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Francis Ford Coppola

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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The Murder of Luca Brasi: The Curiously Moving Death of a Henchman

in Anatomy of a Scene/Character Studies
Luca Brasi getting strangled, his eyes vacant and his tongue poking his right cheek

By Jenna Allen

The scene begins with the camera positioned at a low angle, hovering just above ground level. We are transported into a setting never before seen, one that is fashionable, well-decorated, Art Deco-themed, and visually intriguing. It is a mere hallway but spacious, a series of platforms and stairs—pristine, white, heavily mirrored, gold-accented, and possessing an opulence that plainly states “luxury.”

We see many reflections of Luca Brasi in this Art Deco, heavily mirrored luxurious hallway—but we feel there’s one essential Luca

We see the lone figure of Luca, whose back faces the camera, dressed in all black and ascending the stairs. His garments are dark-toned, contrasting with the surge of brightness that is the background. His looming stature fills up almost the entirety of vertical space from ground to ceiling, as he ascends with a casual, confident gait. He is out of place—a dark, lonely figure situated among a landscape of brilliant white. When he reaches the top he removes his coat and, if we were unsure before about the identity of the tall figure, the wide profile allows us to see him clearly now: it’s Luca Brasi, Don Corleone’s most valued henchman.

The surrounding mirrors display his dark demeanor—his sober, calm professionalism—in multiple dimensions, but there seems to be one essential Luca. He is, indeed, a professional. He is a man sent out on a mission—a mission by Don Corleone.

There is something ironic about Luca’s presence here, and it is not simply his appearance. From the previous scene, we already know that Luca is to prepare the bait, to feign discontent with the Corleone family, and to ultimately test the waters for this newly emerging character, Sollozzo. Luca’s loyalty is executed in the form of a betrayal—one that is acted, of course. Thus, when Luca first steps foot into the club, with the intention to carry out the Don’s plan, a silent tension smothers the air. This is all a test.

It is a test for Sollozzo—in the most obvious sense, we want to know if he can be trusted—but more so it is a test for Luca, our principal interest in this scene. We are here directed to see how Luca will fare, this loyal, eagerly-obliging man who has been thrust into the Don’s dirty work. We cannot help having some stored attachment for this man, who first endears himself to us at the wedding with his poorly performed thank you to the Don. Thus, when Luca dies on an errand of loyalty, we register heavy tremors of shock. A sense of loss, keyed to the corruption of Sollozzo and Tattaglia, begins to color The Godfather, often exploding upon us in the most sudden and savage of ways..

Though the impact of Luca’s death scene has much to do with surprise, it also has deeper, more complex roots. Our emotional response to Luca’s death hinges on what we’ve come to know about him: at this point in our experience of the film, he is not just some brawny, dispensable crony, but rather an actualized, round character.  In Puzo’s novel, Luca Brasi’s loyalty to Don Corleone is established through a long history of violence—murders committed on Corleone’s behalf. (Annotated Godfather, 75) In the film, Brasi is a much-abbreviated version of this ruthless killer, but he is fleshed out just enough, and with singular idiosyncrasies, to draw our attachment.

* * *

First impression-wise, it is difficult for the viewer to focus on any aspect of Brasi other than his gigantism. He possesses all the properties of a menacing assassin whose sheer bulk and size instantly disclose his raw strength. Kay echoes this notion at the wedding, remarking to Michael in a low tone, “See that scary guy over there?” The actor who fills this “scary guy” role is 6’6” Lenny Montana, an ex-wrestler who had been known by the moniker “The Zebra Kid” and was the World Champion at one point. (Annotated Godfather, 37) Such a figure inadvertently dwarfs all the wedding guests around him.

Luca, the “scary guy,” practicing and fumbling his lines

But the longer the camera focuses upon Brasi, the more we see of his contrasting, almost endearing interiority. The “big scary man” who is talking to himself is actually frozen in deep concentration, fumbling and repeating the same words over and over again. He strains himself in the midst of merriment. Everyone around him is alight with joy and then there is Brasi, mumbling to himself, a heap of nerves. There is something sweet about a man who does not match the fear he inspires—who is quickly deemed the ‘scary’ guy while possessing a slightly softer, grateful side within.

The death of Brasi is much more than transactional—not “strictly business,” to use a phrase from the film. It is emotionally affecting.

