What now? Let me tell you what now. I’ma call a coupla hard, pipe-hittin’ niggers, who’ll go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. You hear me talkin’, hillbilly boy? I ain’t through with you by a damn sight. I’ma get medieval on your ass.
So why did Coppola have him say those words? With that logic, they might as well have just started the movie as he kills them. It makes Michael a much more interesting character to know that underneath the war hero veneer, he has the bearing of a cold, calculating murderer before he ever pulls a trigger.
I think we’re getting a little off track. Before, I said I see no significant hesitation. I think what you’re pointing out isn’t significant hesitation on Michael’s part, but rather Coppola’s staging/blocking to heighten and draw out the dramatic tension of the scene. You say you think he’s handling the gun tentatively, and maybe he is, but I find it’s an awfully big leap to translate that into “he’s taking a loaded gun out slowly, so maybe it means he doesn’t really want to kill these two people.” Or “he pauses for 2 seconds when he comes out of the bathroom, so maybe he’s conflicted.” That doesn’t necessarily follow. It especially doesn’t follow since these are the men who tried to kill his father, are still trying to kill his father and about whom he has recently expressed a strong desire to kill. When you take that into consideration, there is no meaningful struggle on Michael’s part.
Michael isn’t trying to get the subway noise out of his head, Michael is the subway. He’s hurtling down a oneway track and nothing will stop him from reaching his predetermined destination. I assume you’re not a fan of that metaphor.
After he’s shot them, he watches McCluskey struggle until he knows he’s dead, turns around, grabs his coat, drops the gun and walks out. How do you conclude Michael isn’t just conflicted, but rather very conflicted in those 5 seconds?
I think you’re not only confusing the build up of dramatic tension for some personal conflict, you’re also focusing too much on that one scene. The man who we already know is calm under pressure, who accuses a police captain in front of his men of arranging a murder, who gives the speech about how he will methodically kill 2 people, is not a man who suddenly finds Jesus as he’s about to kill the men who tried to kill his own father. A few dramatic pauses in the restaurant cannot wash all that away, even if it is just words.
Maybe because it’s late, I’m not sure what you’re getting at with this part. If you’re thinking that I think Michael is so cold as to have no conflict in him whatsoever, I’m not necessarily saying that, only that there is no meaningful hesitation/conflict/struggle/shock in taking out Sollozzo and McCluskey.
zbuzz, I don’t think we are going to agree in our own interpretations of that scene. For me, the scene only works dramatically if there is tension, conflict and hesitation. I see all that in Pacino’s performance and the directorial choices. You see something else, c’est la vie.
In short, he does want to kill them, he knows he is well able to kill them (because, as you say, he is calm under pressure) but at the same time he knows that what he is about to do will both help the family and at the same time hurt his father deeply and change the course of his life.
That conflict has to play out and we have to see it and feel it.
Of course, it is a great scene in that it can provoke these discussions in the first place.
I don’t think Michael knew that the plans his father had for him were not “family business.” He consistently brushed aside any attempt to have a conversation about his future. Certainly the audience doesn’t know what hopes and dreams Vito had for Michael until the scene in the backyard when Vito says, “I never wanted this for you.”
When he retrieves the gun from behind the toilet tank, he is first nearly panicky about it’s possibly not being there. When he finds it, he is first very careful not to let it hit anything and make a sound. Then he seems to cradle it in his hands almost lovingly.
I see the hair-smoothing gesture as a calming action. I also notice (I have watched all the GF films entirely too many times) that he holds his head with a slight tilt to the left. He’s done that a few times earlier in the movie, but NEVER does it again. All of his body language changes after that moment.
Ok. I agree it is a very tense scene, but I don’t believe you’ve shown that it springs from personal character conflict. It comes much more from Coppola setting the scene with his editing choices, blocking, sound, etc, and with Pacino playing off that.
