Storytelling, Structure, and The Godfather

First, a note: I’m sorry this one took me so long to post. I had WAY too much to say. Believe it or not, this is the edited version.

So first off let’s figure out what we mean by structure. At first I was going to make an analogy between structure and a story’s bones, but on second thought, I’ve decided that it’s probably more accurate to think of structure — at least the way I’m going to talk about it — as also including the tendons in a story’s anatomy. It’s more than plot, after all, it’s also the escalation of tension, the sequence and manner of revelations, the turning points that drive the action. It’s the way the individual plot points hang together, the way the acts build on each other.

The better the storytelling, the harder it is to extricate structure from character and world. Writing about The Godfather proved a lot more difficult than I expected for this very reason. The film isn’t about a single character’s journey so much as it is about a huge shift in all the characters’ world. It’s about family and time and culture and choices and consequences. It’s about a father’s legacy. It’s about a regime change. One of the many reasons the structure of the film is so brilliant is because all of these elements are layered into the 27min opening sequence. The entirety of the rest of the film flows out of that infamous wedding scene.

As I talk about the way the story is told, I’m going to summarize the story WITH SPOILERS. You’ve been warned.

It’s Sicilian tradition that no man can refuse a favor on his daughter’s wedding day. Don Vito Corleone, known to his friends as the Godfather, hears a number of petitioners amidst the festivities celebrating his daughter Connie’s marriage to Carlo. The Corleone family consists of the Don, his wife, his daughter Connie, and sons Santino (Sonny), Fredo, and Michael, as well as adopted son Tom Hagan, now the family lawyer. Michael, a war hero, brings his American girlfriend, Kay, to the wedding. He tells her that his family is mafia, but he himself is not. After the wedding, we see Tom Hagan carrying out one of the favors on Vito’s behalf, and we learn that Don Corleone’s power extends even to LA.

The wedding and LA sequences establish the world within the film (film scholars call this the diegesis). They introduce us to all the players and let us get to know the Corleones at the pinnacle of their family life. The length of time we spend at the wedding tells us as viewers that this film is, at its heart, about family and legacy, so that later, when bullets start flying, we know that the resolution of the war is not the point. It’s because of this glimpse of the family unified and happy that the rest of the movie has the weight of tragedy even though the Corleones nominally triumph.

Soon after the wedding, the Godfather meets with Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo, an up-and-coming drug dealer with ties to the Tattaglias, another mafia family. The Turk and his partners want to make a deal for the Corleones to provide political protection for their heroin business. Though Sonny and Tom are intrigued by the business possibilities, the Don is reluctant to get into narcotics and turns down The Turk’s proposal. The Don orders one of his top men to gather information on The Turk’s operation. Soon after, The Turk and Bruno Tattaglia arrange to gun down the Don in the street. They kidnap Tom and instruct him to take a message to Sonny. They want the deal they proposed to the Don to go through, and they believe that Sonny and Tom can make that happen now that the Don is gone. However, the assassins missed, and the Don is still alive. Everyone on both sides waits to see if the Don will pull through.

The turning point that really sets the action in motion is the Don’s meeting with The Turk. Sonny’s thoughtless disagreement with his father in front of The Turk gives the impression that Sonny would go for the deal if Vito weren’t around. Now perhaps the assassinations would have gone forward regardless, but it’s this perception of a policy disagreement between father and son that informs the deal The Turk and Bruno propose after the hits. They think that Sonny is the one to worry about because he’s heir to the family business. They don’t understand the unspoken truth of the Corleone family: that Michael, the civilian outsider, is the Don’s true heir. The circumstances of their misunderstanding only highlight the reasons why Sonny isn’t meant to be the head of the family longterm. So here we’ve got character revelation coupled with theme in a way that advances the plot and heightens the emotional tension. Have I overused the word brilliant, yet? If not, then I probably will soon because this kind of layering is BRILLIANT amazing.

The Tattaglias and the Turk attempt to kill the Don in the hospital. Michael discovers the plot in time and saves his father’s life, but Sonny is so furious at this second attack that he retaliates and has Bruno Tattaglia killed. As the two families hurtle towards war, The Turk makes one last attempt to get his deal. He requests a meeting with Michael, who, as a civilian, is seen as a somewhat neutral party. Seeing no other way to protect his father, Michael assassinates The Turk and his bodyguard, a corrupt police captain. Michael flees to Sicily, and the Corleones and the Tattaglias go to war.

