The Road to Hell:
A Romance with Crime
from The Blood
Poets: A Cinema of Savagery, 1958-1999, by Jake Horsley
The
cinema has always developed by means of a certain low cunning. We are driven
back to the blood, the thriller. And when we have attained to a more popular drama, even if it is the
simplest terms of blood on a garage floor, the screams of cars in flight, all
the old excitements at their simplest and most sure-fire, then we can
begin—secretly, with low cunning—to develop our poetic drama.
—Graham Greene, Mornings in the
Dark
Along with Altman, Coppola introduced a new
level of artistry to American movies. Unlike such directors as Penn and Peckinpah,
Coppola’s style was strangely muted, subdued, yet richer and more
textured, with an almost European flavor to it (not almost, either¾Coppola is of
Italian stock, obviously). The Godfather blends the best of the Italian and French styles,
the operatic, imposing grace of Bertolucci’s Conformist (for example), with the rough and ready,
pulpy, visceral excitement of American gangster movies. It’s the kind of
movie that the European directors (Bertolucci, Truffaut, Goddard, Chabrol, et
al.), with their unabashed admiration for crime-flicks and film noir, dreamed
of making, and of course, it required an American-born European to pull it off.
Coppola, at the tender age of thirty-two, pulled it off alright, and made not
only the finest gangster movie ever (matched only by Coppola himself, with the
sequel), but also a great American tragedy. The Godfather is almost Shakespearean in its scope and its
depth of character, yet it was taken from a pulp novel (by Mario Puzo, who
worked with Coppola on the screenplay), and there’s a certain irony here,
because the movie is
pulp, at a superficial level, and can be enjoyed as such¾the best pulp we ever had.
The action of the film has only cursory
relations to any historical Mafia, of that or any other period (the film begins
in 1945 and progresses through to the ’50s). It’s an artist’s
dream of the Mafia, and it transcends realism to achieve a sordid, sultry kind
of myth. The characters in The Godfather breathe, they are more than real to us, and their
story has assumed over the years something of the importance and vitality, the
weight, of legend (to Americans at least, but I think the film extends much
further than that, and has reached moviegoers everywhere). As a popular epic
saga, it holds something of the emotional significance for us that the exploits
of the gods once held for the Greeks. I don’t mean to be fanciful here;
modern culture has just as much need for archetypes¾for myths¾as did ancient, and there can be little argumen
t that movies, as the
most universally shared of all the art forms, have become not only our circuses
but also, to some extent, our churches. We go to them for glimpses of the
extraordinary, to experience sensations that are otherwise denied us (or which
we deny ourselves). It is through movies of course that America has
“colonized the consciousness” of Europe.[1] And this is how I am able¾or why I am inclined¾to speak of myself, when it comes to movies,
as an American. Art transcends all borders, they say, but trash simply extends
them.[2]
John Wayne, or Batman, or Marilyn Monroe, or
Betty Boop, all have their particular appeal to us, in so far as they awaken an
affinity within us,
an inner yearning to emulate or identify with¾or simply to
understand¾the qualities they embody. The more popular an
“icon” or “star” becomes, the more effectively it has
tapped into this “archetypal yearning” within us.[3] If movie stars have become our royalty, and
royalty are understood as the personifications¾or at least
the representatives¾of the gods, then it’s not overly
fanciful to say that certain film personalities have entered our collective
awareness, and that they inhabit it, almost like spirits acquiring a host. We
are possessed by the spirit of Han Solo and Indiana Jones, however, and not by that of Harrison Ford (mercifully;
although neither Solo nor Jones would be real to us without him). Likewise, the
characters of The Godfather¾which I think is the first completely
authentic modern myth in American cinema¾are real to
us in a way that the actors, great as they are, could never be. Sonny Corleone
and Tom Hagen and Fredo Corleone are far more lasting figures to us than James
Caan and Robert Duvall and John Cazale (though Duvall at least created one
other archetypal figure in his rabid Colonel Kilgore of Apocalypse Now). These are American heroes, not because they
are strong or virtuous or daring, but because they are real.[4]
The greatness of The Godfather is in the way in which, more than any other
film I’ve seen (save for the sequel) it creates a wholly integrated
landscape¾a world, if you will¾in which both
its characters and its action seem to move as it were spontaneously,
organically, and without the slightest sign of being prompted or written or
directed from “without.” (In this sense, the director and the
writer disappear, as well.) The world of The Godfather is, to put it bluntly, more real for most of
us than our everyday lives, and that is
what makes it myth. What is more real
than real life is the life of the imagination, the life of the soul, which is
communicated to us, presumably, via the gods, who are our own unconscious
creations.
