Michael setting his wine glass on the table. Their silence creates an edgy atmosphere and implies some dilemma before any dialogue even occurs. Once it does begin, the dialogue is brief; each character speaks using one-sentence replies. Kay poses quick questions: can she accompany Michael to the hospital? When she will see him again (a question she repeats when at first Michael avoids answering her)? Kay uses the imperative mood when she speaks: she appears and is literally dependent on Michael.

Michael’s replies, meanwhile, are short and vague: he denies Kay’s requests to accompany him, declares that he does not want Kay to “get involved,” and avoids addressing when they will meet again. Michael uses the indicative mood—he makes decisions and is in control. Their conversation could simply reveal the sorts of tensions that beset all romantic relationships eventually, but we cannot help but feel something larger is at stake for this relationship.

The halting rhythm of the camera draws out the scene’s feeling of awkwardness. The scene’s establishing shot shows Kay sitting at the dinner table. The camera frames her using a point-of-view vantage and positions us in a medium close-up. Immediately we notice her red blouse, princess-length pearl necklace, coiffed hair, and hesitant face. Kay appears vulnerable, and since that vulnerability charges the establishing shot, we know it will inform the scene. The camera transitions to Michael wadding his napkin, looking down and avoiding eye contact with Kay.

This counter shot uses Michael’s icy attitude as a response to Kay’s diffidence, enabling the camera to characterize Kay as subordinate, as though she needs something from Michael. A brief medium two-shot reveals both characters across from one another at the table. Here the camera captures their disengagement. Their initial silence emphasizes the physical distance the camera exposes, and as a result the dinner feels forced and uncomfortable. We feel the discomfort—Kay’s pain and Michael’s angst.

Once the dialogue begins, the camera reemploys a shot/counter shot technique that parallels Michael and Kay’s responses until the scene ends. Each counter shot lasts approximately five seconds, and the more we watch, the more engrossed we become by the dialogue:

KAY: When will I see you again?

MICHAEL: Go back to New Hampshire, and I’ll call you at your parents’ house.

KAY: When will I see you again, Michael?

MICHAEL: I don’t know.

As the camera alternates between Kay and Michael, the montage produces two effects. First, the shots isolate each spoken line, underscore them as wooden and clipped, and intimate the anxiety Michael and Kay both suppress. Second, we become anxious. We identify with Kay’s vulnerability and await Michael’s replies, anticipating each counter shot. Yet because he is so evasive, and since their emotional turmoil functions as the subtext of the scene, we are left in suspense, with more questions than answers, frustrated and dissatisfied. At this point, the scene’s romantic picture crumbles. We realize now that Berlin’s song functions more as a lament for Michael and Kay’s romance than as an expression of it.

***

We end with a shot of Kay staring at her wine glass. The camera once again positions us at a medium close-up, reinforcing her pain and hesitation. We know Sollozzo’s attack has unnerved Michael. We might foresee his looming retaliation. Perhaps we even correctly infer his ultimate fate from these character developments. But empathizing with Kay’s pain, we question if her relationship with Michael will last.

This loose end unsettles us. It is true, of course, that Michael and Kay do ultimately reunite. It is also true that, as an outsider to the Corleone world, Kay is presented at first as a figure for the audience: when Michael explains his family to her in the wedding scene, he is in effect explaining his family to us in the audience, and she becomes a key figure of identification for us (up to the very last moment of the film). Our anxiety derives less from a fear that they will indeed break up, and more from the scene’s tragic irony: Kay’s world hopelessly opposes Michael’s, and yet she loves him. Whatever form her relationship with Michael does take, Kay—dependent, vulnerable, and unlike Michael in too many ways—will remain relegated to the Corleone family’s periphery. This alienation accounts for why she appears dependent and vulnerable: we sense too that, since Michael will always subordinate Kay to the family business, her alienation will persist.

This scene, then, does not merely establish a narrative problem. It reveals a fatal flaw in their relationship—the gulf between Michael and Kay that, whatever the melody playing in the background, neither one can bridge.

Max Sala studies Rhetoric and English at Cal. After watching her flaunt her silky smooth hair in a Noxzema commercial, Max realized he was Meredith Baxter in one of his past lives.