We’ve got three big turning points here in the legacy department. The first is when Michael intervenes at the hospital to save his father’s life. The second is when he proposes that he should be the one to take out The Turk. The third is when he actually pulls the trigger and completes the hit. This sequence is so intense it could be a mini-movie in and of itself. In the meeting, for example, Michael and The Turk speak Italian, and subtitles appear at the bottom of the screen. After Michael retrieves his weapon, however, the subtitles disappear. From that point on, all our attention is on Michael’s body language. Words no longer matter. The tension is unbearable. Michael’s eyes communicate terror, doubt, determination — and then he pulls the trigger. This act begins by revealing Michael as the heir to Vito’s dreams, then transforms him into the heir to Vito’s reality. It’s the most formal act in the film and my favorite.

While in Sicily, Michael falls in love with and marries an Italian girl. Back at home, Sonny and Tom attempt to hold the family together. They make a deal to send Fredo to safety in Vegas. Sonny gets drawn into Connie’s escalating marital problems. Upon learning of a particularly violent incident, Sonny runs out of the house unguarded in order to go to his sister’s side. He is ambushed and killed on the way. Soon after, Michael’s young wife is killed in a car bombing meant for him. Unwilling to risk his remaining children, the recovered Don Vito negotiates a truce with the Tattaglias so that Michael may return. During the negotiations, the Don realizes that the Tattaglias have been a tool of Barzini, another mafioso, all along.

The intercuts between Sicily and New York don’t just tell the story of the war, they also underscore the fragmentation of the family in Vito’s absence. Sonny’s hot-headedness, Tom’s ineffectuality, and Connie’s self-absorption interact to lead to Sonny’s death. Fredo’s weakness leads to his exile. Michael’s cool-headed ruthlessness transforms him from civilian to assassin.

There’s a subtle doubling that occurs when Michael’s wife is killed. The bombing happens almost immediately after Michael learns that Sonny is dead. We don’t know at this point that Sonny was betrayed, but we do know that Michael was. One of Michael’s guards and companions throughout the Sicily sequences is responsible for setting the car bomb. The close timing of the two deaths links them at the time and foreshadows later revelations.

At least a year passes, and Michael reconciles with and proposes to his American girlfriend Kay. With Sonny gone and the Godfather retired, Michael becomes head of the family. He promises Kay that the family business will be completely legit within five years. Guided by his father, Michael bides his time, lulling his enemies into a state of overconfidence and some of his allies into a state of worry as the Corleone family plans a wholesale move to Las Vegas. Don Corleone passes away before the move, but not before warning Michael that one of their people is a traitor. When one of the Corleone capos approaches Michael at the funeral to set up a meeting with Barzini, Michael knows he’s found the turncoat.

Michael agrees to become godfather to Connie and Carlo’s youngest child. On the day of the christening, which is also the date of his proposed meeting with Barzini, Michael orders a series of assassinations and takes out the traitor, the Corleones’ opposition in Vegas, and the other four New York dons, including Barzini. Afterwards, Michael meets with Carlo. Michael promises Carlo absolution and exile if Carlo will confess the name of the person who asked him to set up Sonny to be killed. Carlo says it was Barzini. Stone-faced, Michael goes back on his promise and has one of his men garotte Carlo, who has just unwittingly confirmed what many in the family have long suspected — that he set Sonny up to be ambushed.

In contrast to our glimpse of Tom and Vito’s grief over Sonny, we barely saw Michael’s grief over his wife. Michael’s lack of overt emotionality did not, however, mean that he’d forgiven or forgotten anything. Instead, the close of the war set up the final act of the film. The revelation that Carlo intentionally beat his wife in order to draw Sonny out into the ambush closes out the doubling between the deaths of Sonny and Michael’s first wife. The delay between the deaths and Michael’s vengeance adds to the emotional weight of this final sequence, as does the third betrayal. The moment when Michael becomes godfather to his sister’s child is the moment when he both claims and subverts his father’s legacy. Without the earlier doubling between Sonny and Apollonia’s deaths (Apollonia being Michael’s first wife), Michael’s execution of all his most powerful enemies might be read as a pragmatic political move. However, the final scene with Carlo is intensely personal, and it ties this series of executions to all the emotions we haven’t seen Michael show. It transforms them from good politics into revenge served cold.

Later that day, the family’s things are in the process of being packed for shipment to Vegas. Connie rushes in, screaming for Michael. She accuses him of killing Carlo without care for what that would mean for her. When Michael tries to comfort her, she breaks away screaming and crying some more. Kay witnesses the confrontation and Connie’s accusations, and when Connie leaves, Kay asks Michael if any of the accusations are true. Faced with her persistence, Michael tells her he will allow her to ask him about his business this one time only. She asks again, and he says no. Kay gasps in relief, and the two embrace.

Kay leaves the room, but she turns and looks back at him in his office. Men surround him. A capo kisses his hand and calls him Don Corleone. Kay’s face says she knows he lied.