By suppressing Puzo’s version of Brasi, who is marred by a more unforgivable past, Coppola gives us a Brasi who is known only by his loyalty. This Brasi exhausts himself with perfecting a memorized speech of gratitude, and even gives money afterward for the bridal purse of the Don’s daughter. Yes, he kills for Don Corleone, but he also receives an invitation to an exclusive family wedding; we come to know him purely through this bond to Don Corleone. His death, then, is much more than transactional – not “strictly business,” to use a phrase from the film. It is emotionally affecting —the poignant consequence of his “pledge [of] never ending loyalty.”

***

At the start of the scene that leads to his death, we already know what Luca Brasi really is. He is a fabricated defector who must, for now, bury his unshakable allegiance to Corleone. When he steps into this lavish place of meeting, we as viewers are thrust into a moment of waiting, a moment of pressing uncertainty. The gold ornamentation, the trendy aesthetics, the overall unspoiled feel—burgundy walls, golden dim lights, everything shrouded in shadow: all these elements foster a mellow ambiance. Surely, no violence can erupt in a place as sedate and sophisticated as this? And even if it does, we have faith in the reliable, tried-and-true Brasi.

When we meet the figures of Bruno Tattaglia and Virgil Sollozzo inside, there is something about them that blends into this cool, fashionable setting. This is the Italian-American Mafia—sleek entrepreneurs, cleverly veiled criminals—and this is where they meet, as businesspeople accustomed to a tableau of luxury. Tattaglia immediately sets the tone, introducing himself as if he were all smiles and good cheer: “Luca! I’m Bruno Tattaglia.” He effortlessly assumes a businessman’s air of affability, embodying a type of bold cordiality that is difficult to second-guess.

“I know.” Brasi’s curtness marks a break with the manufactured pleasantries. Brasi, in fact, seems incongruously situated here from the start. The inaptness of the meeting is magnified by his unrelenting stoniness.

Meanwhile the camera angle captures the scene from the characters’ torsos up, panning back and forth frequently, with equal attention capturing each expression. Tattaglia maintains an easy casual aura, standing directly under a cascade of light, smiling as he speaks, professional and almost jovial. When Sollozzo enters, taking his place beside Bruno, he mimics this air of friendliness.

The opposing sides are clear contrasts in this way. Sollozzo, chatty and encouraging, leads the conversation with a piercing, alert gaze. He dresses warmly, in welcoming beige and camel-colored tones—all in all, appearing as a lighter flash of color against Luca, who is on the opposite side, darkly attired, stoic and shadowed, with a reserved nature that seems unwittingly out of place.

As with many scenes in The Godfather, we could not possibly have guessed the coming action. In a brief, preceding scene, Brasi, in preparation, dons a bullet-proof vest while he loads his gun. “The audience is probably waiting for the vest to come into play,” Coppola writes in his notebook. “This is a beautiful piece of misdirection.” (Annotated Godfather, 75)

The business pauses for a moment, as Brasi, thinking the ‘deal’ over, takes out a cigarette. Then the quiet, steady hum of this scene is shattered in an instant. With swift movements and efficient teamwork, the violence occurs almost too quickly to even process. Tattaglia drops his amiable facade, and the camera zooms in as he grabs firmly onto Brasi’s arm. Next, a knife plunges into the frame and lands with a tell-tale thud into Brasi’s restrained hand.

We hear a simultaneous scream, made more unsettling by its deepness, and by our awareness that it comes from a grown man who cannot suppress the anguish of his pain. And just like that, without warning, we are ejected at once from the scene’s mellow, easygoing tempo to one of fast-paced horror. By the time the garrote is placed around Brasi’s throat by an unknown assailant, we want Luca to overpower him, to use brute strength or even his gun to turn the outcome around. Ultimately, we just want his suffering to stop.

But there is no easy escape. Instead of ceasing, Brasi’s strangulation is extended as long as possible. In this striking, visually repulsive moment, we are forced to endure his death in its entirety. Luca’s gasps become softer. His face becomes tinged with a purple, bruised color. His eyes are pushed out of their sockets and become two vacant bulges as his tongue sticks unnaturally outside his mouth. In preproduction, Coppola’s special effects memo reads, “This is probably the most difficult effect in the movie.” Luca’s dying moments here are backed by sufficient research to capture all the unpleasant physiological changes that occur realistically with strangulation. (Annotated Godfather, 76) This scene holds nothing back. Once the choking Brasi ripens to the complexion of a grape, and his limp figure starts to slip under the table, we have to accept the imminence of his death.