Coppola, for a brief spell (his
“fall” was actually visible to us in Apocalypse Now, which began as a masterpiece and gradually
dissolved into a simple mess) was the film auteur as god (he was his own
creation), which is what made him the true leader of the American New Wave. The
fact that he chose for his act of creation¾his genesis¾the story of the Corleone family says as much about America itself as
it does about Coppola. The best way to understand, to absorb, the power and the
appeal of The Godfather,
perhaps, is to view its anti-hero—Don Vito Corleone and his son Michael
(they are really one soul in two bodies)—as an archetype embodied: the
corrupt and twisted realization of the American Dream¾a dream that
was false from the start and could only ever be realized as a nightmare.
Vito Corleone is the murderer as king (a
modern Macbeth), and the story of the Corleones is really the story of American
politics, as much as crime (at the very top of the pyramid, the film implies,
the two are synonymous). This is the first film in which murder took on an
apocalyptic, fatalistic, almost religious depth and meaning (a meaning not far
removed from that of Shakespeare’s Macbeth). The violence of The Godfather is stately and lugubrious, appalling in its
beauty and its inevitability, and the strange, terrible grandeur which it
assumes is due to the fact that the violence is not simply performed¾it is ordained.
The real crime and corruption of the film¾like that of
politics¾takes place behind closed doors, in the
shadowy lair of Don Vito, and later, of Michael, as they kiss and embrace their
lackeys and, like petty gods in business suits, pass sentence upon their
enemies.[5]
The film is the most dramatic and moving
illustration imaginable of Jesus’ question in the Gospel: “What
does it profit a man if he gaineth the whole world, but loseth his soul?”
With Vito Corleone, we do not (until the second film that is) get to see what
he was like when he did
have a soul (and lacked the world); but with Michael we get to watch the whole
tragic process from beginning to end (as it spans the two films, about six and
a half hours in length, it’s an epic journey, and no joy ride). In fact,
Vito Corleone is an entirely different case from his son Michael. I said they
were one soul in two bodies, but it might be more accurate to say that
Vito’s soul possesses, or overthrows (like a cuckoo invading the nest)
that of his son Michael, who becomes enslaved to the inexorable will of his
father, an empty shell of a man. The Godfather is about the sins of the father, and the legacy of
generations.
Monstrous old dinosaur that he is, Don Vito
seems perfectly reconciled to his station¾for all his
corruption he does not seem to be jaded (though his magnanimousness might well
be seen as a monumental kind of weariness), and the process by which he has
arrived at his position of Mafia don, feared and admired by all (a process we
get to witness in the second film), is one that he himself seems to have
assumed responsibility for. He’s
a self-made monster, with no regrets.
Michael, on the other hand, is drawn into his father’s shadow like a fly
into a web. When Don Vito learns that it was Michael who assassinated two of
his enemies, in the act that starts Michael on his father’s path (the
road to his ruin), Don Vito weeps.