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Pop, Flash, Bang: Color Accents in The Godfather

in The Craft of The Godfather

By Katerina Marovich

The Godfather is a sensually ingenious movie: it lulls its viewers into a dream state with scenes of comfortable warmth, then shocks us awake through punchy pops of drama and action. This rhythm is developed, in no small part, through Francis Ford Coppola’s distinct and painterly use of color. The visual scenes of the film—brushed with broad washes of color, while featuring sharp points of accent—give us many clues and guides into the powerful world of Don Corleone and his “family business.” There is an overwhelming sense of warmth to what we see onscreen: the general palette holds soft tones of orange, sienna, and mahogany—colors that draw in the viewer and make them feel like one of the family, cozily perched in the Don’s snug office or falling in love with Apollonia alongside Michael in Sicily. Yet it’s the accents—the colors that accentuate and ‘pop’—that drive the most interest in each scene and offer the truest signs of action and meaning.

To understand these meticulous placements and punches of color, let us first delve into the most iconic example: Vito Corleone’s red rose in the opening scene.

Don Corleone in his office, making a deal with Bonasera

We are first introduced to Don Corleone through this vivid image of him in his tuxedo, in the dark room, with the bright red rose sported on his lapel. Our eye is immediately drawn to this gleaming source of color, as this red rose promptly becomes an image carried through The Godfather’s iconography in and out of the film itself.

The red rose, highlighted in the promotion of the film

The rose, with its splash of color, is featured prominently in the posters and marketing for the film. Yet what does this red rose represent? Most obviously it is the symbol associated with love and romance. Placed over the Don’s left breast, or over his heart, it may represent passion or foretell the spilling of blood. In retrospect we can see how it foreshadows the circumstances of the Don’s downfall (how his love of his family takes his business into a crisis) as well as his ultimately peaceful end (his death of a heart attack). All of this is pulled through this pinhole image of the red rose against all the darkness surrounding him.

The Godfather in his office, surrounded by his family

Even as the scene pulls away, the red rose is at the center of the frame, pin-pricking the Don’s heart with incredible precision. Although the rest of the frame is set in the soft warm oranges and browns that we grow accustomed to, this red-hot image on the breast of the Don presses all of his warmth and his love of family into a single center. From another angle, we might say that the entire family center is found within Vito—or that the passion and love and emphasis on family all derive from Vito Corleone’s own vision.

A moment at Vito Corleone’s funeral

This image of the red rose returns, in a more minor key, at the Don’s funeral, as the mafiosos each leave a red rose on the grave at his burial. Barzini and the other mafiosos nonchalantly lob the roses onto the grave of the late Don, without any semblance of emotion or grace. The passion and love that these roses represent to the Don die and are left alongside Vito Corleone, and we are left with the dark mercilessness of Michael to replace him. The powerful passion that held the family center is no longer at the center as it was in the opening scene of the film, but now tossed rather unceremoniously to the grave.

However, the bright red rose is not the only warm accent that punctuates drastic images within the film and creates an indelible moment in the film. Another beautiful example is seen when Vito Corleone goes to the market and is subsequently shot by men sent by Sollozzo, “The Turk.”

Edward Hopper, “New York Movie”

This single image epitomizes the entire scene, which unfolds in an incredibly beautiful and aesthetic way. Notice the composition of the colors in this frame, the darkness and coolness that envelops most of the frame in the bottom left-hand side. Yet the pop of warmth and orange draws the eye to the upper right-hand corner. The shot is at a dizzying angle up and away: the camera is elevated to a birds-eye view that offers both an objective and an artfully tasteful representation of the moment. The angle disorients the viewer, pulling the emotion out of the moment directly, and viewing the sequence as a ‘whole picture.’ The image recalls the genre of American realist painting—for example, Edward Hopper’s New York Movie.

A genre entirely true to the subject matter that attempts to depict the moment in a scrupulous way that also appeals to the senses. In Coppola’s American Realism, the oranges that spill onto the street speak to the life being drained from Vito as he is shot in the street—a metaphor for the blood being spilled—and stand for the disarray of the family as well. The Don descends from the warmth and falls into the cool darkness of the street on both a physical and metaphorical level.