Yet Luca’s drawn-out suffering and the morbidly jarring violence of this scene are not inserted in the film simply for the sake of violence, simply to titillate or transfix the viewer. Brasi’s suffering is key to the film’s greater significance, as this short scene marks a monumental turning point within it. From his death alone, The Godfather forges its overarching conflict and defines the ensuing direction of the plot. It takes one scene to dramatically color Sollozzo and Tattaglia as merciless villains.

The murder of Luca Brasi colors Sollozzo and Tattaglia as merciless villains, and seeds feelings of shock, disgust, betrayal, and sadness—out of which emerges the heightened question, “What next?”

The scene seeds, within the audience, feelings of shock, disgust, betrayal, and sadness—out of which emerges a heightened wonder of ‘What next?’ Moreover, Luca’s eventual death does not mean an end to the violence; it is, in fact, the jump starter for it. Brasi’s death, then, opens onto many forms of loss—the loss of a trusted friend, the loss of peace among the Five Families, and all the human losses that we anticipate will arrive with the unprecedented storm that is about reach the Corleones.

Jenna Allen (’18) is a Cal undergrad working on her B.A. in English Literature.
Works Cited

Jenny M. Jones, The Annotated Godfather (New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007).

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Men of the House: Modes of Masculinity in The Godfather

in Character Studies

By Janani Hariharan

In The Godfather, director Francis Ford Coppola introduces the lead character Michael Corleone in the most curious of ways: almost thirteen minutes after the film has begun, Michael walks into his sister’s extravagant wedding, wearing a full Marines Corps uniform with a non-Italian-American woman on his arm.

This choice on Michael’s part, and on the part of Coppola, signals how The Godfather — though produced in the early 1970s — is a film that reflects on the mid-1940s, a time when masculinity was being redefined in the wake of the Second World War. Historian Corinna Peniston-Bird argues that during the war, “opportunities for contraction, transformation and resistance were limited. Men did not have a choice whether to confirm or reject hegemonic [military] masculinity.” But what happened once the war ended, when men had to use their bodies outside of war? What happened when decorated war heroes like Michael had to come home and redefine their manhood without wartime’s existing framework?

This problem is tackled in The Godfather through Michael but extends to every man in his family. The Godfather dramatizes this crisis of masculinity through male characters’ interactions with other men. While Vito uses restrained movements to exert influence, Sonny’s big, brash, impulsive actions take up space. Michael, meanwhile, takes a page out of both their books, using his intelligence and audacity to command authority. Insofar as the film equates masculinity with power, these important male characters in the film use their bodies in different ways to secure their patriarchal positions at the head of the family.

***

Power expressed in a small gesture: Vito signals for a drink for Bonasera

Vito Corleone controls his movements impeccably, using his body in only the most understated of ways to convey a sense of omnipotent authority over other men. This becomes evident as soon as the movie begins: the first time we as viewers lay eyes on any part of Vito, the camera faces Bonasera from over Vito’s shoulder. Bonasera, sitting on the other side of Vito’s desk, begins to sob at the plight of his daughter’s suffering. We see not a commanding body towering over Bonasera but an out-of-focus hand in the foreground, gesturing to a capo to bring Bonasera a drink in consolation, which he gratefully accepts.

Vito with the kitten: calculated gentleness

With just the use of one out-of-focus hand, the film situates Vito’s authority in methodical action and institutional relevance. His is a masculinity characterized by the deference and obedience of other powerful men — a masculinity that doesn’t need to exert power actively because the institution he has built on his own terms does it for him. Soon after the camera cuts to face Vito, we see him petting a small cat on his lap as he discusses matters of life or death with Bonasera. The cat, sprawled on his lap, luxuriates in his attention and infuses a playful energy into an otherwise dark and brooding room. Past critics have pointed to the cat as representative of hidden claws under Vito’s subdued façade. To me, however, a subtler detail stands out, particularly when Bonasera makes the grave mistake of asking Vito, “How much shall I pay you?” Vito immediately looks up at him from the corner of his eyes, affronted, and stops playing with the cat. He puts the cat on the table as if to mean serious business, stands up, and calmly confronts Bonasera about his infraction: “Bonasera, Bonasera. What have I done to make you treat me so disrespectfully?”