Ah, now I understand what you meant with the last part of your last post. I see we’re done here, so I’ll end it by saying that conflict may play out somewhere, but it isn’t palpable in the restaurant.
But let’s agree to never discuss it over veal at Louis’ Restaurant in the Bronx.
He would have been the number one suspect since the police captain smashed his face in outside the hospital in front of witnesses (although Michael refused to press charges and told the lawyer he slipped). Which is what Tom told Kay when she showed up at the family compound on Long Island,that he felt he would be a suspect and went into hiding. Tom did tell Kay that they knew he was safe but refused to take a letter saying a court might interpret it as having knowledge of his whereabouts. Mama Corleone happened along, took the letter (yelling at Tom) and told Kay to forget Michael and marry a nice boy.
One thing about the book is the other families felt that have Michael kill Sollozo and McCluskey was tactically correct but a long term error: it deprived Michael of being around Vito for two years and not learning from him. But you can argue that while in Sicily Michael learned more about why his parents were the way they were and made him more determined to move the family into legitimate businesses (which went awry in the two movie sequels).
Well, Sonny never served in any war, so he’s probably talking a bit out his ass, there. But it does seem like there’s a difference between killing someone in a uniform in the heat of battle, and coldly walking up to someone you’ve just been having dinner with and blowing their brains out. I don’t know the deep lore on the Godfather movies, but those were old associates of his father, right? Likely people Michael had known since childhood. However close and brutal the fight was in the Pacific, it’s not like Michael knew any of the people he killed there by name. There may not have been a literal mile of distance between him and the soldiers he killed, but there was a definite emotional distance that he did not have when he carried out the hit in the restaurant.
No, they weren’t old associates of Vito. No one in the family knew either of them until Sollozzo reaches out for the sit down which is near the beginning of the film.
Well, yes, there is. He stops to pat down his hair. That’s hesitation. He pauses again when he steps out of the bathroom, before going over to rejoin the meal. That’s hesitation again. You say it’s just so Coppola could draw out the tension of the scene, but where does that tension come from? The possibility that a trained marine with the element of surprise might not be able to murder two old, unarmed men in a half-empty restaurant? Tension comes from conflict, and the only genuine conflict in that scene is internal to Michael Corleone.
That hair pat you mentioned is an amazing bit of acting, by the way. Watch it again, there’s a lot going on in that gesture. He doesn’t stop to pat his hair, he stops to cover his eyes. He then grabs his head with both hands, partially covering his ears, which after a beat he translates into straightening his hair.
That’s not calm, that’s a guy devoting every fiber of his being to not freaking the fuck out.
As I had mentioned before, I was referring to significant hesitation, meaning something that could clearly be attributed to an inner conflict. It’s a very big stretch to say the hair stuff or pausing before rejoining the meal telegraphs that Michael is genuinely conflicted about what he has to do. And it’s even more of a stretch when you take into account he has already pledged himself to his father and these are the people who tried to kill his father, to say nothing of the fact that he is convinced they will try to kill his father again, regardless if they make peace in the restaurant. Sollozzo and McCluskey leaving the restaurant alive means Vito is dead. There is no realistic way Michael is having second thoughts about it, which is reflected in Coppola’s use of the subway.
Tension doesn’t always come from conflict. Take Hitchcock’s story about suspense (or tension), for example. The imminent exploding of the bomb the audience knows is under the table crowded with people creates tension, but the scene is devoid of any conflict. Coppola creates a tense atmosphere by drawing out the scene with structural hesitations, making the audience wait in anticipation.
We know that Michael isn’t devoting every fiber of his being to keep from freaking because we already saw how calm he was in putting himself in harm’s way saving his father’s life at the hospital. Just in case the audience missed this important aspect of his character, Coppola even goes as far as to explicitly show that Michael himself notices how calm he is in a tense situation.
To say there is conflict in Michael means you must chop the legs out from under the cold, calculated, spoken-with-conviction “I’ll kill 'em both” speech, when in fact, that speech is a window into the true Michael.