Vito Corleone’s wounds

After this moment, the last instance of a warm color we see is once again the red accent of dripping blood from Vito himself. He is then drowned in a wash of cool tones and dark colors as we lose sight of this bright flash of red. We are left not knowing whether the Don is alive or dead, as the darkness of the scene envelops his entire person and pulls away our knowledge of his life. This is a distinct turn in the movie as well, as the power turns from Vito Corleone to his sons, and there is an incredibly dark shift in the way the business is run. The movie drifts into this darkness just as Vito Corleone slips to the darkened pavement in this scene.

To fully understand the impact of these pops of color surrounding Vito Corleone and his mode of managing the family business, we might contrast them with the final scene with Michael taking over for Vito in the office in which it all began.

Michael in his office as the newly sanctioned Don

In this moment, the hues of the warm browns and oranges are dampened, deepened, almost entirely muted with the exception of Michael’s stark white shirt at the center. As opposed to this whiteness presenting purity, it can instead be seen as a beacon of harsh light. The source of all attention, much less comforting and aesthetically sympathetic than Vito’s romantic red rose. We are left with the cooled earth-tones of Michael rather than the warmth of reds and oranges associated with the late Don, and forebodingly end the movie in deep darkness. All the warmth of the family business that the viewer has come to associate with the Corleone family throughout the movie has been entirely sucked out. Nothing remains but Michael’s stark, brisk coolness.

Katerina Marovich (Cal ’18) is a senior English major from Northern California planning on taking her English degree into the publishing field.

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Coppola’s Reluctant Voyeurism: Gendered Violence in The Godfather

in The Craft of The Godfather

By Julia Delgadillo

Cinema is a medium that, even in the more progressive present, is largely dominated by men. As Laura Mulvey has famously suggested, this domination has caused a clear masculine bias in how films are shot and presented to viewers who, sometimes unknowingly, consume examples of harmful masculinity. In her landmark essay “Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema,” Mulvey identifies some of these harmful techniques—prominent among them the scopophilia of the male-directed camera and the sadistic punishment of women—while citing Alfred Hitchcock’s films as prime examples.

Yet there is often a complex relationship between the larger tradition of male-dominated cinema and the work of a single director—as might be seen in the case of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. Though the New Hollywood of the 1970s often reinforced “the male gaze,” Coppola deliberately does not use the more popular approach of sadistic punishment, rejecting the Hitchcockian way of violence. What is most interesting about The Godfather, though, is how it negates these  conventions: Coppola created innovation not only through his manipulation of the film’s formal elements, but also through its depictions of the punishment of women.

The Godfather is a film that is obsessed with depicting male abjection—abjection understood with reference to Julia Kristeva’s “Approaching Abjection,” which defines the abject as something that is unsafely other; something that is not a definition of the self, but is within the self; something that is not a symbol of death or decay or other forms of shame within the self, but evidence that these shameful processes exist despite the self’s attempts to suppress them. More than an abstract concept, the “abject” evokes the repressed elements of the body, with fluids like blood, vomit, and feces being the best example. Not only is The Godfather obsessed with showing the moral decay of its male characters, but when it comes to the depictions of violence, male violence is shown in its entirety, with no restrictions obscuring any form of abjection.

A hyperviolent murder to match a hypermasculine protagonist: the death of Sonny

The most violent onscreen male death, in terms of the abject, is the death of Sonny Corleone. Seemingly punished for his own insatiable rage and confidence in elements of traditional masculinity, Sonny is murdered in full view. When his death begins, he is seated inside his car as the bullets begin to pierce his body and cause visible bleeding, visible abjection. His death does not end in the obstructed view of the car, however, and continues as he steps outside, not allowing a moment of rest during his hyper-violent massacre. If there is a depiction of sadistic punishment in the film, it arrives through Sonny’s death, as he is punished for being too masculine; his protracted death is performed for the unobstructed view of the camera, and so he perishes with his abjection, shame, and decay in full view—dehumanized in his demise.

The same hyperviolent treatment is not extended to the women in the film. The death that is most violent in nature and outcome is the murder of Michael’s Italian wife Apollonia, and although the manner in which she dies is harsh , the impact of this death is not as evident because of the scene’s lack of visual violence. The car explodes in full view, but we do not see the full impact of the violence on her body. The violence against her is lethal, but there is no abjection present to further shame her. The violence is instantaneous; there’s no prolonging of the agony.