Playtime is over: the Don dispenses with the kitten

The cat in Vito’s hands is a symbol of the judicious way in which he wields power: he plays with the cat and gives it what it wants until he decides playtime is over. The Don giveth, and the Don taketh away, so to speak. These first few scenes illustrate what I would call Vito’s calculated gentleness: his body language is characterized by restraint, which highlights the authority he draws from simply being the head of the family and being revered and feared by so many.

Tenderness without calculation: the Don with his grandson

Of course, Vito’s authority changes after he steps down from his position as the copo dei capi. Vito becomes more of a family man, indulging in wine and time with his grandchildren. In an uncharacteristically tender moment toward the end of the film, we see Vito playing with his grandson in the garden. He presses an orange peel against his teeth to scare the child and lets him spray him with a water gun as they run around through the orange plants.

Poignantly, this is when his body gives out and he passes away. “I spend my life trying not to be careless,” Vito had admitted to Michael just moments before the film cuts to the garden scene. You would think that being a Mafioso is more life-threatening than being a grandfather, so it seems particularly biting that during his most unprotected moment in the film, he dies. Vito’s masculinity and power rest on the foundation of the institution he has built; when he finally moves without formal restraint, his vulnerability is not allowed to last. Within the scope of being a being a don, tenderness — when it’s not calculated — becomes weakness.

***

Reckless self-indulgence: Sonny with the bridesmaid

This weakness becomes apparent after an attempt is made on Vito’s life by a rival family, and the film offers up his oldest son, Sonny, as a solution to this newly created vacuum of power. But if Vito spends his life trying not to be careless, Sonny is a man who spends his life doing the complete opposite. Brash and impulsive, Sonny wields his body in intensely physical, violent ways; he asserts a hypermasculinity in relation to those around him, men and women alike. During Connie’s wedding, Sonny flirts with the maid of honor as his wife Sandra sits at another table. Soon after, we see Sonny and the bridesmaid in a bathroom having rough sex up against a door. Tom Hagen goes looking for him at Vito’s request and knocks on the door. “Sonny, are you in there? … the old man wants to see you,” Tom calls from the outside. “Yeah, one minute,” Sonny responds, before continuing with his pursuit.

If Vito maintains his masculinity through restraint in order to keep the family in power, Sonny asserts his through reckless self-indulgence, prioritizing his own needs and desires over those of the family. A particularly telling moment later on in the film illustrates this difference of worldview between father and son. In a meeting about the possible growth of the drug trade in their area, Vito and Sonny learn from a fellow Mafioso that the Tattaglia family would be willing to work together to ensure the Corleone family’s security. Sonny, immediately interested, butts into the conversation: “You’re telling me that the Tattaglias would guarantee our invest—” But Vito does not allow him to finish. “Wait a minute,” Vito tells Sonny, as he looks back at him, irked and disappointed, and proceeds to elegantly divert the conversation away from the infraction.

“Santino, what’s the matter with you?”

After the meeting ends, Vito tells Sonny to stay behind and reproaches him: “Santino … what’s the matter with you? I think your brain is going soft from all that comedy you’re playing with that young girl. Never tell anybody outside the family what you’re thinking again.” Sonny, like a disobedient child who refuses to listen, looks away and rolls his eyes at the scolding. Through this interaction, we see that Sonny’s intelligence and competence as a man and a leader is frustrated by his impulsive desire to disobey the configuration of norms and codes as set by Vito. His refusal to practice restraint and judiciousness in making decisions upsets Vito, and it is ultimately what leads to his downfall.

Sonny, exacting vengeance on Carlo

Yet Sonny loves his family as fiercely as he indulges in his own whims and fancies — and as the film progresses, these two passions create a recipe for disaster. Sonny finds his sister Connie with bruises all over her face, ostensibly because she had been abused by her husband Carlo. “Sonny, please don’t do anything. Please don’t do anything,” Connie pleads, recognizing where Sonny’s mind would immediately go. “What am I going to do? Make that baby an orphan before he’s born?” Sonny says as he holds her. In the scene that immediately follows, Sonny jumps out of a car with a baseball bat and chases Carlo down. “If you touch my sister again, I’ll kill you,” Sonny says through gritted teeth, after having beaten him to a pulp.

