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Apollonia Vitelli

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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“Till Death Do Us Part”: Michael’s Marriage to Apollonia and the “Corleone” Way

in Anatomy of a Scene/Character Studies

By Julia Reilly

Michael’s marriage to Apollonia, halfway through The Godfather, marks a metaphorical marriage to Sicily and the ways of his father. By partaking in an intensely traditional wedding with an equally traditional Italian bride in a town that bears his family’s name, Michael is wedding himself to the Old World of his father’s generation and to the violent path that he had previously rebelled against. Yet he renews his commitment to his family in his own way — and the terms of this commitment are signaled by the contrast between the two weddings in the film (Michael’s and Connie’s) and by the development of his character between the two ceremonies.

The two weddings in The Godfather differ from one another greatly. Unlike his sister Connie’s sumptuous and lighthearted reception, Michael’s marriage to Apollonia is old-fashioned and deeply Sicilian. While Connie’s wedding features Sicilian traditions, like her wedding purse and songs sung in Italian, it does not diverge too sharply from a normal (though lavish) American wedding. The Corleones showcase their prosperity and well-connectedness through the wedding, and Connie’s towering cake is the epitome of extravagance and excess.

Connie’s enormous and intricate cake, a symbol of the family’s wealth, is presented to the party
Guests cheer loudly and happily at Connie’s well-attended and expensively decorated reception

Connie and Carlo’s wedding is bright and loud. Wine flows freely, and several characters appear to be drunk. The scenes of their celebration utilize warm, vivid colors and upbeat music accompanied by laughter, excited shouts, and singing, while Michael’s wedding looks muted and earthy, scored by a band playing a song that recalls the slow and almost mournful Godfather theme. Where Connie’s wedding features posy pink bridesmaids’ dresses, a performance from celebrity Johnny Fontane, and lots of dancing, Michael’s nuptials are quiet, small, and more serious, in the “Old World” fashion.

Apollonia engages with guests at her modestly sized and decorated, quiet reception
A reverent Michael and Apollonia bless themselves, kneeling respectfully before the Sicilian priest

As noted in the screenplay, Michael’s wedding is “the same in feeling and texture as it might have been five hundred years ago,” with “all the ritual and pageantry, as it has always been, in Sicily.” This deeply Sicilian wedding illustrates Michael’s complete immersion in the Sicilian culture. The priest and the wedding ceremony, rather than the reception, take center stage, and Michael and Apollonia, though joyful, wear formal expressions. Their wedding is a sacred, holy union, and while the couple and the bride’s family will soon celebrate, the religious sacrament is the undisputed focus of the day. This emphasis on reverence and religion is not displayed at Connie’s reception, where young women are playing guessing games about the size of someone’s manhood and Sonny is having extramarital sex with a bridesmaid upstairs.

Sonny’s wife with a riff on someone’s—perhaps her husband’s—manhood

In Michael’s wedding scene, a beautiful long shot of the small Italian town follows the bride and groom’s procession, showcasing both Corleone’s natural richness in color and its plain and battered buildings. Michael’s journey to Sicily is a journey back to his family’s roots, and this shot shows audiences just how different his home in America is from the region that gave the Corleone family their name. In New York, the Corleones live luxuriously. Immensely successful as a result of their illegal deeds, they are a family of wealth, but one somewhat isolated from the land and their community. Only the important and influential are permitted to attend Connie’s New York wedding, but Michael’s Sicilian wedding invites the whole town to take part in tradition and festivity.

A long shot (Godfather cinematographer Gordon Willis’s favorite shot of the film) follows the wedding party as it files through poor but naturally beautiful Corleone

Set against the backdrop of poor, dilapidated Corleone, Michael and Apollonia’s reception takes place among urban grime, in a circle of mismatched chairs — a stark contrast to Connie’s ornate celebration. Apollonia engages with her wedding guests through Sicilian traditions, her incredibly elaborate hairstyle and ornamental veil reflecting the monumental nature of the day in a way that the homely reception area does not. This reception is about family and community, about honoring the memory of those who came before by celebrating in the old way. The reception’s traditions are like valuable heirlooms, passed down from each new couple to the next; they join the community in a bond that matches the sacredness of the earlier ceremony, even though they are not religious sacraments.