I didn’t get the impression that the smoothing of the hair was emotional conflict - Michael was making himself look calm so Sollozzo and McCluskey didn’t suspect him.
And also as a dramatic gesture, to show that Michael was about to enter fully into the Mafia life he had been trying to avoid. And he was calming himself, as the first instance of becoming the stone-cold Mafia boss who ultimately winds up killing his own brother.
Regards,
Shodan
There could have been a lot of McCluskey and Sollozzo’s associates that knew they were meeting with Michael. So being a suspect is a given. But to transition from that to having evidence that would prove Michael guilty is something else. Esp. given Vito’s friends in the police force and judicial system. If Michael had gone directly from the bathroom to start shooting, perhaps some of the people in the diner would have been too startled to note that the person shooting was the same person eating at the table earlier. Do you note that a person has gone into the bathroom and is now coming out? But the sitting down fills in people’s memories that this is the same guy as before. The Corleone’s needed witnesses’ memories to be a bit shaky.
In 1 they don’t mention what he did or his awards but in 2 when he is at the hearing it is stated he was awarded the Navy Cross which is just below the Medal of Honor. It is rarely awarded.
Of course as usual his ribbons in the film are not exactly correct. No Navy Cross, instead there is a Silver Star. Next is the Navy and Marine Corps Medal which is the highest award for heroism that is not in combat. Then the Purple Heart which makes sense. The bottom row is the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal which makes sense and the European/African/Middle East Campaign Medal which does not. Last is the WWII Victory Medal.
The book states his deeds were heroic enough to get his picture and story in Life magazine. He was also wounded and had a long recovery before returning home.
Many web pages detail Michael Coleone’s ribbons, he was quite the war hero. He went to three separate theatres. I didn’t notice until just recently, his ribbons are prominently displayed, and easy to see to a viewer who cares… See this page: https://bamfstyle.com/2015/09/02/godfather-michael-usmc/ It analyzes the entire outfit Micheal wears – humble but proud of himself.
I like in Godfather II when he testifies to Congress, and Kay calls him out. Michael lied to HER government, not to the Government or his government or their government. This Government is HERS, she’s the WASP, the government belongs to her. 'Course, she doesn’t even know the congressman’s lawyer is on Hyman Roth’s payroll.
Yet Michael never says, “Hey, who took a bullet for this country?”
nm
It was hardly a secret. McCluskey reported where he was going to the NYPD - that’s how Sonny’s people learned the location of the meeting so they could hide the gun. Sollozzo’s people had arranged for the hostages (better explained in the book) to guarantee Michael’s safety. The Tattaglia family would know, because they were Sollozzo’s partners and Barzini would know, because he was the mastermind behind the original plan.
I seriously doubt McCluskey logged that he was having dinner with Vito Corleone’s son and Sollozzo!
That there’s a meeting would be known to several people. That the meeting was with Michael was a much smaller group of people. The driver of their car would know about it, for sure. After that we just have to assume that certain close associates also knew.
I have always wanted a thread on what Michael did to get the Navy Cross. Where was he? I personally want to believe he was on Peleliu when he smoked that machine gun nest, or whatever in-your-face, brain chewing fight he was in. That’s the joke, see. Sonny thinks he’s in a war. Michael knows worlds more about fighting than Sonny could ever imagine. When Michael he go in? Was he on Iwo? He wasn’t shot up, so he was definitely on Peleliu as they moved across the Pacific. Maybe they pulled him out before Okinawa to promote the war stuff.
Anyway, what I can see, after blowing these two creeps away, is that he’s just gone through combat for the first time since getting out, and well, maybe a little PTSD. Maybe.
It’s my guess he mainly served on board a ship as, e.g., a gunnery or security officer. This would explain his ribbons from the Mediterranean and Pacific campaigns, since a number of US Navy vessels participated in both:
I get to bump my response because of today’s column. Yay.