Nope. At least, in the film, at the meeting of the five families, while mentioning his opposition to drugs, he compares it to stuff that he is apparently OK with, namely, “gambling, liquor and even women.”
Things I find puzzling:
(i) When Micheal promised to Kay that everything will be legit in 5 years, was he serious? If so, what happened? He did eventually get the casinos but then he also solidifed his position in the NY mafia.
(ii) Why was Tom out in the Nevada move, and why did Carlo get an important position despite the suspicion that he led to Santino’s death?
(iii) Why do they show Tattaglia whispering to someone in the boardroom meeting? Does that give Don the spark that it was Barzini all along?
why did Carlo get an important position despite the suspicion that he led to Santino’s death?
??
Carlo never made it to Nevada alive. They whacked him the day of his son’s christening while they were doing the heads of the other families and Moe Green.
The day of the wedding Sonny suggested giving Carlo an important position, and the Don said no, never let him in on the family business but give him a living. AFAIK he had a job but that was about it.
(i) He probably intended to be legit, or at least hoped to.
(iia) He wanted to keep Tom’s work and the Nevada work separate. Also the Nevada move required more brutalily than Tom was probably capable of. Just a guess.
(iib) Carlo didn’t get an important position; not really. To the extent that Michael presented the impression of trust, he was doing so to keep Carlo & Co. off guard until he was ready.
(iii) no clue.
(i) Michael was to some extent sincere about going legit. GF1 showed his decline from not wanting to have anything to do with the family business to being completely involved in it. So even towards the end there was still some of the naive, “old Michael” left that wanted legitimacy. In GF2, even he knew it was a pretence.
(ii) Michael was getting progressively more paranoid about outsiders. GF2 was the fullest expression of it. But in GF1 it was turning his back on Tom where this is first manifested. It is also clear in the book (and somewhat in the Saga version) that Michael couldn’t completely trust any of the old family members and built up his secret capo regime to be used in the finale of the movie. The mistrust was wise. Sorry Sal, there’s been a change of plans.
As to Carlo, he was just keeping Carlo off guard. Presumably he was watched, information was being sought on the particulars of Sonny’s death, etc. It just was too early for Carlo to go away. If Carlo had been removed earlier, Barzini would have expected he was next. First Barzini and the heads of the other 5 familes, then Carlo.
(iii) The whispering incident appears to be part of the sign of what tips him off. Vito was looking for who was secretly controlling whom. I think Barzini officially approving Vito’s proposals, which in turn forced Tattaglia to make peace with Vito was more significant. Vito probably felt that Tattaglia would have never made such a gesture if someone (Barzini) hadn’t expected it.
And, yeah, prostitution is a “harmless vice” to The Don.
In regard to Vito disapproving of drugs, remember he says to Solozzo “It makes no difference to me what a man does for a living” - he disapproves in a strictly business sense. Drugs are bad news for him because other people - i.e the judges and politicians he has has friends - view it as a dirty business and would turn their backs on him. This marks him out as a good businessman, not a sentimental Don.
It was a good move to keep Carlo and Barzini deliberately kept off-guard.
I suspected that the whispering was some communication between Tattaglia and Barzini but it wasn’t clear.
One more thing that puzzles me is the meeting that Barzini arranges on Tessio’s ground after Vito dies. Vito knew that such a meeting is a sign that Michael was going to be whacked. He had already advised Michael. Tom knew this as well. So, if this was such openly known protocol, how could Barzini think he could pull it off?
Way before Carlo’s death but after Sonny’s death and Michael’s return from Italy, Michael makes some decisions about moving to Nevada and he calls Carlo his “right-hand man”. I was talking about that.
That was just to keep Carlo under his thumb until he had everything sorted. Carlo set Sonny up by beating Connie. There was a phone call Connie was to believe was Carlo’s mistress, but was intended as a signal for Carlo to get Sonny out of the family mall, where he could not be protected. Moving Carlo and Connie into the mall was to calm Connie and reassure her, while keeping Carlo where they could keep an eye on him.
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer,” as the saying goes. Carlo expected to be hot stuff in the family by marrying Connie, and he was given a penny-ante bookmaking operation (where he was also kept under close watch, because he was a knucklehead.)
Carlo’s esteem must have fallen fairly rapidly; after all, at the end of GFII, in the flashback to the bombing of Pearl Harbor/Vito’s birthday, we see Sonny clearly trying to set Carlo up with Connie. Sonny must have liked him then, but by the end of 1945, he hates his guts (and this is even before he found out Carlo was beating Connie). Now that I think about it, Carlo and Connie obviously had a fairly long courtship, since they were introduced in 1941, yet didn’t get married until after the War. The Don clearly didn’t think much of Carlo, yet the marriage was allowed to go forward. Odd, that.
