I think the whole point of Michael killing Fredo was to highlight how different a man he was from Vito.
Vito could be a ruthless man. But he always had what he felt were good reasons.
Michael was ruthless but he had lost sight of the reasons for why he was doing it. He was emotionally dead inside and was just going through the motions.
Really? I took it, particularly when paralleled with Vito’s backstory, as paralleling the rise of the family with its fall, proceeding naturally from Vito’s descent into the underworld. He may have thought he was doing something “upright” (but illegal) for his family, holding has family above all else, but really he was sewing the seeds of his family’s destruction from within. Closing with the scene of the birthday just cements that in my mind, with Michael being the least corrupted of his sons, the one Vito himself had hoped would go on to legitimize the family as an important politician, ultimately being dragged down to become the most corrupt by the murder of the brother he was closest to (his last brother, thanks to Sonny’s death from “natural” causes). But still as a natural consequence of the world Vito created for him.
Vito thought he had good reasons to do what he did, but really he just undermined everything he cared about, and Michael’s murder of Fredo was just the proof of that.
he came out and said it directly for Carlo but it was more round about for freddy and the don was pissed once what he heard about freddys hobbies in vegas (mainly “banging showgirls 2 and 3 at a time”)
In the movie, Vito doesn’t mention Fredo to Tom in the car after the Commission meeting. Maybe you’re confusing it with what Vito says after the Sollozzo meeting when Sonny fucks up, the line about his brain going soft from all that comedy he plays with the young girl. Or maybe what you’re describing was in the book. But it wasn’t in the movie.
It would be general knowledge that Michael promised not to kill Fredo while their mother was alive. Everyone would have expected Fredo to die after the Cuba events and an explanation had to be sent out.
So mom dies, Fredo disappears. Hey, smart move Fredo. Go hang out in Europe for a while.
And tales of Mafia figures in real life pretending to be nice to someone in order to set up their murder are common. No one would for one second think that Michael and Fredo’s reconciliation at the funeral had any real meaning one way or another.
I see no reason to assume this. The only one Michael tells is Al Neri - “I don’t want anything to happen to him while my mother’s alive.”
Michael Corleone didn’t do explanations. If there is one thing that defined him as a Don, it was keeping everything very close to his chest. Especially motivations and plans. Following his father’s advice( but taking it even a step further ), he told no one anything that he could avoid telling, because the fewer people that know what you are thinking, the fewer ways you can be betrayed. Michael was enormously successful both because he was brilliant( at being a criminal overlord )and because in his own quiet why very pragmatically intensely paranoid.
Keeping everyone guessing on whether he was continuing to tolerate Fredo is just part and parcel of this. Because at this point Michael is ruling the roost - his enemies are exposed, dead or on the run. Not knowing what the violent and cold 800 lb gorilla might be thinking is just that much more intimidating.
The reason I brought this thread up to begin with is that, since the first time I saw the film back in the 80s when I was about 18, I wondered about the killing of Fredo, and you know how sometimes when you get an impression of a movie or a scene in one it stays with you. Until now I’ve never thought about it in any detail, just had a lilttle lingering doubt about it.
I don’t have them anymore after thinking about it in this thread and reading responses. However, I think there are some reasons for my wondering about it. Mario Puzo had doubts. Remember the scene with Michael’s mother and he asks if being strong for the family could cause him to lose his family. Part of it had to do with Kay but I think he was thinking of Fredo as well. And Michael also told Tom that he knew Roth had misled Fredo, and Fredo didn’t know it was going to be a hit and I think Michael believed that. I just see any scenario where Fredo would have Michael killed. Michael would know that. We never know exactly what Fredo did, just that he thought he was helping with the negotiations. And thought he was helping the family. Not every offense against the family warrants the death penalty, especially if it is your own brother.
By the time Fredo was killed, as Tom told Michael when he wanted to kill Roth, Michael had won. Roth was just trying to retire in Florida. He was no threat to the family. No practical reason to kill him. But Michael, having just won, had to have Roth killed as a message to anyone who dared cross him that they would eventually be killed, then or later. And he also applied this ruthlessness to his own brother.
The scene at the funeral when Fredo hugs Michael is very emotional and I think we, at that time, are supposed to believe Michael had forgiven him. This comes not long after Connie pleaded with Michael to do so, and of course after the earlier conversation with his mother. It is possible at that time Michael reallly did want to forgive him but just couldn’t do it. And then, after it was done, he has the flashback at Christmas when he was young and Fredo being the one to congratulate him about joining the service. Thanks for pointing that out, MadMonk 28, I never connected that. And by then, he has lost his family
Anyway, these are all reasons I used to wonder if Coppola was trying a little too hard to punch us in the gut. Michael forgives Fredo, how wonderful! We’re so glad. Not shortly after, sorry, Michael was pretending and now Fredo is dead! And now for my next screenwriter’s trick!
