To the best of my recollection, Vito doesn’t threaten Roberto and he comes off as the hero in that story for saving an eldery widow from a heartless landlord who was set to evict her. And Pentangeli and his brother are both members of the mafia. The best case you’ve got is with the prostitute, but with social attitudes being what they were at the time and with herself being a criminal, she’s not a good example of a regular person. I don’t think we’re going to see eye-to-eye on this. You’ve made your case and I’ve tried ot make mine and I appreciate it, but there’s no reason to keep going back-and-forth.
He tells Roberto to ask around the neighborhood about him. That’s a veiled threat. That story line isn’t made to make him come off a hero, it’s to juxtapose how Vito uses violence (or the threat of it) to coerce people with how Michael does it (dead innocent prostitutes).
It’s never said in the movie that the brother is in the mafia. His deer-in-the-headlights look he gives Frankie suggests he is just a regular guy who has no idea what’s going on.
And if you’re actually arguing that the crime of being a prostitute legitimized her murder, even if only though the lens of 1953 or 1974 sensibilities, and that this was a deliberate choice by Coppola so that you can still sympathize with Michael afterwards, then yeah you’re right, there’s no reason to continue.
Two quibbles…set up two steps up the line or at trhe plate…there’s still going to be a collision
There are no ‘consequences of actions’ to be saved from. It’s a reasonable chance to take regardless of the outcome. That OFer who can’t hit the cutoff man has to hit it…Rosie O’Donnell has to make the most important throw of her life and Dot has to not drop the ball. Kit has already tied the game up. She’s already a hero.
As for the rest. I’ve covered it already. It’s a cowardly directing choice to make. It robs Kit of her accomplishment and makes Dot betray an entire fanbase and her entire team. Thanks for sitting out the series and then coming back to make sure the knife gets twisted. Winning and competition make not be the end all TO HER…but its not her choice to make for an entire team and fanbase. This isn’t tennis.
Especially given the director is a woman who spent an entire film showing how women can do what men do and…oh wait. Dot got some feel feels and destroyed The Peaches entire season. It doesn’t add up.
There are a lot of characters and it’s possible I’ve gotten this one confused. Wasn’t Pentangeli the dude who was going to testify before a Congressional committee, so they invited his brother to sit in the audience to remind him that he had a duty to remain silent? Code of omertá?
Prostitutes aren’t typically thought of as members of polite society. Certainly not in the 70s when the movie was made or in the decades the movie was set in. I haven’t read the original novels, but making sure we dont’ see the Corleone family sinking their claws into small business owners, intimidating witnesses, or other mob activities was a deliberate choice by either Puzo or Coppola.
I’ve always seen the murder of the prostitute as sort of a moral event horizon for Michael - it’s the first “innocent” we know him to hurt, and a sign of how degenerate the family has become.
Ok now I have an entry for the thread.
There was no deer in the headlights look. He knew exactly what was going on. He was pissed at his brother. Some people mistakenly think he was forced to be there as a threat to his life. There is no hint in the movie that is going on. It would make no sense to bring him out in public in front of congress if he was being threatened. He was exactly what was stated in the movie. A tough guy who could have had his own family in America who decided to stay behind in Sicily and was there to remind his brother to keep quiet.
I can’t find it right now but an early version of the script spelled out clearly that Vincenzo was a boss in Sicily and his presence was to tell his brother to honor the code.
Yes, that’s Pentangeli. In at least one of the earlier drafts of the script, it’s implied that the brother would have killed Frankie’s second wife and their children who were living with the brother in Italy if he testifies. So, if that were the case, I wouldn’t say he is a regular guy. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of, but none of that made it into the film.
I have a difficult time imagining even 1974 audience members who watched that scene and said, “I still have sympathy for Michael because she was just a prostitute.” I have an even harder time imagining Coppola saying, “This scene won’t do anything to adversely affect how the audience views Michael.”
But like I noted earlier, Luca Brasi does some evil shit to completely regular innocent people in the book, so since you haven’t read the book, I wonder how you can state so definitively that Puzo didn’t do what he actually did. I’ll also ask again if you’ve read that Coppola said it was a deliberate choice on his part. I’d genuinely like to see if he said that.