NOTE: I’ve added a bit to the following for clarification purposes. The new bits are underlined so you can find them easily.

One of the reasons I picked The Godfather for this exercise is that it’s so much richer than you’d think if you just nailed its structure down into acts in the traditional sense. From that perspective, I tend to think of it as Act One: Before the Fall (everything up until Vito turns down The Turk); Act Two: Michael’s Choice (up through Michael’s assassination of The Turk); Act Three: The War (up through the meeting of the five Dons); Act Four: Michael’s Revenge (up through the death of Carlo); Act Five: Michael lies to Kay (the denouement). The first and last acts both focus on the relationship of Don Corleone to his family and his people. The second and fourth acts focus on Michael’s pivotal choices. The middle third bridges the gap. It’s quite elegant, really.

But as we’ve seen, The Godfather is more than that. It’s not just a coming-of-age story — Michael Corleone becomes a ruthless crime boss — it’s also a tragedy. The heart of the film is with steady and loyal Vito, not with the increasingly cold Michael, and as events unfold, it becomes apparent that we are watching the death of Vito’s dream. At the beginning of the film, the Corleones are united. At the end, Michael stands alone, feared and distrusted by his family most of all. The Corleone family triumphs over its enemies, but the viewer, like Vito, is left disquieted and saddened by the cost of that victory.

And this is why I wanted to talk about structure as more than just plot. It’s the conflict between Vito’s dreams and his children’s actions that lends tension to the film. Yes, eventually the focal point is Michael, but Sonny and Fredo and Connie are each just as big a disappointment in their own way. Arguably, only Tom is faithful to the Don’s legacy, but Tom isn’t up to the task of saving the Corleones from themselves, which is perhaps its own disappointment.

Before signing off, I want to look at the opening sequence more closely to really get at the brilliance of the sequence of revelations. The film opens at the high point in Vito’s family life. Connie is getting married; Sonny and Tom are learning to take over the family business; and Michael has come home a war hero. Fredo is a fool, but at least he isn’t getting into any trouble. Given the number of wedding day petitioners, the Corleone family’s power and influence seems assured. The future looks bright.

The first clue to the film’s core conflict comes when Vito insists on holding off taking the family photos until Michael arrives. The fact that Michael is this late for the wedding establishes a distance between this son and the rest of the family. The lack of rancor in Vito’s voice or manner indicates that this distance is in some way expected or desirable. Vito has already shown that respect is vitally important to him during the opening scene with the undertaker, so why isn’t he angry at Michael’s lateness? There’s a mystery here that only deepens when Michael eventually shows up with his American girlfriend, Kay.

No one questions Kay’s presence, though she is one of the only non-Sicilians, other than Tom Hagan, at the wedding. Then, when Kay questions Michael about his father’s business, he tells her that his family is mafia, but he is not. So now we’ve got a youngest son who’s late to his sister’s wedding, brings a non-Sicilian date, outs the family business, and rejects his place in it — but there’s no hint of rebellion in his attitude towards his family. He’s distant, but not ashamed. The rest of the family, especially his father, is obviously incredibly proud of him. Gradually, we come to realize that for whatever reason, Michael is special. Michael is Vito Corleone’s shining hope.

Only later, after the unsuccessful hit on Vito, do we find out what everyone else already knows: that Michael is kept out of the family business by Vito’s express command. Tom, in particular, frequently reminds the others that Michael is a civilian, to be kept safe and protected. And this is what I mean when I say that the way tension is layered into this film is brilliant: the mystery of Michael is resolved only to set up the fact that his civilian status is about to be violated. We get clear on the fact that Michael is a civilian right before he goes to visit his father in the hospital. When Michael is confronted with his father’s vulnerability in the hospital and acts to save him, he gets punched in the fact by the corrupt police captain who’s helping The Turk. The police captain violates Michael’s civilian status and threatens to arrest him on false charges. So now we have Michael pledging to protect his father and getting treated as a combatant by those who should know better. The game has changed. The old rules no longer apply. And we had only just figured out what they were!

The second to last act functions similarly. We are presented with a new Mystery of Michael which is paid off with Carlo’s death and Kay’s distrust. The first time it happens, we learn that Michael can be counted on by his family. The second time, we learn that he can’t. We get it. We get why he does what he does, why he becomes who he becomes, but like Vito, we mourn.

So there we go. I could say more about The Godfather. I can ALWAYS say more about The Godfather, but this post is already triple the length I intended. Please add your own thoughts in the comments. I promise to get the next review up in a much more timely manner!

Tagged as: storytelling through film, Summer Film Series, the godfather