***

The sequence which comes closest to the Hitchcockian tradition of sadistic punishment is the sequence in which Connie gets beaten by her husband after reacting emotionally to a call that seems to indicate an affair. Still, even though this scene is set up for an act of sadistic punishment against women, Coppola refuses to use the Hitchcockian conventions, instead allowing Connie to be punished off screen: doorways obstruct the violence, setting it in a closed space that is not completely explored by the camera. The moments in which Connie is being visibly abused by her husband are few throughout the scene, but while we see the belt hitting her body, we do not see any signs of abjection. She does not bleed, she does not bruise, she only screams in an act which alludes to pain, but does not provide proof of its existence as blood does. Both Connie and Sonny’s punishments end in a scream, but while Sonny is in an open space, Connie is out of the frame.

In the scene of Connie’s beating, the camera represents a reluctant voyeur—one who is curious, perhaps horrified, at the abuse, but does not feel the need to insert him- or herself into the scene.

Moreover, because of its frequent placement behind doorways, the camera in this scene does not identify with Carlo, the masculine punisher, as it would in the Hitchcockian convention. To make a fine but necessary distinction: the scene is voyeuristic, but not in a scopophilic sense. The camera looms over places of domesticity, but it does not fixate on the female. Instead, the camera represents a reluctant voyeur, one who is curious, perhaps horrified, at the abuse, but does not feel the need to insert him- or herself  in these scenes of violence, and instead observes quietly and curiously as violence is committed.

Violence and punishment in film do not necessarily need to relate to the physical or the abject. In some cases, violence can be considered a destructive force separate from the physical. Although Coppola may reject American cinema’s tradition of sadistic punishment, there are definite limits on how he chooses to imagine the women in his film.  In the same sequence, in which Connie is a victim of domestic abuse, the mise-en-scene conveys the limits within which Connie imagines herself and lives her life. The spaces she inhabits—and destroys—are filled with staples of domesticity. Connie breaks plates in the kitchen, she tears up the dining room, and she gets beaten in the bedroom.

Breaking plates, spilling food and wine, throwing poker chips: Connie destroys the illusion of their happy home

Yet even when Connie has the brief power to act on her own agency and destroy, she is only allowed to destroy within the confines of her stereotypical gender roles. While she does spill the chips of the living room’s poker table—the only masculine objects she touches in the scene—they are not damaged beyond repair like the other objects in the home.

What we see when Connie is being beaten: a pink bedroom full of signifiers of female fragility and submissiveness

When the sequence comes to an end, the camera lingers on the image of the bedroom, which matches Connie’s own infantilized image. The bedsheets and curtains are in the same shade of pink as her silk nightgown, a shade of pink that is most often associated with a youthful femininity and innocence, one which codes the wearers as delicate or fragile. On top of the silk bedsheets is a stuffed rabbit, another object which signifies Connie as a girl, not a woman. A girl to be disciplined and controlled by the patriarchal figures of her father, brothers, and husband, not a woman with her own sense of agency. Lastly, the images of Japanese women in kimonos that hang over her bed reinforce this impression: not only do they signify an obvious fragility and femininity, but also these images have been fetishized in the West, and falsely and unjustly associated with submissiveness. The combination of these two indicators of femininity—the softness and fragility of the pinks; the submissive and silent geishas frame Connie as a person who is expected, simply, to please her man and submit to him.

In the end, the acts of violence against Connie were used as bait to lure Sonny to his death, furthering the constraints women face in the universe of The Godfather. They exist only as objects for the men to use, whether it be sexually, romantically, in the roles of cooks and housewives, or as pawns in their never-ending battle to maintain their hyper-masculine ideas of dominance. While Coppola does not necessarily partake in the traditional on-screen, voyeuristic violence against women as seen in classic Hollywood films, The Godfather perpetuates the oppression against women in the sense of confining them to spaces and roles that reduce them to ideas of submissive beings without agency. Coppola gives us, then, both an untraditional way of framing them through his camera and a traditional way of framing women, in a larger sense, as characters.

Julia Delgadillo (Cal ’18) is a senior majoring in Film Studies and an aspiring writer/director. She is currently writing a senior thesis titled Monsters of the Mind: Manifestations of Mental Illnesses in Contemporary Horror Films.

 

Works Cited

Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 833-44.

Julia Kristeva and John Lechte, “Approaching Abjection,” Oxford Literary Review 5:1/2 (1982), 125-149.