Connie waltzes with her father on the dancefloor, encircled by her hundreds of guests
Newly married Michael and Apollonia dance together on worn cement as their guests look on from a circle of mismatched chairs

The differences between The Godfather’s two weddings suggest the materialism of American culture — how the opulence of “The Don,” a product of his success in America, has distanced him from the family-based Italian way and the poverty-stricken town of Corleone.

Aside from providing important commentary on the Corleone family and culture, the disparities between the two marriage celebrations highlight the many ways Michael has changed since the beginning of the film. For Connie’s wedding, Michael dons an American military uniform, signifying not only his alignment with America and its laws and customs, but also, and more notably, his history of risking his life to maintain them.

A bright and giggly Kay intertwines arms with her war-hero boyfriend, Michael

When Kay, a talkative and inquisitive all-American beauty (dressed in a bright and patriotically-hued frock), questions Michael about his family, he does his best to answer only vaguely and often attempts to direct their conversation away from the topic. When asked about Luca Brasi, Michael simply tells Kay that he “helps my father out sometimes.” Kay eventually pushes Michael to tell her the full story about Brasi and Johnny Fontane. He gives in, telling the tale solemnly and in graphic detail, taking great care to distance himself from the violent act he is speaking about. Michael concludes the story with the statement “That’s my family, Kay. It’s not me”: he does not simply refuse to participate in the “family business,” but also deeply disapproves of it. As Kay and Michael sit together, Tom Hagen informs Michael that his father is looking for him. He does not get up or even attempt to look around for his father, but instead simply continues his conversation as if nothing had happened.

Michael holds Kay and poses with his family for a photo

Michael and Kay are carefree and giggly when not discussing family matters, holding hands and sitting close together in their own little world like high school sweethearts. They isolate themselves from the rest of the party, only interacting with family members if they approach them first. When Michael is brought over for a family picture, he insists Kay join in, perhaps subconsciously to associate himself more closely with her than with the Corleone family. Kay is an independent, outspoken American woman—the opposite of the submissive female Corleones, most notably the delicate and powerless Connie.

At his own wedding later in the film, Michael is much more serious and traditional, embracing both his family and his heritage. He seems comfortable in the Sicilian way and looks perfectly natural during the ultra-traditional wedding. Michael has traded in the military uniform for a modest yet formal suit, looking dapper save for his badly bruised face. The attempt on Don Corleone’s life has ignited a change deep within Michael, and the darkening mark under his eye physically indicates the alterations taking place inside him emotionally.

A bruised Michael, changed both physically and mentally since the film’s start, dances with his new wife

At the ceremony, he genuflects reverently, then sweetly but solemnly offers his new bride his arm as they stand up. Michael is serious and formal as he processes through the city with his wife, wearing a dignified expression that matches the rich and ceremonious wail of the music. As Michael continues to walk, it is increasingly apparent that he has become one with Sicily.

The newlywed couple walks forward seriously and ceremoniously as guests throw celebratory rice behind them

He shares a moment with the young flower girl: he smiles at her and she smiles back, as if acknowledging him as a welcome member of the family and the community. Michael walks with his bride through the town that has now become his home, not looking like an out-of-place foreigner, but like a man who has strolled these winding paths all of his life. As Michael walks down the dirt roads of his father’s world with his new bride, he follows in his father’s footsteps, both literally and figuratively.

Sharing a smile with the young flower girl, Michael is comfortable and accepted within the Sicilian community

The changes Michael goes through during the film, visible through the differences in his behavior at the two weddings, begin with the attack on his father. At the hospital, Michael gets in an altercation with (and is physically assaulted by) a corrupt cop while trying to protect his already injured father from being “finished off” by hit men. From this moment on, both he and the family’s enemies view him not as an innocent bystander, but as an active participant in the Corleone family.