The fruit of vengeance: Sonny’s death

While it may seem like a justified retribution — a black eye for a black eye — it is this hotheadedness that triggers Sonny’s downfall. After another violent altercation between Connie and Carlo, Sonny receives a call from Connie. “You wait right there,” he says, and jumps into a car and drives off angrily, despite pleas from Tom to stop or at least slow down. “Go after him, go on!” Tom tells other members of the family, and they get into a car to follow him. Sonny ultimately drives off to his demise as he is ambushed at a tollbooth by machine gunfire, in a set-up orchestrated by enemies of the family with the help of Carlo.

If Sonny had not been so quick to attack Carlo after the first incident, he may have never made an enemy out of Carlo and would not have met such a gruesome and sudden death. Minutes after the assailants drive away, Tom’s men arrive at the scene only to find Sonny lying dead in the middle of the road. At the very least, if Sonny had waited for others to join him before he drove away to confront Carlo, he would have had some form of reinforcement during the ambush. Unlike Vito, Sonny is neither calculated nor gentle, relying on brutish force and carnal instinct to use his body and exert power. His masculinity ultimately proves to be an unfeasible solution to the vacuum of power in the wake of Vito’s attack.

***

Sonny’s response to a threat: artless aggression

Sonny’s death leaves his younger brother, Michael, as the most viable option to take the helm of the Corleone family. If Vito’s quiet authority and Sonny’s careless impulsiveness occupy opposite ends of the spectrum of masculinity presented in the film, Michael’s masculinity lies squarely in the middle. He is intelligent and collected but unforgiving: he has the tact of his father and the audacity of his brother. A telling difference between Sonny’s and Michael’s body language is highlighted during the two brothers’ meeting with Clemenza, Tom, and Tessio, as the five discuss how to handle Sollozzo’s request to discuss a truce. Sonny unsurprisingly raises his voice at the idea of Sollozzo’s proposition, pacing the room aggressively and yelling at those who suggest hearing Sollozzo out. “No more meetings, no more discussions, no more Sollozzo tricks,” Sonny yells, towering over Tom. “Do me a favor, Tom, no more advice on how to patch things up. Just help me win.” Michael, on the other hand, sits stoically on a plush chair, watching the scene unfold. After a brief moment of silence, Michael enters into the conversation. “We can’t wait,” he says calmly, remaining seated. “I don’t care what Sollozzo says about a deal, he’s going to kill Pop. That’s it.”

Michael’s response to the same threat: a methodical plan of action

Interestingly, Sonny and Michael want the same thing: they both think it’s wiser to strike now rather than give Sollozzo the benefit of the doubt. This is indicative of their potential to both be sound leaders. However, what Sonny articulates via artless aggression, Michael expresses in a methodical plan of action. “They want to have a meeting with me, right? … Let’s set the meeting,” Michael says, as he goes on to detail how they will orchestrate the ambush and dodge any possible retaliation.

We might see both Vito and Michael as self-made men — or self-made Dons — though they take different routes to that same destination. While Vito built the institution of the Corleone family from the ground-up, Michael comes of age over the course of the film and makes himself into a man by virtue of avenging an attempt on his father’s life. We later see that Michael successfully carries out the plan for the Corleone family, unflinchingly putting bullets in Sollozzo’s and Captain McCluskey’s heads and ending the threat to this father’s life. Insofar as Vito possesses a calculated gentleness and Sonny does not, Michael learns from their shortcomings to realize a calculated ruthlessness. He is a man who does not strike unless it is absolutely necessary — but does not hesitate to get his hands dirty when he must.

Calculated ruthlessness: Michael with Carlo

Michael’s newfound, calculated ruthlessness is powerfully evoked in the movie’s bloody climax, in which the camera cuts between the baptism of his godson and the assassinations of his rivals. But Michael’s metamorphosis is even more strikingly dramatized in a scene soon after, when Michael confronts Carlo about his complicity in Sonny’s murder. “Sit down,” he tells Carlo, as he pulls up a chair and takes a seat next to him. He pats Carlo on the shoulder and calmly reassures him: “Don’t be afraid. … Do you think I’d make my sister a widow?” Michael tells Carlo that he will have to leave for Las Vegas and hands him a plane ticket. “Only don’t tell me you’re innocent because it insults my intelligence. … Now, who approached you?” Michael asks. When Carlo finally admits to his involvement, Michael directs him to a car that is supposed to take him to an airport. Clemenza, sitting in the backseat, garrotes Carlo to his death, as Michael watches from the outside.