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Never Let Your Body Show What You’re Thinking: Gesture and Masculinity in The Godfather

in The Craft of The Godfather/Tropes and Leitmotifs

By Alex Chellsen

Mind Your Mannerisms

For a film filled with intense scenes of violence and gripping dialogue, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather contains an equal amount — if not more — of quieter, more understated moments. Throughout the film, masculine power is not expressed in feats of physical strength, or through hardened exteriors and hyper-masculine personas. Instead, it is conveyed by the manner in which Vito and Michael Corleone carry and conduct themselves around other men, specifically the other Families with whom they are dealing. Small actions often speak louder than words. By controlling their physical faculties, Vito and Michael maintain the appearance of authority: their power is dependent upon the suppression of their violent, primitive urges in the midst of things going amiss. Fascinatingly, as Michael inches closer towards becoming the new head of the Family, his mannerisms begin to mimic those of Vito. The men, for brief moments, become mirror images of each other, or reflections and refractions.

There are four pairs of scenes that reveal both the parallels between Vito and Michael’s physicality and their divergences. By comparing and contrasting the mannerisms of Vito and Michael, we can observe the differences in how they exercise their masculinity — differences that become especially evident in their shared scene in the garden, where Vito is the experienced elder, exhausted from his responsibilities, and Michael is the heir, hungry for revenge and committed to advancing the family name and the Family’s legacy.

Sitting Still

Vito and Michael resemble each other in the way they sit and are seated, displaying their masculinity through the manner in which they restrain themselves.

As the head of the Family, Vito is not stripped of his patriarchal position when he sits down. Rather, his status is elevated: he is a king upon his throne. With all eyes drawn toward him, he is careful to use limited and deliberate physical gestures to conceal his thoughts and emotions. When Tom Hagen briefs Vito about Sollozzo’s request to receive protection in exchange for a percentage of the profits of his drug trade, Vito sits with his legs crossed while reclining in his seat. Before the meeting with Sollozzo commences, Vito nods his head, shrugs his shoulders, and sways—as if he were doing Sollozzo a favor by indulging his offer, only bestowing the minimum physical attention required to hear his request. He also asks Tom if he is “not too tired,” as if to suggest his own fatigue as the Don. His body language reveals a disinclination towards stretching the reach of the Family business, as it jeopardizes the familial affiliations that he has established within and outside his blood ties.  When Sonny asks him what his decision is going to be, Vito raises his hand from his cheek before resting it on his chin, withholding his thoughts until the next scene.

After he inherits Vito’s throne, Michael’s sitting posture recalls his father’s — but with some striking differences. When Michael offers a plan to exact retribution for his father’s shooting, he positions himself in an armchair in a similar manner to his father, crossing his legs and lolling in the furniture. However, Michael is not as calm and collected as Vito had been: he rubs his eyebrows and slumps in his chair, moving his body back and forth before proceeding with his plan. He’s restless—sweaty and squirming. He wants to take immediate action, but he does not act upon his impulses. In the following moments, he places both arms on the handles of the chair as a way to ground himself within the turbulence. As the camera zooms in, Michael’s body becomes more relaxed while still tilting forward: we sense that he is more comfortable with his position, prepared to prove his power. He slurs his words, recalling how his father often mumbles his words, but he does so in anger, his gestures intensified by the sternness of his stare and speech.

Michael is channeling the Don, but uneasily: he’s trying to hold onto himself, in the same way that he holds onto the arms of the chair.

Showing—and Not Showing—Their Hands

Vito and Michael both use hand movements that reveal them suppressing their anger and frustration. In the opening scene, mortician Amerigo Bonasera offers to pay Vito Corleone in exchange for revenge upon the men who abused his daughter—an offer which offends the Don, as it insinuates he is both a killer and can be “bought.” Prior to this exact moment, Vito’s hand is petting and playing with a cat sitting on his lap; just after, his grip tightens around the animal’s head. The sequence of gestures suggests a few meanings: (1) he is crushing his urge to act upon his anger towards Amerigo Bonasera—he is a man, “not a murderer”—which would demonstrate a childish weakness that cannot be associated with the patriarch of a family, let alone the Family; and (2) given that the image of a cat often carries both feminine and sexual connotations, Vito’s intensifying hold shows him flexing his masculine power and exerting his dominance, his full control.