And he didn’t even do the jump himself. May have wanted to (IDK) but it was a stuntman.
That Mad Max: Fury Road and Top Gun Maverick have “No CGI”.
They happen to use a ton of practical effects and are very well shot films, but yes there are a bunch of CGI shots in the film. But that’s a good thing because the films are so well edited to make the CGI look real unlike a bunch of other movies.
If that’s not a deer-in-the-headlights look, it’s also definitely not the look of a pissed off tough guy. It is the look of someone being used who can’t do anything about it.
There is indeed a hint because, again, the film is a running juxtaposition of Michael with Vito. It’s a commentary on how far Michael has risen (or fallen). Whereas Vito uses a little soft power backed up with the implicit threat of violence on some two-bit tenement slumlord, Michael does the same but has the balls to do it in front of the US Senate. (And not to go too far into the weeds, but it also reflects back on Vito in One lamenting that Michael coulda been a contender Senator Corleone.)
Tom says Vincenzo’s reputation in Italy is impeccable, so if you want to take what Frankie says at face value, you have to do the same for Tom, which means he’s just a civilian. I think it’s much more likely that Frankie, who is about to die, is just boasting about his brother because that’s literally all he has left.
If Coppola had wanted us to think that Vincenzo was a tough guy, he wouldn’t have had him wear that tie. If ever there was a piece of neckwear that screamed “harmless civilian”, it was that one.
I think it just means that he’s got a clean reputation. When a leader in the NY mafia says his Sicilian brother is tougher than he is, and would have had his own family here, that dude is part of the Sicilian mafia. He’s not some mope being led around by the Corleones.
I thought it was more the look of a guy who’s saying “I don’t need this heat Frankie, why are you putting me in this position?”
I got the feeling he was a definite somebody in Sicily and who, when appraised of the situation by the Corleone family, would…
a) disapprove of Frankie’s testimony and would want to dissuade him anyway
b) know exactly what the implications were once the Corleone family contacted him and that his choices were limited, tough guy in Sicily or not.
ETA - in relation to point b) I’m sure that Vito’s revenge killing in Sicily was not unknown to him.
On the other side of the coin, that the original Jurassic Park dinos were all CGI. Yes, the use of CGI in the movie was groundbreaking, and the CGI that was used still holds up well to this day, but a lot of the close up dino shots were animatronics, and the velociraptors (for example the hotel kitchen scene where they’re stalking the kids) were people in velociraptor puppet costumes (possibly touched up in post with CGI, though).
Exactly. Kit proved herself with the hit. The game was now tied, and even though she ran through the coach’s stop signal she had already proved everything she had to.
And there’s a huge difference between Dot walking away from the game because it was too emotional for her to play against her sister, and because her injured husband had come home from war, then intentionally throwing the game and full on betraying all her teammates because she didn’t want Kit to feel bad.
If she really did that because of her feelings, then it completely went against Jimmy’s “If it wasn’t hard everyone would do it” speech. And Walter Harvey was right - women should go back to the kitchen so the men returning from war could play baseball again.
I remember when the Jurassic Park calendar came out I was really disappointed, because all the dinosaur pics were of the animatronic and puppet effects, with no CGI. I imagine that the CGI shots weren’t ready when they were making up the calendar. Or else they wanted to keep them hidden until the film’s release.
Its an INSANE thematic message that undermines half the film.
“One woman’s feelings are more important then the integrity of the entire sport. Enh…who cares. It’s JUST women’s baseball. Its not like its important. In fact its so unimportant, we want Dottie Black Sox Hinson to play in the reunion game at the end.”
“This just in…Georgia Tech felt sorry for that stupid little shit Rudy and LET him tackle the QB. Also Russian hockey team gives US College scrubs a gimme…news at 10.”
I can’t help thinking that at some point in the future, Spielberg is going to do a Lucas-style re-release of Jurassic Park with all the velociraptors covered in CGI feathers.
And holding walkie-talkies.
One, in the film. And the only three that succeeded IRL werent British either.
Tell me about it the whole Deckard is a replicant goes against the idea that the replicants are just as human as Deckard.