IIRC, he went on to become John Paul I, so he would have been a cardinal at the time.
Are you sure about that? I thought psychopaths were usually pretty obviously dysfunctional. Either way, if Michael was a psychopath who wanted to blend in, why not just go into the family business to start with? He’d have fit in just fine, there.
If I understand correctly, it becomes obvious only after you’ve been exposed to them over a long period of time, and a lot of little things start falling into place (or you actually catch them in the act of, e.g., offing somebody).
Are you sure that’s not sociopaths? I’m not any kind of a doctor, but my mental image of a psychopath is the sort of person who gets explosively violent over even minor provocations - which is the sort of thing that’s hard to keep under wraps for very long.
Vito had no trouble coaching Michael in becoming just like him. He personally mentored Michael after he arranged his return Italy. The old man was kidding himself and he thought you could buy respectability. Which is exactly what Michael attempted to do in the GFIII.
Well, he tried to get out, but, y’know…
I don’t think it was stealth bragging. Michael elected to bring Kay to a family wedding which means they were already in a serious relationship. Michael would not bring a woman to meet his parents, siblings, and other relatives unless he was serious about her. Kay was genuinely surprised that the Corleon’s had a personal relationship with Johnny Fontaine and if Michael was a braggart she wouldn’t have been surprised to see singing sensation there. What this scene showed was that Michael had been keeping the nature of his family a secret from Kay for their relationship until he decided to spill the beans at the wedding. And even then he wanted to make it clear that “That’s the family. Not me.”
Vito * reluctantly* mentored Michael. He said, “I never wanted this for you.”
I don’t see it. Michael falls in love with the girl at first sight; he courts her in a decorous, respectable and traditional fashion, with chaperones; the father probably already knows who he is, and nothing Michael says or does or hints can be read as a threat – his father’s status is, if anything relevant, rather an inducement, to make Michael an attractive catch, like if he were the son of the owner of a steel mill or something. There’s psychopathy in the story, but none in that particular episode. The only thing possibly dodgy about it is that it is not clear, AFAICR, that Michael is broken-up with Kay at this point.
Yeah, right. And he never really wanted to have to whack people (or have them whacked). :rolleyes:
In re sociopaths vs. psychopaths, here is a good article on the subject:
Many a good man has gone down a bad road.
I remember someone very close to me once saying (about something very bad he was going to do because he didn’t see any way out)
“I feel absolutely horrible, but I’m still going to do it.”
The whole concept of the series is psychopathic in a way, or at least elitist: Unlike in treatments like Goodfellas or The Sopranos, in the GF films we almost never see what the families are fighting over – turf to practice the sordid street crime that provides all their revenues, the protection rackets, rakeoffs, loansharking, prostitution, truck hijackings, scams and cons, etc. We see some of that in the flashback sequences of GFII, with young Vito and his crew, but when he becomes a don it’s like that stuff doesn’t exist anymore and We Do Not Talk About the Sources of the Family Income (not even in family war-councils, AFAICR). We see Michael’s Nevada whorehouse only because the plot requires it. All the conflict is like conflict between medieval lords or Renaissance princes, common folk simply do not play a part in it except as required and are not much thought of by the princes – they’re there, tilling the fields and paying their feudal dues, and that’s that.
In fact, they’re all rather indifferent to the lives of common folk. One of Michael’s enemies, I forget which, is machine-gunned while in bed with a woman, who of course dies too though she’s nobody’s enemy. And then there was that prostitute in GFII, who apparently died just to frame the senator.
I recall a scene from Puzo’s The Last Don: Don Clericuzio, who has lived all or practically all his life in the U.S. but still seems to regard it as a foreign culture, is watching TV sticoms or soap operas and is amazed and says to his (crazy) daughter, in effect, what is wrong with these people, why do so many things make them unhappy, why do they have to make life so complicated, “Why can’t they see that a glass of wine and a knob of cheese at the end of the day is enough?” And he’s sitting here in this royal palace that he can never leave without an armed bodyguard, at the heart of a vast web of business enterprises criminal and legitimate . . . He could have opened a vegetable stand in the Bronx and had his glass of wine and his knob of cheese.
Huh? I don’t recall anyone claiming that Vito was a saint. I’m just saying he genuinely wanted a different future for his son Michael.
Michael clearly relishes telling the story that he did, about the brains or the signature. It is a shocking story, cold and mercenary the way he conveys it, and there’s no reason to be so graphic except to brag, by association. The “That’s not me, Kay” is far too glib and disingenuous. While I wouldn’t say he’s a psychopath, he still has the family business coursing through his bloodstream and to treat a death threat so casually (over a movie) is simply not normal, let alone “innocent”.
It hasn’t been mentioned that he was 3rd in line of secession, so I would imagine that’s why he went to college and then the military, because his ladder of ascendancy within the family was blocked by his brothers. He could afford to be his own man and pursue more traditional pursuits because his chances of holding the reins are so remote and the expectations of him wouldn’t be the same. But circumstances quickly show that he’s smart and strategic, while Sonny is loud and impulsive. So while he may not have designs on the business, he will do what he needs to to protect the family.
I don’t buy that the trilogy is a tragedy, unless you look at it through the eyes of Kay. Hers is a tragic arc–naively entering into a calculated marriage, her abortion as only means of protest. Michael has no innocence to lose. His claims to want to make the business legitimate in 1 & 2 are simply falsehoods. He is stepping into his father’s shoes, but hardly against either his will or his nature. And by 3, even if there is a change of heart, that horse has already left the barn for good.
And I think that deep down, he knew it was never really possible. They weren’t exactly Joe and Jack Kennedy.
One note…Michael seems determined to get his brother-in-law to admit his complicity in Sonny’s death. In the book, Tom is stunned that Mike is continuing this discourse. Tom felt that, innocent or not, once you determine a man is guilty, you don’t haggle over the details or question yourself.
I think you’re underestimating how deep an insult it is to the Corleones that Moe Green is slapping Freddie around. It’s a blatant lack of respect and to let it slide would make them look weak. He also insults the family by calling them finished and that Barzini is chasing them out of New York. And then add to that the fact he’s skimming from the casino, which effectively means he’s stealing from the Corleones. So, to sum up- Moe has no respect for the Corleones, openly insults them and is stealing from them. By the Michael meets him in Las Vegas, Moe is a problem to be dealt with, not an asset.
That’s what the last 10 minutes of each film is for.
Confusing the issue a bit here, but in the book he was actually originally first in line of succession because of his brother’s various issues ( too impulsive with one, too dumb with the other - Don Corleone had no truck with primogeniture ). Dropping out to join the military was in part his way of opting out.
Book aside, count me among those that thinks the whole storyline kind of fails if Michael was an actual psychopath and I don’t think I see it in the movie. Hard, yes - he was always hard, with what Stephen King once rather nicely descibed as a core that was like biting on tinfoil. And more traditional than even he himself believed he was ( hence his explosion at Kay’s abortion in II ). But he was a hard, smart man trying to soften and distance himself from tragedy and who ended up failing.