Michael, on the other hand, is less composed and constrained in his physical mannerisms—his body is seemingly riddled with anxiety. After Michael’s return from Sicily, he makes significant decisions as the new “head of the Family,” including relocating the business transactions to Las Vegas and replacing Tom Hagen as consigliere. During this scene, Michael is twiddling a zippo lighter between his fingers, smoking a cigarette, and prolongedly pressing it into an ashtray.

Michael is adjusting to the fluidity of his new power as the Don, and this is reflected in his body language, as he is both looser in the movement of his limbs and firmer in the way he carries himself among the other men. When Vito tries to be sympathetic with the suspension of Tom’s position, resting a hand on his shoulder, Michael tells him in a sturdy voice, “you’re out.” After Tom exits, Michael slackens his collar, leaving his tie more disheveled than before. His newfound power possesses a chokehold over him, as it is still an extension of his father’s hand.

Different Strokes

Both Vito and Michael stroke their heads during times of great stress, and the repeated gesture underlines how both of them confront the emergencies they face. Combing their hair is a coping mechanism, a gesture made to maintain their cool, or at least the image of such.

After the opening scene, Don Vito runs a hand against his grey, slicked-backed hair and qualifies his terms for the mortician’s debt: “We’re not murderers, despite what this undertaker says.” In this scene, Vito is literally scratching his head at his decision to expand the scope of the Family to meet the pleas of an acquaintance who has deliberately avoided them. Yet Vito’s grooming habit is second nature to him—he stays in character as the cool and collected Don.

This gesture is replayed in a different key in the pivotal scene at the Italian restaurant, in which Michael struggles to carry out the plot he proposed—to kill Sollozzo and his police guard. Just after he retrieves the gun from the restaurant’s toilet, Michael stands in front of the bathroom’s mirror and presses both hands against his hair in an attempt to gather himself. Here, Michael is on the edge of becoming a part of the family — a family that he had pointedly described, to his girlfriend Kay, as “not me”. His fingers are pushed against his head—he is trying to wrap his brain around his decision. By executing his plan, he not only will be initiated into the business, but also will finally be able to feel like a part of the Corleone family by embodying the role of his father. With the gun concealed in his jacket, Michael seats himself at the table with Sollozzo and his police guard; he brushes his hair back and switches from speaking in Italian to English when staking his claim: “What’s most important to me is that I have a guarantee: no more attempts on my father’s life.” By protecting the patriarch, Michael secures his succession.

Unlike Father, Unlike Son

In the divergences between Vito and Michael’s mannerisms, the film suggests the differences in how the two men play their parts in the Corleone patriarchy.

When Vito meets with Sollozzo to listen to his proposition (only to decline), his blazer is unbuttoned, and he droops one arm over the chair while the other dangles from his hip. Vito gives the appearance of approachability while still upholding his authority—he does not need to exercise his dominance in the situation because his mere presence is enough. Vito’s amiability is not so much a sign of respect for Sollozzo, but a means of maintaining respectability as a representative of the Corleone tribe. As Vito turns down Sollozzo’s request, his hands are clasped, but not fastened together, and he strokes and shrugs his thumbs: “It doesn’t make any difference to me what a man does for a living.” Vito is not interested in what can be done to advance his enterprise, but in what he can do to preserve the relationships with his current business partners.

Michael is not as gentle, however, when he arrives in Las Vegas to buy Moe Greene’s casino and offer Johnny Fontaine a new contract.  In this scene, Michael clasps his hands as well, except with his thumbs pressed together. Not only is he steadfast in his position, but also he’s confident that no one in the room can “refuse” him nor the strength he flexes. Moe Greene then barges in and argues with Michael over the notion that he can “buy [him] out,” and Fredo defends Moe and questions Michael’s reasoning. Echoing the earlier scene in which his father advised Sonny to “never tell anyone outside the family what [he thinks] again,” Michael warns Fredo never to “take sides with anyone against the family again.”

Both Dons are strict in these commands, but Vito’s raised eyebrows and shifting gaze reveal concern, whereas Michael’s unrelenting stare silences anyone who rises to test his supremacy. Vito exercises his power as a means of protecting his family, whereas Michael flashes his influence to uphold his place and ensure the progress of the Family.

