I’m not a doctor, but I’ll quote part of the relevant passages from the book. This scene takes place after Lucy has her first sexual encounter with her new boyfriend, the doctor at the casino/hotel where she is working. The person speaking here is the boyfriend/ doctor. he’s speaking after having, shall we say, examined her personally.
"Now let me tell you what your problem is. it’s not the equivalent of being ugly, of having bad skin, or squinty eyes that facial surgery really doesn’t solve. Your problem is like having a wart, or a mole on your chin or an improperly formed ear…What you have is a pelvic malformation, what we surgeons call a weakening of the pelvic floor. It usually comes after childbearing but it can be simply bad bone structure…It’s a health thing too. If you don’t get it corrected you’re going to have a hell of a lot of trouble later on with your whole plumbing system. The structure becomes progressively weaker unless it’s corrected by surgery.
That Sonny was especially well equipped or that Lucy Mancini was large? Both seemed plausible to me. I think Sonny had a proportionally large girth that made him fit Lucy so well.
No, I know what happened…but why would Puzo include something like that? It was so bizarre. It veered into PSA territory. And add me to one of those skeptical that vagina anatomy works that way.
Your question could have been clearer. I think the answer is simple: sensationalism.
VaginoplastyI believe is a not-uncommon operation (sometimes advertised as “vaginal rejuvenation” or “vaginal tightening.”) It’s usually in response to childbirth or aging. I don’t know how common it would be in other cases.
I just looked it up because I was curious - I didn’t remember it either. Turns out it is a deleted scene :). It was restored for at least the unified two film video release, ironically a shorter version of the films cut down from the ( slightly cut-down ) first unified two film TV release. May have also been in that TV release, but wasn’t included in any of the theatrical releases or the later three film unified version.
Chronologically it apparently takes place after Michael returns from Sicily and is discussing the peace with Don Vito. Given that bit of a dialogue, I can see Little Nemo’s interpretation.
Sonny having a big schlong is implied in an early scene of the film. During Connie’s wedding there’s a shot of Sonny’s wife and her friends at a table and she holds her hands a distance apart, then moves them further, and then further apart. She and all her friends then start laughing but then she sees Sonny with Lucy and she stops. There isn’t any audible dialog, it’s deliberately drowned out by the wedding music.
Some people in previous threads have speculated that Puzo had a relative with "female plumbing problems" and this was his way of getting the word out. I think he and his publisher felt they needed more sex scenes and a character in the abortionist Jules Segal who is smart, flippant and a bit irrerevant to anyone not named Corleone. But it is kind of strange to include it.
When Puzo wrote the book he was almost 50, owed money to people and not an expert on the Mafia.
In the novel, after the murder of Carlo, Kay realizes Michael did it and returns with the children to her parents in New Hampshire. Eventually Tom goes to get her and eventually tells her the truth. Tom also says that if she tells Michael what he says, then he is a dead man. Kay and the children are the only ones that Michael would never hurt. Carlo and Tessio betrayed the family and the lives of family members would always be in jeopardy if they lived.
Okay, my apologies. I remember seeing the scene but I hadn’t realized it wasn’t in the theatrical cut. I checked and it was a deleted scene as Tamerlane says; it was apparently added back in to some of the TV edits, which is where I must have seen it.
This is indeed quite telling. It occurs in The Godfather Saga version, right after the meeting and before the scene where Michael goes to see Kay (which takes place 2 years later in 1950).
It takes place in the garden where the later strategy sessions between Vito and Michael also take place.
In this scene, Michael points out that he is not bound to keep the peace, which makes Vito smile. The planning for revenge starts that day.
The retaliation takes place in 1955, 7 years later. That’s a lot of time. Michael needed that time to prepare. The big challenge is that he didn’t know which capos he could trust. So he started a new subgroup under Al Neri. (Note: In the book, Neri killed Moe Greene after the Vegas meeting and well before the attacks on the heads of the other 5 families. The movie doesn’t show who shot Moe as Neri, using his old police uniform, kills Barzini and it’s implied that Moe was shot the same day.)
Little about Neri and his group is shown in the film. Some griping from Tom about the new men, etc.
Afterwards, Neri takes over Sal’s capo regime.
If you read the book or see the Saga version, it’s pretty clear that the Corleones are weak after 1948. It’s less clear in the movie. But the comments from the other gangsters on Vito losing his grip aren’t just bragging.
Without a war, the other families got careless. Fighting the long war was part of the Corleone DNA.
Woltz, for example, couldn’t possibly have outlasted them. Even with the help of a fixer along the lines of Eddie Mannix.
Also Rocco Lampone, the guy that buys it at the end of Godfather II after successfully killing Hyman Roth. Michael kept Don Vito’s experienced old capos around, but in time-tried feudal fashion he made sure to surround himself with new men beholden specifially to him.
I think the timing is important. It wasn’t that Michael and the Don agreed before hand that the Don would pledge his peace while Michael didn’t so he could technically be free to seek revenge. The meeting with the heads of the families where the Don made his pledge took place before the conversation with Michael.
Besides, I think we shouldn’t give too much weight to any promises. Both Michael and the Don were at heart criminals; they would honor a promise when it suited their purpose or when the consequences for breaking the promise were too high. But they wouldn’t stick by a promise just because they had made a promise. Look at Michael and Carlo; Michael told Carlo his only punishment would be being kicked out of the family business - and then had him killed a few minutes later. Michael could lie to Carlo because Carlo had no allies who would support him.
What does the novel have to say about him? In the film his killing of Roth looks like a suicide mission, like there wasn’t really much chance of him getting away and he knew it but he did it anyway. Was he sacrificing himself for his family or some serious debt to the Corleones?
From the clip (about 1:30 here) it looks like he was planning to get away in the confusion, and he might have made it if the agent with Roth hadn’t been willing to fire into a crowd of civilians. He almost made it to the stairs. There was probably a getaway car waiting for him.
There’s nothing in the novel about Roth or Cuba. That happens in the future. All they took from the novel that was used in GF II were the parts where DeNiro played the young man Vito and a child actor who played the child Vito.
Rocco Lampone wasn’t one of Don Vito’s old capos. During Don Michael’s time when Vito was his Consigliere, Michael brought Rocco up to Capo. Hagen got upset that Michael was setting up Lampone with his own caporegime behind his back. Vito reassured Hagen by telling him that HE knew Tom would figure it out. Both Michael and Vito knew that when Vito passed, Michael would need someone he trusted to replace whichever Capo (Clemenza or Tessio) who tried to sell him out to Barzini.