I’m a bit of a Godfather junkie and have recently been watching the Godfather Epic, which presents both Gf I and II in one chronological story. There are a couple of things I’m noticing now that are puzzling.
When Vito Andolini/Corleone arrives in America, he is found to have smallpox and put into 3 months quarantine. Isn’t smallpox highly contagious, and doesn’t one become seriously ill? How could he just be wandering around with smallpox? Wouldn’t he have already infected half the passengers on the ship? And why don’t they just refuse him entry and put him on a boat back to Italy?
In the Senate hearings on the Mafia, after Michael’s testimony, they adjourn the hearings until Monday, implying that this is happening on Friday. Next Frank Pentangeli’s guards are preparing him for his testimony “tomorrow morning,” so that is happening on Sunday. The following scene shows Michael and Fredo in the house in Tahoe. Next is the scene back in DC with Pentangeli’s brother walking into the hearing room with Michael. Is Michael zipping back and forth between DC and Tahoe by private jet? Why? How did they get Pentangeli’s brother to DC so quickly?
Back again to the escape to America: It is implied that friends secretly send the young Michael off. How is a young child permitted by the steamship line to travel alone? Who meets him on arrival, and how would they have been notified?
FWIW the novel doesn’t say anything about Vito having smallpox (or any other disease) or if he travelled with anybody when he was 12 years old. Just he was hidden by relatives after his father killed a Mafia chief (and was killed a week later) and shipped to America when the Mafia decided he might try to avenge his father when he grew older. Coppola could have decided to have him quarantined to emphasize Vito was all alone in a strange land.
Smallpox comes in several varieties. The type that my mother and her family got in the 1930s was the mild kind. Worse than chickenpox, but not so bad a previously healthy kid couldn’t be walking around for part of the course of the disease.
“Modern” knowledge of the disease and how to care for the sick helps a lot. In particular, having people around who were already exposed or vaccinated is key. They can provide shelter, decent food, clean water, fresh clothes and linen, etc.
Places like E. Africa and India usually had the most deadly kind.
Since smallpox was already floating around somewhere in the US most of the time in that era, the issue was preventing a new outbreak in the slums of NYC that might not currently have one. So, some precaution is wise, but it’s not an Outbreak type situation.
Yeah, I’ve always wondered about the timing of things during Michael’s testimony.
Yeah, back in those days I don’t think anyone from the steamship line would have cared about a young boy traveling alone or where he ended up. Vito was very much fending for himself, but he probably got some help finding a place to stay and a job through the kindness of other Italian immigrants.
Realistically, the answer is, none of this is happening as fast as it seems. Congressional committees don’t typically hold hearings on the same thing on several consecutive business days without interruption. There is other business, after all. The real Valachi hearings were spread over more than three weeks of September and October, 1963.
My father had smallpox as a child, out in the country in Nebraska, in the 1930’s. Where it came from or how he caught it was never known. The house was quarintined, with a placard of the door, as was done in those days.
In the novel at Connie’s wedding, one person who asks a favor of Vito is the baker Nazorine. It says that the two played together as children in Sicily. I suppose when Vito’s relatives got him on to the boat, Nazorine’s family was leaving too and they watched over him. Or they may have been in America already and met him there, although the book doesn’t go into Vito’s emigration in great detail and doesn’t have his mother being killed either.
Since Puzo wrote this because he was heavily in debt and needed a money maker, there are some discrepancies. For example, at the wedding when Johnny Fontane talks to Vito, he mentions that Woltz's woman chased him and they had a one night stand and now Woltz won't cast him for his war movie. Vito, in a tough love thing that works better with Johnny than it would with Sonny, Fredo or Michael, says what do you expect, you stole this man's woman, he won't cast you and now you are crying. Yet when Tom goes to Hollywood, it's kind of a surprise to him..or rather that Woltz is making a big deal about it (although he concludes that Woltz doesn't have real balls..he won't risk everything on an affair of honor).
Of course I wonder about Carlo plotting with Barzini to kill Sonny. You have a woman, who may or not be Carlo’s mistress, call Carlo’s house where Connie answers, she and Carlo fight, she calls Sonny who storms out of the house past Tom to get machine gunned by Barzini’s men manning a toll booth on the Jones Beach Causeway? How often are those guys there?
I suppose also with Vito being diagnosed with smallpox, the disease was in the news in the mid 1970s since efforts to eradicate it were pretty close to completion. It existed only in the horn of Africa. Coppola may have used it because it was getting publicity.
Sonny is coming from Long Beach where the family compound is. He always goes that way when he’s heading to the city, so the Barzinis can easily set up an ambush there. They know when Connie tells Sonny about the beating he will rush off for her place by himself without waiting for a body guard.
The main problem is you’re watching the chopped up, tossed up, assembled into a neat little row, Epic collection. It’s episodic. The time lines are all fucked up. And what is a beautiful storytelling in it’s natural state, putting everything chronological order only accentuates any flaws in the continuity that you aren’t supposed to see. Warner Bros is incredibly notorious for this. The first time I saw Once Upon a Time In America, it was the WB studio crapfest cut that ensured that nothing was intelligible, but they got it down under 2-1/2 hours and thought they showed Scorsese how to edit a film. Again, WB has been famously wrong about editing forever, See Bonny and Clyde. In GF Epic, you don’t get any feel for the time passage. Just tight, neat editing.
<For example, at the wedding when Johnny Fontane talks to Vito, he mentions that Woltz’s woman chased him and they had a one night stand and now Woltz won’t cast him for his war movie. Vito, in a tough love thing that works better with Johnny than it would with Sonny, Fredo or Michael, says what do you expect, you stole this man’s woman, he won’t cast you and now you are crying. Yet when Tom goes to Hollywood, it’s kind of a surprise to him…or rather that Woltz is making a big deal about it (although he concludes that Woltz doesn’t have real balls…he won’t risk everything on an affair of honor)>
because in that world “real” sicillians wouldn’t sex or any emotional matters get in the way of business its also why they weren’t supposed to get mad when they tried to kill each other in takeovers because it was bad for business
its alluded that if vito hadn’t still been that hurt when mike kills the cop he wouldn’t of let him do it right away or even at all because it was primaly a emotional decision that wasn’t well thought out …
Still seems a bit iffy although they may have had to try an iffy plan. But then the other families always thought that have an Irish consiglieri was Vito’s only mistake. They were right on this. Tom reproaches himself about that…knowing Genco would have smelled a rat and had known that the other families weren’t being beaten as Sonny thought, they were playing possum.
Seemed like a pretty clever plan to me. The responses of Connie to the phone call, and of Sonny when Connie called him to tell her Carlo had beaten her, were completely predictable. And Sonny always went the same way. All they needed to do was to figure out where to place the ambush. (And they might have had a backup plan to hit him at Connie’s house if he did take another route.)
The things I mentioned aren’t caused by the editing. For example, the whole thing with the Senate hearings is exactly the same as in Gf II and it still doesn’t make sense. We have the scene with Pentangeli on a Sunday night, preparing for his appearance the following morning. Immediately thereafter Michael is in Tahoe and Tom is telling him he’s totally screwed. The next scene everyone is back in DC, including Pentangeli’s brother.
how many godfather books were there ? 2 or 3 ? I know the second book was written before the movie because I had a 1970 paperback version of the first and it had some of his books to order on the back page
There was really only one Godfather book. The Sicilian came out in the 80s, but I think that’s more of a sidequel-type novel. Then about 10-15 years ago they started to milk the property with a few Godfather sequel/prequel books after Mario Puzo died.