Connect to Disconnect

In their final interaction in the film, Michael is already Don of the Family and Vito is “retired.” The viewer can sense a shift in Vito’s demeanor; he is smiling, joking, drinking wine, and sitting with his right leg folded above the other. He is not hunched over, as he had been in many previous scenes. The burden of the Family business has been removed from his shoulders, and he can take it easy, if only for an instant.

Michael is hunched over, however, with his arms pressed into his thighs. He feels the weight of death looming over his shoulder: Vito predicts, in a surprisingly casual manner, about how the train of events will unfold: “And at that meeting you’ll be assassinated.” Vito’s gestures in this scene may be read as a relinquishing of his patriarchal position out of respect for the new male head of the family. Michael leans in because he still displays an insecurity regarding his power and position as a man. He still looks to his father to be the Don for him. When Vito struggles from the chair and shuffles to sit near Michael, Michael leans back. He wants to be close to his father, but only at a certain distance, as intimacy often necessitates an emotional and physical vulnerability, one that threatens his male assertiveness.

Tellingly, when Vito positions himself in his seat, he obscures the image of Michael. The camera work suggests how succession works in this family: the importance of the patriarch means that there’s no room for others, just the single male head. To be powerful, to be head of the family: this aspiration is tied to Michael becoming singular, with a way of moving his body that—however indebted to his father—is his and his alone.

Alex Chellsen (Cal ’19) is a junior majoring in English and minoring in Creative Writing. He is an avid reader and writer of poetry and plays keys and synths in the band Dream Without Sleep.

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Office Space: Don Vito’s Home Office, and Michael’s

in The Craft of The Godfather

By Robert Norte

The Corleone office is a crucial setting in The Godfather: after all, it is the place where Vito Corleone is introduced and subsequently the setting in which he hands over power to his son Michael. The office’s interior décor — first with Vito in power, and later with Michael — contains details that, while small to the audience’s eye, speak powerfully to how the mafia leaders choose to represent the family and how they manage the family’s affairs. Despite the office’s various changes as power shifts from father to son, enough of the décor stays the same to suggest that both men rely on a complicated moral framework — one that gives power to themselves and demands obedience from those around them. More radically, the office’s décor suggests a code of ethics which lacks depth — a framework more concerned with appearances than with discriminating between right and wrong.

In a dimly lit office, Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) listens to the pleas of Bonasera (Salvatore Corsitto) to avenge his daughter, as Sonny Corleone (James Caan) and Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) wait for Vito's orders.
Don Vito, in his dimly lit office, listens to the pleas of Amerigo Bonasera

The first thing that stands out about Vito Corleone’s office is the lighting, or lack thereof. The blinds are only slightly open, and shadows draw the eye to the corner of the room: domestic wallpaper, portraits of family members on the mantel, along with a bookshelf create the impression that this meeting is taking place not in an office complex, but rather in the Corleone home — or, more precisely, in Vito’s study. The room’s overall darkness conveys that Vito handles the family business as a true criminal would: colluding in the shadows rather than being open about his affairs.

Fittingly, in the film’s opening scene, Bonasera has come to Vito’s office to ask for the favor of murdering the two men who attempted to rape his daughter. Vito, however, rejects Bonasera’s request, as Bonasera’s daughter is still alive and according to Vito “[the two men are] not murderers.” Vito’s dialogue, supported by the scene’s interior décor, furthers the notion that Vito is a just family man who is sympathetic to his fellow Italian Americans. However, this family man persona is as artificial as the office itself: doing business in the cozy confines of his office ensures that the violent acts carried out in his name cannot be traced, and so are not seen as a reflection of Vito’s character. Just as shadows mask images for what they truly are, so is Vito’s complicated morality masked by the appearances of his family business.

Likewise, the furniture in Vito’s office shows how he chooses to close off the outside world to his business. Three dark-colored chairs surround Vito’s desk, countered only by Vito’s light-colored leather chair. All of these chairs are padded except the chair directly across from Vito, which is reserved for those who require help from him. This layout is essential to how Vito conducts his business: the singular chair that sits across from him showcases that there is only room for one request at a time. Moreover, the lack of padding on this chair has symbolic resonances too: asking for Vito’s help is an uncomfortable experience, one that leaves you indebted to a powerful man — a man whose family business includes political bribery, extortion, and murder. From the perspective of protecting Vito’s familial image, the uncomfortable chair also ensures that no illegal request lasts longer than it needs to, and is over as quickly as possible. Vito may rebuke Bonasera for never inviting Vito to his house and for being terrified of being in his debt even though Vito’s wife is Godmother to his daughter—but the scene of the office suggests exactly why Bonasera would not have put himself in this literally uncomfortable position. Vito may offer himself as a family man helping out extended family and friends, but we see him also as a criminal who forces people into submissive positions to further his grip on power.

