Does anybody remember the absolutely HILARIOUS skit by the Late John Belushi, of the death of Vito Corleone? You know, when he scares the daylights out of his grandson, by putting the orange slice in his mouth? I wonder what F.F. Coppola had in mind with this scene-I mean, the old man, who has spent his life promoting evil (although, to his credit, he refused to be a drug peddler), tries to get the grandson to laugh-instead, he scares the kid, and flops due to a massive heart attack!
The presence of oranges in all three “Godfather” movies indicates that a death or a close call will soon happen. Vito Corleone is shot after buying oranges, and dies with an orange in his mouth. Tessio is tossed an orange at the wedding reception and later is executed as a traitor.
(this copied from the Trivia section for the Godfather at IMDB)
I believe Vito Corleone’s death scene was improvised for the most part by Brando. I don’t think Vito Corleone was trying to scare his grandson as much as he was just playing with him. His grandson was very little at that time and eventually he thought his grandpa was still playing with him as witnessed by his spraying of his grandpa with the bug spray after he has died.
sewalk said:
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You are apparently forgetting Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, made in 1925.
Not to say BoaN wasn’t light years beyond everything that had been done in its day.
While I’m here, log me with those who believe The Godfather is the greatest movie ever made.
The difference between The Godfather and the other movies you cite is that The Godfather reinforces an existing prejudice. Nobody makes mob movies about Norwegians, because the general public doesn’t associate Norwegians with crime. The Godfather works, in part, because peoples’ minds are already primed to hear about criminal Sicilians. Every movie needs a degree of believability, and a movie that relies on prejudice to get that believability ought to lose a few points compared to one that doesn’t.
The scene, I believe, is important in emphasizing the difference between Don Vito and Michael.
Vito is, in a limited sense, a success over the course of his life. His motivation is the success of his family. His failure is the death of Sonny, but for the most part he accomplishes his goal; when he dies, his family is marching along nicely, and except for Sonny they’re all still breathing. Dying in a peaceful courtyard with his grandson is a fitting way for his life to end.
Michael, by comparison, is a failure. He ascends to the throne though his father’s one failure (Sonny’s getting shot 150 times) but completely blows it. For all his money and power, his family is a shambles by the end of Movie #2; Fredo’s on a permanent fishing expedition, Tom is pushed out, his brother in law is dead, and his marriage collapses. At the conclusion of both G1 and G2 - and G3, actually - Michael is not in the presence of a member of his family; he lost them all, and that’s where he failed where his father did not.
State of Grace was an excellent movie about the Irish mob in Hell’s Kitchen. Little Odessa is a great film about the Russian mob in Brighton Beach. In GF2, Hyman Roth is Jewish, not Sicilian.
Yes, the “eye-talian” mob is a cliche that the Godfather really did a lot to cement in the popular consciousness, but it’s not true that Italians/Sicilians are the only ones about whom mob movies are made. Add to that the fact that a lot of the big crime families in the U.S. are/have been Italian, and the Italian mafia is not an unreasonable plot setting.
Even the Sicilians make mafia movies about the Sicilian mafia: Excellent Cadavers stars Chaz Palminteri.
I thought that nobody makes mob movies about Norwegians because there is no Norwegian mob. At least that I know of… Wait… what’s this I got in the mail? Oh no. Apparently Luca Brasi sleeps with the lutefisk. :
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Sure, someone could see The Godfather as confirmation of their prejudice against Italians.
But Boyz N The Hood can be seen by a bigot as confimation of their prejudice againt blacks. Someone could watch Fargo and feel justified in thinking that all Upper-Midwesternerners are uncultured dolts in funny hats. Someone somewhere could watch Ben Hur and say “See, I told you all chariot drivers are queers.” That doesn’t mean these movies are weaker because of this ignorance or that that their overall legacy relied on it.
There was a subculture of organized crime with Sicilian roots in America. This is a fact. So I don’t see believablity as being a problem. Someone decided to write a story about this fascinating, secretive and very real subculture. I think the people who enjoy the movie the most see The Godfather as a story about people, not as a confirmation of their prejudices.
I also think the fact that the mob movie is firmly ingrained in the landscape of American pop culture shows that there’s a general sympathy to the motivations of mobsters (perhaps too much) that transcends tracing ancestors to The Boot.
Milossarian wrote:
Have I ever mentioned how much I cringe whenever people say “light years beyond,” because I just know they’re thinking that a light-year is a unit of time and not a unit of distance?
Besides, we all know that Airplane! is the greatest movie of all time.
The parallels with Frank and Jonnie Fontaine were made almost too specific. Of course Moe Green was really “Bugsy” Segel and Hyman Roth was really Meyer Lansky.
AFAIAC The first two Godfather movies are the greatest American film of all time. I’ll be first in line to get the DVD box set when it’s released this fall.
You can rest assured that I know it’s a distance. And nothing in my post would indicate otherwise.
Cool pocket protector! 
I should just add a note mentioning that in college, we used to have semiannual Godfather Parties that consisted of:[ol]
[li] Several cases of Henry Weinhards[/li][li] Large quantities of marijuana[/li][li] Several Pizzas[/li][li] VHS copies of each of the Godfather movies[/li][li] Obligatory mimicing of as much of the script as each participant could remember[/ol][/li]Of course, we also did this in the dorm’s TV lounge with the nightly ST:TOS and Kung Fu reruns, except the emphasis was on heckling the program, in the spirit of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
i thought it was faithful to the book on what it actually went in depth on but it left out half the book and only shown confusing parts of some things
1 the johnny fontaine part of the story hes in 2 scenes the one at the beginning where hes asking the godfather for help ok but the second one is where mike meets him in the hotel and hes a big shot in hollywood it dosent explain that the dons bankrolling his producining outfit and it dosent explain johnny won the acamedy award which is how he came to be a big shot
2 one big subplot they also left out is the lucy mancini/dr jules angle whicn in the book is what helps mike get in to vegas … and its never explained in the movie toms using lucy to spy on freddie somewhat
also in the movie it never explains that kay adams and mama corelone became close while mike was gone and it was a chance call to the house that she found out mike was back
also one huge thing they forgot was mikes version of luca brasi the only scene wiht him is hes the cop that shoots barzini in the limo but since he started out a cop and felt he was screwd by the system for accidently killing a pimp and wassent to jail and as a favor the coreleone family got him out of jail
of course a few chapters in the book were the flashback on how vito became the don but i think they saved that for part 2 but theres a lot of small things that made the book a whole experience like the johnny/nino subplot that would of made the movie better but it probably would of been 4 hours heh