On a completely unrelated note, something I never really understood: Why kill Fredo? Was revenge that important? To me, Fredo’s betrayal of Michael was a minor one compared to the actions of Tessio, or worse, Hyman Roth. I could see wanting to bump off Roth for purely practical reasons, anyway: If he was questioned by the Feds, as would certainly happen, maybe he’d reveal more incriminating evidence, and the effort to prosecute Michael could continue after the Pentangeli fiasco.
But what was to be gained by killing Fredo? He never intended to be a threat; he was simply a trusting idiot who was misled by Johnny Ola into thinking he could do good for the family while proving his worth as a man. Michael is very intelligent; yet he couldn’t see how his patronizing treatment of Fredo would possibly hurt him. And after it became clear Fredo felt compelled by Michael’s condescention to go behind Michael’s back to make the deal with Johnny Ola, Michael couldn’t forgive him?
Michael was shrewd and ruthless with his enemies, but such cold-heartedness towards Fredo always seemed to me to be a bit much even for him. It always seemed like there was a good business rationale for Michael’s brutality, except for with Fredo; in this case, he’s taking things “very personal”.
I can see a couple of reasons for whacking Fredo. While he’s not exactly evil, he’s very jealous, very ambitious, very dumb, and has access to people who are very powerful. That’s a bad combination. When you’re trying to subtly maneuver your enemies into just the right position, the last thing you need is a moron brother who spends half his time mucking up your plans trying to impress you, and the other half in lame, transparent attempts to sell you out. He’s not only incompetent, he’s actively disloyal. Keeping someone around who so obviously and openly abused Michael’s trust and respect was bad for the image of the Corleone family; it bred disrespect for the Don among the other families. Any non-family member who acted like Fredo did would have been bumped off long ago.
Then there’s also the warning it sends to others: “you think you can cross me and get away with it? Just look what I did to my own brother. You so much as blink at me the wrong way and your entire family is history!”
Of course, the main reason for including Fredo’s murder was to show just how cold and vicious Michael had become.
Well, if Michael was that cold, I can’t figure out how Kay managed to stay alive. I mean, from Michael’s perspective, she murdered his son. Fredo didn’t want to hurt anybody. How could Kay have done much worse?
Remember that when Kay & Michael had the big blowout, he told her she would not take the children. When she argues, he says, “Don’t you know I would use all my power to prevent that?” I’m sure that in the ensuing custody and visitation determination, it would have been very clear to Mrs. Corleone that if she did not cooperate, she too could simply disappear in a tragic accident.
The difference being that Kay isn’t a threat to his empire. While Michael doesn’t love Kay at that point and does threaten her, she’s not really a threat to him, abortion or no. Fredo is actively dangerous - and, as Michael points out himself, Fredo is a threat to his children’s lives. ("… Where my children come to play with their toys!")
Hmmm. So it seems Fredo could still be seen as a threat, even after he’d been identified as the traitor? Yeah, I guess I could see that: Just too much of a liability to keep alive; plus Michael had to set an example to anyone who would betray him.
Poor Fredo. I guess if he’d had more to offer as a double-agent or something, it he might have saved himself, but by the time Mama died, he had little that Michael needed. Except the love of family, of course.
Keeping in mind that it’s been a LONG time since I read the book, or saw the movies, I believe Sonny was the oldest, but was considered too much of a hot head to ever take over. Fredo was the second child (then Michael, then Connie, I imagine), and yeah, he was always kind of sickly and “slow.”
In the book, Fredo was getting out of hand, but of course the book ends before the second movie begins. I used to wonder if John Cazale’s illness played any role in the decision to kill off his character, until I realized that he wasn’t seriously ill until 3 or 4 years after Godfather II was filmed.
I grow weary at all of these condescending slams at GF III. It was as solid and entertaining a wrap-up as one could have hoped for --Sofia Coppola’s presence notwithstanding-- and anyone who disagrees is an elitist mort.
I’ve also always wondered WHY Michael picked Kay to begin with.
First he’s with Kay.
Then he marries Apollonia. (I wonder just how he was going to explain that to Kay when he came back to the states with his lovely pregnant Italian wife.)
Apollonia dies, he comes back and now suddenly he’s just gotta have Kay again?
He couldn’t have found a nice Italian girl at home?
I’m not sure he ever loved her, really, although I’m hard pressed to come up with another reason why he married her.
