I was annoyed too (not that I read the sequels, but from reading Tessio’s Wikipedia entry), because in the movie, when Tessio is taken away, Tom retires to the house and loosens his collar. I took this to mean someone was being throttled nearby.
The book offers a little more resolution to the story–although Michael doesn’t pay reparations to Apollonia’s family, he does make sure that the treacherous Fabrizio (who’s moved to New York and is working at a pizzeria) is taken care of. [Coppola had filmed a scene of Michael personally gunning Fabrizio down–unlike in the book, where IIRC it’s one of his soldiers instead–but it wasn’t included in the final cut]
Also, the book goes into more detail about how Michael and Kay are reunited–it turns out that it was largely due to Mama Corleone’s intervention, and wasn’t Michael’s initiative at all. In that version of the story, Michael doesn’t seem quite as callous regarding Apollonia’s memory.
It’s also interesting that in the book, Kay develops a close friendship with Mama Corleone, which isn’t really hinted at in the movie–it helps to explain how she comes to accept her role as Michael’s wife, in a way that her character doesn’t in the movies. However, if they had made the movie-version of Kay more like the book-version, that would probably have weakened the dramatic tension of Godfather Part II.
In the movie, someone (Clemenza?) mentions that they’re letting the negotiator win.
My two cents on the OP question is that Michael wanted to put Carl at ease so he would be more likely to confess to his role in setting Sonny up. Michael needed to hear a confession. If Carl felt that Michael was going to let him stay in the family, then a confession isn’t a death sentence.
I don’t like that either. I’ve always imagined that Tessio, in view of his long service to the family, would be granted the privilege of being allowed to commit suicide.
I don’t see that. It had to be reciprocal. Tessio betrayed the family so the family had to kill Tessio.
Well, they showed him nailing her in the movie-it just doesn’t explain the whole “hot dog in the hallway” thing.
Lucy didn’t realize her problem until she went to Vegas (Tom Hagen set her up, not Fontane), and met up with Dr. Segal. He realized what the problem was with her “hotdog hallway” and arranged to have a colleague fix it for her.
I don’t know why I remembered that-probably if only because it involved Sonny being hung like a bull.
Zeldaro, isn’t it true that your wife once put a horses head in your bed?
Zoetina
Well, in the loosest of senses, yes, it’s quite true. It was a wooden Rocky horse from your babyhood whose head had become detached from its body. You want to 'splain about the cause of said detachment? Didn’t think so.
Want to 'splain about that fishbowl you wanted to put in the bed that time?
And why was it you wanted to name your bra Luca?
That goes along with how I read the scene. To me it is maybe the last piece of subtle acting Pacino ever does. He is 90% sure of Carlo’s guilt. He needs to make sure. As soon as Pacino hears the confession his eyes go a little dead and out of focus. Now he knows for sure. Carlo is quickly hustled off to his death. That scene is probably the best acted scene in Pacino’s career, IMHO. If he did that scene now he would be screaming.
In the “Saga” version there are two scenes added. The first has someone tell Michael that Fabrizio is working in Buffalo and the second has a car bomb blowing the guy up outside a pizzeria. Such revenge would have satisfied Apollonia’s family.
It made little sense to whack Carlo. I thought the plan was to send him to Las Vegas, to work at a Corleone-controlled casino (like dumb brother Fredo). Carlo KNOWS that Michael knows (that he was in on the murder of Sonny). So, Carlo could b used as a tool, to infiltrate the Moe Green empire.
Plus, Michael knew that Connie still loved Carlo (in fact, Carlo’s murder led to that unpleasant little scene in Michael’s office, later).
It would have been a powerful device for Michael to turn Carlo into his tool of revenge, letting him know that every second of his life Caarlo will live is due solely to Michael’s generosity and beneficence. At the next sign of anything less than 100% abject loyalty to the Corleones, Carlos’ stay of execution will be be revoked, and he will die as painfully as humanly possible. Given that, to use him as a mole into Mor Green’s operation, knowing that his work there is extremely risky but that risk is the only thing keeping him alive, might have made rather a useful little slave out of Carlo, which would not only have been very efficient of Michael, but might have been a much crueler revenge on Carlo than killing him was.
Too bad Puzo wasn’t a more subtle psychologist.