Michael, in the vicinity of violence: the murder of Carlo

For all the talk that we hear of Vito “taking care of business” toward the beginning of the film, we never once see him personally enact violence or be in the vicinity of it. Michael, on the other hand, both tactfully extracts a confession and also watches his brother-in-law lose his life at his own order, without so much as a flinch. The film establishes Michael’s masculinity relationally through the men that came before him: he learns from his father’s distaste for violence and his brother’s carelessness to become a true, successful copo dei capi of the Corlene family.

Michael’s consolidation of power proves to be a fitting end to the first installment of The Godfather trilogy, which is primarily interested in charting the jostle for power between and within families to establish a new socio-political hierarchy within the organized crime circuit in mid-1940s America. In the post-war context, men grappled with how to express their masculinity and assert their dominance outside the battlefield.

The film encapsulates this struggle by moving through two different modes of masculinity — through Vito and Sonny — before settling on the only viable option in Michael, whose calculated ruthlessness secures the survival and prosperity of the family. The other Dons have been vanquished, and there are no other characters within the family who might take its helm: the film underscores how Fredo’s feebleness and lack of intelligence and Tom’s non-Sicilian heritage effectively take them out of consideration for the leadership of the family, while the women of the film are shut out of that form of power entirely. Michael stands alone, unchallenged — his character having “successfully” resolved the film’s complex exploration of the relationship between gender and power in the post-war era.

Janani Hariharan (Cal ’18) is a senior studying Business Administration and English. She may have been much too young when she first watched The Godfather twelve years ago, but she is using this project to help her recover as she continues to explore the implications of gender and its performance in her favorite works.
Work Cited

Linsey Robb and Juliette Pattinson, Men, Masculinities and Male Culture in the Second World War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

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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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The Story Behind This Site: Or, Can a Lecture Course Also Be a Publication Workshop?

in About This Site

By Scott Saul

For educators who may wish to 'try this at home,' I've written this step-by-step, nuts-and-bolts account of how this project was generated and realized. — SS

This website exists because, in the fall of 2017, I read the following sentences from Cathy Davidson’s The New Education, a book-length manifesto for rethinking how universities teach their students: “Students do not do particularly well writing papers for the sake of writing papers,” Davidson suggests, referring to a landmark Stanford study of how the digital landscape has altered the practice of writing and the sensibilities of younger writers. “Rather, students value writing that ‘makes something happen in the world.'” (93)

Davidson’s point aligned with my own recent experience as a teacher, and specifically as a teacher of writing. I’d started to feel a sense of diminishing returns when I simply asked students to produce what has long been the “industry standard” in English departments: the five-page essay of close analysis. At its best, this assignment allowed students to shine new light on a formerly obscure corner of a text (and prove to themselves that they were ready for the rigors of graduate study in the discipline). At its worst, this assignment felt like make-work to students — something written only for the eyes of the person grading their writing. It was inconceivable, to many, that anyone else might be interested in their thoughts on, say, Emily Dickinson or Robert Louis Stevenson or Toni Morrison. They were writing an essay because they had to, for someone who was reading it because he had to—not exactly a recipe for the production of deathless prose.

So in 2016-17, I taught two new courses for me: a creative nonfiction workshop in Cal’s English Department and an honors research seminar on the 1970s Bay Area for Cal’s American Studies Program. In both classes, the goal for the students was to create something that, after multiple revisions, would be published online — something written “for the world”. In the creative nonfiction workshop, which had twelve students, the platform was a Medium site called The Annex; individual pieces came to attract somewhere between a hundred and 9,000 views. In the research workshop, which had only eleven students, the class collaborated to create a digital history project, The Berkeley Revolution, which, upon its launch in July 2017, received favorable notice across the web and has drawn a steady stream of about 50 unique visitors a day.

I had experienced some success in turning undergrad seminars into publication workshops, but reading The New Education made me wonder: would it be possible to do something similar with a lecture course?

