The story starts with one godfather and ends with a different one.
So who’s story is the movie telling: Vito’s of Michael’s?
Michael’s of course.
Michael’s. It’s story arc from his not wanting to be a party of he family business, to being reluctantly dragged in, to wholesale leadership and control.
It’s the story of how Vincent Mancini went from being Sonny to being Micheal.
Given that Vito’s story ends while Michael’s continues, it’s clearly about Michael and how he eventually became his father.
Remember how Michael tells the story to Kay about how Don Vito gets the bandleader to free Johnny Fontaine from his contract? (The bandleader is told, “Either his signature or his brains will be on that contract. His choice.”) Michael says, “That’s my family, Kay. That’s not me.” By the end of the movie, of course, Michael is doing things just like that. Like arranging for the murder of his brother-in-law, Connie’s husband (the groom from the beginning of the movie).
Note that no other character has such an extended sub-plot like Michael does in Sicily.
The novel has diversions involving secondary characters like Lucy and Johnny. And it’s poorer for them.
But the Sicily arc is important. Michael builds on his vengeance mentality, he comes back as his father’s protégé, it strains things between him and Kay, etc.
After he is shot, Vito has little to do with the remaining action.
Funny this thread should appear now- I just watched The Godfather for the first time last weekend. Michael Corleone is the main character.
It’s the story of Michael, Michael’s father, Michael’s siblings, Michael’s wives, Michael’s friends, and Michael’s enemies.
You could make a decent argument that it is an ensemble story, with no single main character or point of view. But I agree that Michael is the best single candidate.
Michael is absolutely the main character, but Vito is indispensable. Think about it: could you make the movie without Sonny? It would be a stretch, but you probably could - Clemenza or somebody could probably take his role as the belligerent leader while Vito was laid up. Could you make the movie without Fredo or Tom? Certainly. Not that they aren’t great characters, but they could be written out–Tom WAS written out of III. You couldn’t make the movie without Vito, full stop. The Godfather is probably best characterized as a story about how Michael falls into his father’s legacy. It’s not the story of Michael alone.
It’s about how they pulled Michael in the first time.
The novel probably lends itself to this interpretation more than the film. **Ftg **makes a good point that Michael’s Sicily arc is important to the film and that no other character is developed this way. That’s true of the film, but not of the novel. There are long stretches giving Vito’s background (that would, of course, be used in Part II). Lucy Mancini’s story is practically a novella in itself; she is barely glimpsed in the film, though she’s invoked a bit in Part III. Johnny Fontane gets almost as much attention as Lucy in the novel, arguably more than Fredo or Tom. He’s more of a presence than Lucy in the film, but he is still relatively inconsequential; casual fans probably remember the horse’s head more vividly than the reason it was there.
I’m probably forgetting others - I haven’t read the novel in over 30 years. Damn, I’m old.
I watched them again recently as the Godfather Saga, where the whole thing is re-edited chronologically. Not my favorite version, but nice to see it that way once after having seen it a dozen times the regular way. What really struck me was how much it was hurt by them not making a deal with Richard S. Castellano as Clemenza for the Godfather Part 2. Michael V. Gazzo as Pentangeli was good, but his character comes out of nowhere. We were invested in Clemenza over 1 1/2 films and it would it would have had much more emotional resonance if he had been the character in GF2.
Michael although the book may be more Vito. The book has Vito’s life story while everything before 1945 is omitted in the first movie.
In the book, a number of scenes are described through Tom Hagen’s thoughts The meetings with the four favor seekers and Johnny Fontane. The meeting with Woltz. The conference with Sollozzo. The peace conference with all the zmafia bosses nationwide except Chicago. But then Tom is both the outsider by ethnicity but also the consiglieri : the second most important man in the organization.
In the novel after Michael recovers from the car bombing, he tells Don Tommasino to tell his father he is ready to be his son. When Vito is shot, Michael and Kay are about to elope. She wants to get married without telling anyone. Michael says he has to tell his father. Vito will understand why he got married; he won’t understand why Michael didn’t tell him. They aren’t staying in the family compound in Long Beach because Vito, strait laced in sex, wouldn’t let them sleep together. Their plans are to become teachers/professors.
But the novel also emphasizes that Michael sees that Sicily is a land of ghosts, condemned to poverty because of the mob. It leaves him determined to make the family legit. Which happens in the novel but not the two sequels.
That is how I always thought as well. It is the only major flaw in the movie and it’s a big one. The story is compelling, well written and wonderfully acted but the arc doesn’t really make sense without Clemenza. Clemenza is the most important character to Vito in Deniro’s portion of the movie. The Michael half works as an arc if it shows the end of Clemenza.
The characters are just there to move us from one violent scene to the next. You may as well discuss character development in an old Peter North movie.
Wow. You really missed a lot of that movie.
Vito is an important character, but Michael is the character with the arc.