Seconds before he is punched, Michael angrily asks the corrupt police captain about his ties to the opposing mob family

Michael wants safety for his father and revenge against the Tattaglias who tried to assassinate “the Don,” and to ensure that safety, he becomes not just an active member of the family, but an active member of “the business” as well, volunteering to shoot and kill Sollozzo. When Michael gets to the restaurant where the hit will take place, he is noticeably uneasy, but he doesn’t change the plan; his motivation is strong enough to neutralize his previous moral ideals. After Michael murders Sollozzo and the cop McCluskey, there is no turning back.

Michael murders McCluskey and Sollozzo—an act the man at Connie’s wedding never would have committed

The very violence he condemned at Connie’s wedding now his own, Michael goes to Sicily to hide. While killing for the family was the first major step in Michael’s transformation, he continues to undergo changes during the journey to his father’s roots. In the town of Corleone from which his family took its name, Michael is inducted into the Old-World life and the Sicilian way. The derelict buildings and sprawling countryside through which his father once walked are Michael’s new home: the ultra-modern, all-American man whom audiences were introduced to at the start of the film is now nowhere to be found. In Sicily, Michael embraces his roots and his culture, connecting with his Italian heritage in a way viewers have not yet seen.

Michael (at front), indistinguishable from his Sicilian bodyguards, treks comfortably through the rural Italian landscape

When asking Apollonia’s father permission to court her, Michael uses his father’s power to his advantage in a way he never would have before, saying “My name is Michael Corleone. There are people who would pay a lot of money for that information, but then your daughter would lose a father instead of gaining a husband.” Michael makes Fabrizio stand and translate for him as he speaks with a stately air, showcasing his power and commanding respect from the man who only moments ago regarded him as a rude and immature boy. Michael’s earlier relationship with Kay is featured in dialogue-heavy scenes, but his growing bond with Apollonia is shown through montage, with smooth, orchestral music and almost no words shared between the couple.

Michael “courts” Apollonia’s father before courting her: they talk while she watches from afar

Michael’s courting of Apollonia is patient, gentle, and traditional—much less modern and American than his previous romantic interactions with Kay. Michael gains the approval of Apollonia’s family and father before spending time with her alone, in customary Sicilian fashion. Apollonia and Michael are united by culture, tradition, and loving glances, their connection deepening slowly but fiercely. By the time Michael marries Apollonia, he seems a completely different man than the one who attended Connie’s wedding. Michael has become a true Corleone (embracing both Italian culture and mob affiliation), and his marriage to Apollonia signifies Michael’s official acceptance of this change and what it means for his future.

Michael catches Apollonia from a fall, touching her—albeit only for a moment—for the very first time in their relationship

When Michael marries Apollonia, he is wedding himself not just to her, but to Sicily and his father’s values. He is also rejecting Kay and the American way: due to the chain of events prompted by the attempt on his father’s life, Michael is on the road to becoming the new Don, and he will need support from a suitable wife. Though the love between Michael and Apollonia is portrayed as gentle, patient, and true, Apollonia is certainly attractive to a future mafioso not just for her kindness and beauty, but for her subservience. Where Kay is white, nosy, and modern, Apollonia is Italian, submissive, and traditional.

Michael’s pre-Sicily relationship with Kay spoke to his rebellion against the “family business,” and when he trades Kay in for a more obedient model, Michael is no longer rebelling against, but rather fully embracing, his father’s lifestyle. He takes part in an Old-World style wedding, far more traditional than Connie’s, to shed the vestiges of his American ways and become a true Sicilian. By marrying Apollonia, Michael accepts the Corleone name, and everything that comes with it.

Julia Reilly is a junior (Cal ’19) studying film and creative writing. On campus, Julia acts in Berkeley’s Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies Department and in plays put on by the 100% student-run Barestage Company. A vintage and kitsch enthusiast, Julia runs a fashion-focused Instagram blog, @juliamaejuicebox.

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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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