I had experienced some success, then, in turning undergrad seminars into publication workshops, but reading The New Education made me wonder: would it be possible to do something similar with a lecture course, and one not specifically oriented to writing? In the spring of 2018, I was set to teach a “Literature and History” lecture course on the 1970s. I decided to enlist the forty-plus students in the class in a writing experiment, and to make the course’s reader—Joshua Anderson, the Cal grad student assigned to assist with the grading—my collaborator in the editorial enterprise.

The team behind the project: Joshua Anderson, the course reader who helped students revise their essays; Kyler Ernst, the advanced undergrad who came aboard to help with editing and site design; Kristin Jones, who headed up the site design

Generating the Assignment: “Fifty Ways of Looking at The Godfather”

Good news for those who might wish to adapt this project for their own purposes but are leery of anything that smacks of technophilia: the writing assignment that generated this site bore great resemblance to the one I’d used in previous versions of my course—a “close passage analysis” assignment. (In fact, the model essay I gave students, which appears here as “Inhale/Exhale: Cigarettes and the Power of Michael Corleone,” had been written for the Fall 2016 version of the course.) The frisson, such as it was, came from the assignment’s framing. From the start, students knew that they were working together on a larger project— “Fifty Ways of Looking at The Godfather: A Collective Project in Close Film Analysis”—with their essay but one piece in a larger puzzle. I had chosen The Godfather as our point of focus because (a) it was epic, multi-dimensional, and exquisitely crafted, so could easily be parsed from 50-plus different angles; and (b) as an early-1970s artifact, it fell early in the term on the syllabus, so on a practical level we could have two months to develop the larger project.

Here’s some language from the original assignment:

The Godfather is an intricately crafted film that has little wasted motion to it: even its seemingly minor scenes, and seemingly minor characters, add to its textured portrait of the Corleone family and its ‘family business.’

Through this assignment, we will throw ourselves collectively into the project of figuring out how the many different pieces of The Godfather add up. Each one of you will take on a different aspect of the film and write an essay that—if appropriate—blends interpretation and some research into the film through reference to the two major sources on its making, The Annotated Godfather and The Godfather Notebook.

Your essay topics will draw from the list of topics posted in a google doc, though you are free to suggest additional topics of interest.

Because the essays will be published digitally, you are asked to be aware of the possibilities of the digital format. It is expected that, in your close analysis of the film, you will stitch in a number of screenshots—or possibly .gifs—as you home in on key moments in the material you’ve selected to analyze.

You should also be aware that you are writing for a larger audience. Imagine yourself explaining the workings of the film to a sophisticated but not necessarily expert reader—someone who has watched The Godfather, is aware of the basics of film technique, and wants to understand better the workings of the film. Amy Taubin’s book on Taxi Driver might give you an example of the right tone: smart, vivid, concise, light on its toes even when engaging with weighty matters. Try to write something that will be both stimulating and useful to the person reading it.

To ensure that students wrote on distinct topics—I didn’t want half the class to write on the baptism/assassination montage, as captivating as it is—I generated fifty-plus topics and created a google doc so that students could see the menu of options and claim a topic. Around seven of the forty-five students took the initiative to devise their own topics (for instance, the essays here on alcohol, body language, and color accents). I encouraged students with special areas of expertise to tackle topics that would draw on that expertise. A student with a longstanding interest in fashion took on costume design; a student who edits Cal’s music magazine, the film’s score.

The menu of options: from the google doc

A Process of Writing and Revision: From 45 Rough Drafts to 45 Final Drafts

My strong sense was that my students, as talented as they were, could write pieces on The Godfather that invited general interest only if they did what professional writers do: revise their pieces through a sustained dialogue with editors who could help them tighten their prose and put their finger on what was most compelling in it. This meant that these pieces would not be produced on the usual undergraduate timetable—submission and evaluation within a span of, say, one or two weeks. Rather, there would be a six-week recursive process of feedback and revision, with first drafts submitted in mid-March.

This focus on revision created a labor problem, since giving good, specific feedback on writing is a labor-intensive endeavor that, as far as I know, no app has managed to simulate. I crowd-sourced that labor, in part, by carving out one class day for peer workshops, with each student paired up with one other student so that they could get, and give, intensive feedback.