Vito directs the men to follow all of Michael’s orders as the power shifts from father to son and the aesthetic follows suit.
(Composite image) The desks of Vito and Michael suggest the different but also shared approach to organized crime and family business.

When Michael takes the reins of the family business and engages in some ‘office redecoration,’ we get a strong sense that there will be a power shift in how the family will operate. Where Vito’s office lacked light, Michael’s is exquisitely lit. The blinds in Michael’s office ushers in light unlike the previous blinds of Vito’s office, giving a sense that Michael is trying to push the family business into the legitimate corporate world of America. There will be no more hiding in the dark, no more whispering about back door deals and crimes: the family, at least in Michael’s eyes, is headed toward becoming completely ‘legit’ through the casino business in Las Vegas. The old wallpaper from before has now been replaced with white paint: Michael is proposing a fresh start for the family, with the family business becoming a proper one, with no illegal activity. Michael even tells Clemenza and Tessio that they can leave the Corleone family and start their organized crime ring only after the casino business is legitimate.

However, like his father, Michael never really abandons his family’s violent nature. This ‘fresh start’ — like the fresh paint of his office’s walls — is only doing what paint does, covering something in a thin layer to mask it. It is, quite literally, a “whitewash”. Michael’s morals are still aligned with the old wallpaper and the ways that his father had established for the family. A morality of family profits first and moral righteousness last. After all, Michael will not allow Clemenza and Tessio power until the Corleone family has established itself as a powerhouse in Las Vegas. Although Michael puts a new face on the family, he carries forward the family’s unwillingness to relinquish power and control of those around them.

The abundance of furniture in Michael’s new office speaks similarly to the modern spirit of inclusion and comfort that he is projecting. Two padded chairs now sit in front of Michael’s desk, whereas Vito only allowed for a single chair to sit directly across from him. The aesthetic of Michael’s office is that of a modern businessman: he has added carpet, chairs, and couches, all of which rest now in a circular formation. He seems to be creating a comfortable and inclusive environment: it’s no longer one person sitting in a single chair, as in Vito’s office, but multiple people sitting together at a conference meeting.  The room is not anywhere near as threatening as Vito’s office at first glance.

At the same time, the new clutter on Michael’s desk suggests how complicated things are about to get under his command. The addition of two plants on his desk, as well as two more plants on the television and mantel, creates a sense that the office no longer is used to plan hit jobs but rather is now a place where life can thrive. However, the placement of books on Michael’s desk brings into question how much life will thrive in this space. The books suggest Michael’s more intellectual airs (in the novel he’s a Dartmouth grad); his actions aim to be more considered and planned. There also appears to be a ledger on the desk — suggesting that Michael will be engaging in a more formal system of “accounting,” in his business practices and in his settling of accounts with those who have betrayed the family. At the same time, the presence of all those books suggest another power play at work in Michael’s office. They may be part of his “mental game” — his way of convincing those who sit across from him that there’s a deeper level to Michael, morally and intellectually. Yet even though Vito has an empty desk, we should note that more violence comes from Michael than any other character within the movie. He masks his moral wrongs like he masks his office with new furniture.

Michael’s final office space — sparsely furnished, and with books piled on the floor, because the Corleone family is on the move

Vito’s room allows for little light and arrangement in furniture—all of which create an aesthetic appropriate to the idea of pre-WWII organized crime as a backdoor business. By contrast, Michael’s aesthetic reflects his attempt, in the postwar period, to push the family away from criminal activity and establish a completely legal organization. Both men long for the family business to become legitimate and believe that Michael can be the factor that allows for this clearing of the Corleone family name. However, the change of the interior design of an office is only a surface change. The end of the film—with Michael ordering the killing of his brother-in-law Carlo from a better-lit room—suggests that, in the world of The Godfather, appearances are deceiving indeed.

Robert Norte (Cal ’19) is an English major and a cinephile who enjoys unpacking the often-overlooked aspects of film.

 

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