Something that confused me a bit: Later, when Michael is forced to testify before a Committee that includes Geary, Geary does little to help and just leaves for another meeting. Am I missing something?
Eh, I’d just chalk that up to the dramatic pacing of the scene. Geary was in total shock at the horrific reality of the situation, and while he at first couldn’t remember what happened, once he calmed down I think it would have been pretty obvious to him who killed her.
He does make that little soapbox speech about Italian-Americans, but then he says something about having to leave. But I assume if he was a member of the Senate committee investigating Michael he would still ultimately get a vote, and he’d vote for acquittal.
I have sometimes thought that Geary’s final look at Tom, after the “All that’s left is our friendship” statement, indicates the beginning of a realization that not only is he totally screwed, but that the Corleones were the ones who killed the prostitute. I’d bet that as time passes, he may be certain of that, but with no proof. Also, like the movie producer, he realizes that they could have just as easily killed him.
Geary can do nothing publicly except that speech, which is a bit too much. What he does privately is spy for the Corleones, letting them know who the government’s secret witness is: Frankie Pantangelli. That knowledge allows Michael to arrange to have Dominic Pantangelli immediately flown in from Italy to show Frankie when he is testifying that Michael can get to anyone, anywhere with great ease. It may have also caused Frankie to realize that had Michael tried to have him killed, he would have been dead, and that Roth never intended the hit on Frankie to be fully successful. However, Frankie wasn’t likely that smart. He probably just knew his family was in grave danger.
This is my take as well. Michael does a little research into the senator and finds out he likes S&M with hookers. Micheal files that fact away and when the senator pisses Michael off by not being reasonable, Michael decides to use the information to set up the senator the next time he visits one of Michael’s brothels. I assumed they drugged geary and murdered the hooker. Once you are a senator in a mob brothel with a dead prostitute, you really aren’t in a position to cop an attitude with Michael.
That was the only foul murder Michael (more correctly, Al Neri) committed.
Unless you count all the others.
There was a thread about this a while ago, but I still maintain that Michael bringing Pantangeli’s brother into the courtroom was **NOT **a threat that if he testified he’d have his brother killed. Rather, it shamed him into realizing that he was about to commit an infamnia, an intolerable act (being a rat). The look on his brother’s face shows this, he’s not afraid for his life, he looks at his brother with ‘old-world’ incredulity that he’s even considering testifying. In an earlier scene when Pantengili’s talking to the FBI guys guarding him he’s already expressing his regret at the choice he’s had to make. Seeing his brother convinced him to say screw the G-men and keep his family’s honor instead.
It’s both a threat and a shaming. Frankie knows that Michael has to be sure. And if he was quick enough, he would have figured that Michael didn’t put out the hit on him.
I think Fredo’s murder was the worst. His own brother, and the only one who supported him when he joined the marines during WWII.
Good point-is there any evidence that any members of either the Kefauver or McClellan Committees (in the US Senate), which investigated organized crime, ever had compromised investigations through blackmail (like the fictitious Sen. Geary)?
The movie would have been so much more epic if Richard Castellano and F.F. Coppola could have worked something out, because Puzo/Coppola’s original backstory involved a Clemenza angle. When the Pentangeli role was still Clemenza, the revelation was that Clemenza had an illegitimate family he’d sent to Sicily at some point to live under his brother’s protection, and the brother’s presence was a threat to that family if he sang (the brother being hardball mafioso).
Yeah, I heard the story that Pantangeli was supposed to be Clemenza but the actor asked for too much money to do the sequel (so they just killed him off). Personally I think it was fortuitous, I just don’t think that the guy who played Clemenza had the acting chops to have pulled off that role. Pantangeli had a lot of subtlety to his character, and Richard Castellano just seemed to lack that. He was just a great stereotypical ‘goomba’! 
You are right-poor Fredo-saying his prayers when Michael has a bullet fired into his head-that was the most cold blooded murder in the movie. Was that necessary? He could have set Fredo up in a position where he would be harmless…but Michael was no longer capable of human emotion. The glance to Al Neri at the mother’s wake sealed Fredo’s doom.
I would have high tailed it out of Nevada at that point.
Also, when Tom was talking to Frank through the chain link fence, trying to convince Frank to kill himself, he mentioned that Roman soldiers who had dishonored themselves could throw themselves on their swords to regain honor and ensure that their families would be safe. That seems to me to be a promise that if he does that, there will not be any reprisals against Frank’s family.
Yes, but – Fredo nearly had both Michael AND Kay killed. He was so stupid he was dangerous. Even his father knew it.
They were both on the same side of the fence. Yeah, that’s pretty self-explanatory. And again, I don’t think it referred to Pantangeli’s actual family, as in his brother, I think it just referred to his crime ‘family’ and his reputation in general. He did have every reason to believe that it was Michael who tried to have him killed, so his ‘indiscretions’ after that (him joining witness protection etc.) could be forgiven too…
And Fredo was smart enough/stupid enough/crazy enough to withhold information from Michael until the last minute. That’s when Fredo tells Michael that the Senator who heads the committee against Michael has a Jewish lawyer in Hyman Roth’s pocket. Fredo could had told Michael before the 11th hour, if he wanted to actually help Michael.
That’s a pretty funny exchange right there. The Italian Mafia owns senators. The Jewish Mafia owns Congressional Committees. You’d think Francis Ford Coppola would worry about making an implication like that, if you thought the Jews really did run Hollywood.