I was wrong. So now looking forward to seeing it again on my new Blu-ray on my new 55-inch TV without any lingering questions (there was another one but it’s not worth discussing).
I did not see Michael forgiving Fredo at all. Maybe Fredo thinks so, and most watchers think so, but while he is hugging Fredo Michael gives Al Neri a look - a cold, hard look - Neri bows his head. He knows what he has to do.
Michael goes up to Fredo immediately after talking to Connie. Why at that moment? Maybe because he saw a way so that Connie would not suspect him. And I think the hug means more. Michael did love Fredo - You broke my heart! - so I think he was saying goodbye. What a lousy cold-hearted bastard! Once he again he will kill someone close to Connie. Never tied that in before. I knew it of course, never thought about the fact that both times it happens near the end of the movie, both times after pretending that he wasn’t going to kill anyone
I’ve seen this movie so many times over the years, sometimes all the way through, somtimes in the middle while flipping, and it’s all so familar I think I’ve lost some of the subleties.
When I watch again I’m going to see how many direct paralles I can see between I and II. I thought of one earlier - Fredo runs his mouth, trying to help the family, and almost gets Michael killed. Sonny runs this mouth, trying to help the familiy, and almost gets the Don killed.
I disagree. I think the point of telling the two stories was to provide a contrast not a parallel.
Vito’s goal was not to become the head of a mob family. His goal was to protect his family and friends. Becoming the head of a mob family was just the path he took to do that. With Vito, being the Godfather was just a means to an end and he always kept sight of that.
Michael lost that (or never had it). For him, being the Godfather became an end in itself. If you had asked why he wanted to be the Godfather, he couldn’t have told you. He gave up everything that should have been important in his life for the title that turned out to be worth nothing.
Compare the way the two men were at their ends. We saw that Vito, for all that he was an evil man, had people who loved him. But at the end of The Godfather Part II, we saw Michael, who had defeated his enemies and was now all powerful, sitting all alone. At the moment of his supposed victory, we were supposed to see that he had actually lost everything.
Mario Puzo also spent like a quarter of The Godfather book on Lucy Mancini and her Grand Canyon of a vagina, so even though he wrote the thing, he doesn’t always hit the target every time.
I don’t think Michael gave up what was important to him for the title, he gave it up for the same thing Vito did: to protect his family. He knows Sollozzo’s men are coming to kill Vito and he knows the police are in on it. There is literally no where else to turn (well, with a little help from Enzo the baker anyway). He understands in that moment that if he wants his family to be safe, he must give up what he has and join them. I mean, they ruled in completely different styles, but they both went into it thinking they were protecting their families.
And I still disagree. I was most of the way through a point by point counter argument, but I think it comes to this:
If you think the point of showing Vito’s rise to becoming The Godfather in parallel with Michael’s consolidation and descent deeper into the underworld (the path his father didn’t want for him, but effectively laid out for him) was to somehow contrast them as if one was doing anything but unwittingly laying the trap for the other to fall into, through hubris, in the style of a classical tragedy, then I just don’t think there’s any value in going point by point.
Keep in mind, also, that Godfather III, for all its faults, is generally consistent with the interpretation that even as Michael fell deeper into things, he still held out some hope that some day he’d be able to distance himself from the world of crime and violence and that he’d be able to finally, at long last, fulfill his father’s wish of legitimizing the family and its business. And again, also in tragic style, we see how that worked out for the family and which generation bore the consequences of that hubris.
Both men held out hope that they’d be able to protect their families through crime and violence, then eventually give that up for the straight and narrow. Both men saw their children suffer terribly as a result.
Mafiosi fake retiring is common in real life. When the heat gets bad, say you’re retiring and lay low for a bit. All the while continuing operations behind the scenes. Remember, to any naive observer Roth was already retired at the start of the events in the movie. But clearly he wasn’t. Michael had no reason to believe that this was an actual retirement.
And Mafia dons rarely forgive and forget.
That may have been true when Michael first got in. But by the end of the Part II, we saw that Michael essentially had no family left. Killing Fredo was the most obvious example but he had also driven away Connie, Kay, and Tom. (Okay, he still theoretically had his children. But they were young in this movie so it could be assumed he would drive them away in the future.)
I know Part III rewrote some of this, I don’t really view that movie as a true part of the series.
I suppose we all have our own Last Jedis. And whatever the long title of Star Trek V was.
The more important question is. WHO goes fishing with Al Neri?
I disagree. Connie was complicit in Fredo’s murder. She was the one who called Micheal’s son back to the house to keep him from getting in the boat with Al and Fredo