Do you mean in the movie? Because in the book, she knew damned well what her problem was- a huge hey-hey that no guy could get any friction in. IIRC, she had ony a couple of disgruntled lovers, one of whom “muttered something about her being ‘too big down there’” as he left her. So she sought Sonny out after hearing the stories of his gigantic schlong.
What she found out from her abortion-doctor boyfriend in the book was that he knew someone who could “tighten her up” in exchange for him performing an abortion for a showgirl client of the plastic surgeon.
I don’t think Puzo got that wrong. You are giving the Mafia too much credit. This is a world described where a family makes its living by being hostages. If you kill one of them, they will try to kill you. This is a simple brutality that is described beautifully in the book. Carlo helped kill Sonny, not just Michael knew this. Michael had to have him killed, it was too basic to the what made the code they lived by. Within the context of the world Puzo described and what we know of the real world of the Mafia I think the Michael and Carlo part played out perfect like so much else about the film.
There’s another problem with Michael allowing Carlo to stay alive and to become a minion/mole/gopher like Fredo: Carlo is much more treacherous than Fredo. Leaving him alive would put every other member of the family/business in danger of being turned on or set up by some other outfit. Getting Carlo out of the picture, in spite of the hard feelings it would create with Kay and Connie and others with a soft spot for him, is just the tidy thing to do.
One less thorn in the flesh and one less to have to look over the shoulder for.
Yes, but Puzo’s point was that Michael was the Mafia v.2.0, in which psychological manipulation (and its place in a new business model) would have been interesting to observe, even if it weren’t historically accurate.
Was that really Puzo’s point? I’ve only read the first book of the series, but I’ve seen all three movies several times. What I took from it was a lament I’d often heard from latter-day Mob movies (like Goodfellas): drugs changed everything.
The Don’s way of doing things was over, and it was time to adapt and change. I don’t think it was any more psychologically subtle than the Don’s time; if anything, it was less so. It was just Mike who was more subtle. But at the end of The Godfather, Mike is still “in transition.” And it’s inevitable that he’s going to put his own “stamp,” bring his own “style” of leadership to the family.
It was Mike and his generation that had the opportunity to distance themselves even further from the “street,” who had the education and social polish to brush shoulders with much more traditional WASP robber-baron heirs, and thus gain access to the kind of power that makes money a mere accessory.
It was the profits from gambling, a business without the street-level violence-and-thuggery associated with narcotics trafficking, that allowed Mike to do this, and it was the Don’s, and then Mike’s, policy of distancing themselves from narcotics, and the inter-family violence that that spawned.
I think that this is why Godfather III was the least favorite of the three movies: by that time, Mike is so far removed from the street-level Mafia that your average street-soldier doesn’t even know his name, or at best thinks he’s a mezzofinook with an underserved rep for a shooting everyone says he never committed in the first place (Solozzo/McCluskey). See Joey ZaZa’s open contempt for Mike as an example.
As to why Carlo must die, a lot of control is maintained via threats. If Michael let Carlo live, even on a leash, others might get ideas of their own. Carlo must die in order to make it clear to others what the consequences of their actions are.
Even Freido, who was blood, eventually had to pay.
Well, I thought Puzo was saying that there was a change in style and technique, but not in the substance, of Michael’s leadership as opposed to his father’s (or to Sonny’s). Vito’s generation of mob boss certainly favored the direct response to betrayal: Kill the traitor. (Though Vito was a subtle boss among his contemporaries–viz. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”). Michael was more businesslike, as he schemed the transformation from a bunch of unsubtle hoodlums to a more corporate model (if I’m not being redundant.) This is just speculation on my part, but I would have found it powerful to see Michael playing Carlo for years, with the threat of immediate death for the slightest hint of further betrayal on Carlo’s part, even while knowing that he hasn’t gotten any forgiveness ast all, just a few extra years of reprieve in exchange for quality service to Michael, who will kill him eventually, just not right this second.
Puzo was pretty unsubtle. I remember in high school, the Godfather was a big best-seller, but the first movie hadn’t yet been made–my creative writing teacher had us closely read parts of the novel, as a negative model. How not to write our sentences, how not to express our ideas, in short, how NOT to write a book. I think Puzo is benefitting from some of Coppola’s narrative gifts, but his outline of the plot still does prevail.