More significantly, I recruited Kyler Ernst, a talented undergraduate from my fall creative nonfiction workshop, to help with the fine-grained work of commenting on and line-editing the students’ essays. (This hire was supported by Cal’s Art of Writing Program, through the good offices of Professor Ramona Naddoff.) Kyler, Joshua and I divvied up the 45 rough drafts between the three of us.

Not long after we dove into reading the students’ drafts, we discovered that it made no sense to give the same sort of feedback on every draft. Some drafts were exceptionally “drafty”—unfinished, or not well-organized, or still in search of a central argument. Others were already polished to a fine degree, and could be line-edited in preparation for inclusion on the site. Still others—the majority—fell in the middle: they were coherent, but needed considerable work so that their promise might be realized.

Divvying up student drafts into different ‘buckets’: a class flow chart

The students who’d written “drafty” drafts were enjoined to meet with me, Joshua, or Kyler, and asked to turn around a second draft quickly if they wished to have their work under consideration for the final site. The other students (about 3/4 of the class) had their drafts edited through the “Track Changes” function on Microsoft Word, and then had several weeks to respond to comments and revise accordingly. Final drafts were submitted on April 20, one month after the due date of the first rough draft.

Tough Calls: From 45 Final Drafts to 17 Final Pieces

With these 45 final drafts in hand, Kyler, Joshua and myself met to determine which pieces might go forward and be further line-edited so as to appear on the site. We were happy to see how much, in general, the essays had improved: they were more focused, more sure-footed, and more sensitive in their handling of the details of the film. We were also aware that time was ticking, that the end of the semester was nigh, and that it was unfeasible for Kyler and myself (Joshua was going to be busy with the evaluation of the students’ take-home finals) to line-edit more than around fifteen essays by the end of the term.

Winnowing the pile of essays from 45 to a third of that number was not an easy task. We started by observing that despite our best efforts, some essays had repeated some of the same material, and we could make some progress by determining, say, which essay had a more nuanced take on Clemenza and his cannolis. Ultimately, too, it seemed that the students who focused on technical aspects of The Godfather—its handling of editing, its production or costume design, its camera work—were more successful at finding a fresh angle on the film. Finally, we put a strong value on the crispness of prose: a tight 1000-word essay was easier to imagine on the site than a 2000-word essay, studded with rich insights, that had some soft spots to it. We ended up choosing seventeen essays, the large majority of which I took responsibility for line-editing.

Designing the Site and Fine-Tuning Its Design

At this point our story takes a happy turn. The process of creating this site reminded me of my experience seeing an apartment building go up in my neighborhood: for years, there was little discernible progress as the foundation was laid and the scaffolding erected—and then, seemingly in the blink of an eye, there was a clean, habitable structure with doors, windows, and all the architectural trimmings. So with this site: after the two months of labor-intensive writing and re-writing, editing and line-editing, the site itself came together swiftly over a few weeks, in the form you now experience.

I was fortunate to have hired the very capable Kristin Jones, a web developer and Germanist who had earlier designed my Berkeley Revolution site, to design the site; Kristin quickly tailored the Fox WordPress Theme (cost: $59) so that it matched what we needed. Kyler—who happily also had a background in graphic design—created the header banner and the footer banner. I inputted the essays and formatted them with images, block quotes, and the like. The process was relatively frictionless.

In retrospect, it seems to me that the most difficult work behind the site involved the part that now is relatively invisible. This was the mental work that my students performed by writing and rewriting their prose, and that I and my fellow editors performed through the various tasks of line-editing—hacking away at unnecessary verbiage or making suggestions for how an argument could take on an extra edge. Notably, this is also the part of the site that teachers in the humanities tend to be extremely qualified to pull together and pull off.

Some visitors to the site may appreciate that the site is visually attractive too—and I would welcome any such appreciation. But I would underline, for any teachers who balk at creating a public-facing digital project, that the software developers of the world have risen to the challenge of developing easily-customized templates for digital publishing. These teachers should know that orchestrating the design side—the nifty sidebars and widgets, the clean lines and coordinated fonts—has been made easy. As ever, the prose’s the thing.

Scott Saul teaches in Cal’s English Department and American Studies Program. He is the author of Becoming Richard Pryor (HarperCollins, 2014) and the editor-publisher behind two digital history projects, Richard Pryor’s Peoria and The Berkeley Revolution. He welcomes comments at ssaul@berkeley.edu.

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