We first see Michael as a young, fresh-faced
and handsome soldier (still in uniform) returning from military service for the
wedding of his brother Sonny; we learn from the start that he intends to have
no part in “the family business.” He tells his lover Kay (Diane
Keaton), “that’s my family, it’s not me.” And at the
time he says it, it’s true. But circumstances conspire to bring Michael
into the fold, against all his nobler instincts. When he is harassed by the
police chief while guarding his father from his enemies (Don Vito has been
wounded in an assassination attempt, and Michael finds him alone and
unprotected in the hospital), and his jaw is broken in a senseless act of
brutality, Michael begins to smolder internally. When later this same police
chief is becoming an intolerable thorn in the side of the Corleones’
business dealings, Michael volunteers for the job of “removing”
him. His brother Sonny can hardly believe his ears, but Michael is so coldly
determined, so ruthlessly insistent, that his brothers, respecting his will,
cease trying to protect him, and allow him to perform the deed. The scene that
follows, in the Italian restaurant where Michael has dinner with his victims,
is the high point of the movie, both dramatically and thematically. Michael
excuses himself to go to the bathroom, where he finds the gun, as arranged,
hidden behind the toilet; the handle of the gun (a small revolver) has been
covered with adhesive tape, presumably to avoid fingerprints. Michael takes the
gun in hand, goes back into the restaurant, and sits down. After an almost
unbearable moment of hesitation, he stands up and coolly blows the two men away
(if he’s cool, he’s the only one who is; the cinema audience may be
paralyzed with tension by now). This is the point, this precise moment when the
gun is fired, that Michael actually joins the fold. Michael turns and leaves
the restaurant, letting the gun fall at his side as he does so. There is a
high-pitched shrieking noise on the soundtrack, an undergound train passing,
but it might be the sound of his soul itself, crying out in anguish for the
deed. This scene is probably the most supenseful sequence ever put on film, and
even after half a dozen viewings, it is still almost unbearable to watch. More
than any other in the film, it demonstrates the almost supernatural talents
with which Coppola was working at the time. His technique¾his art¾is so assured, so complete, that there’s
really no way to analyze or account for the effectiveness, the sheer power, of
the scene. There’s really no need to, either.[6] The scene also stands alone in American crime
movies as the one and only time in which we get to experience what it might
actually be like to commit cold-blooded murder. To compare this scene with The
French Connection,
to which it bears superficial resemblances, is to make clear the difference
between the work of genius and that of mere craftsmanship. The distinction is
about as great as that between a stage magician and a miracle worker. Friedkin
performs tricks, Coppola works miracles.
Coppola was undoubtedly aware of the
significance¾the central importance¾of the scene, and treated it accordingly. All his energies as an
artist seem to be concentrated into making it work, and this intensity has in
turn translated to Pacino, without whom, of course, nothing can happen. We read
in Michael’s eyes, and his cagey, coiled motions, his awareness¾and it’s palpable, like animal dread¾of the
absolute irrevocability of the step he is taking. It’s not that within
moments he will go from a free man to a fugitive; it is that his innocence is
to be forever lost to him (perhaps it was really lost the moment his jaw was
shattered, for we saw that in his eyes too)¾that with
one, self-determined act, he goes from an ordinary young man to a killer.
It’s the Mafioso’s equivalent of losing his virginity, and we see
here, once and for all, just how little romance there really is to this world.
Coppola pulls no punches¾we feel all the agony and despair that comes from watching a good man
go to hell. This is what makes Pacino, and not Brando, the center, the heart,
of the movie¾because Vito is at home in hell (as is said of First Blood’s Rambo: “What you choose to call
hell, he calls home”); hence he is useless as a point of view for the
film. Coppola needs a surrogate, to put himself, and therefore us, into the action;
this surrogate is Pacino. We feel with devastating force the completeness (and
complexity) of Michael’s tragedy¾it is the
tragedy not of death or of failure, but of loss. Loss is perhaps what we all fear the most,
even if we aren’t quite sure just what we fear losing. The Godfather makes it plain enough; it gives us not only
an American tragedy, but the tragedy of Man¾the lost
soul.
The fact that Michael Corleone is, in the
profoundest sense, a loser, is what makes him the real anti-hero of American movies.
After all, the anti-hero is the denial or absence of the heroic¾not merely its subversion. No Name and Harry (and even David and
Alex), for all their brutality and lack of common chivalry, are still basically
heroic figures, in the sense that they retain control of their own destinies¾they are winners. Michael Corleone, on the other hand, although he
retains a certain noblesse¾a corpse-like dignity¾is nobody’s idea of a hero. He is a beaten man, devoid not only
of morality and integrity, but even of his very humanity. Without soul, he has
no way to enjoy this world that is now his oyster. (The first film implies
this, I think, but the second makes it manifest.) That’s a wretched state
for anyone to end up in, but for a once strong and virtuous man like Michael,
it’s a travesty. Obviously, his strength was unequal to his ordeal, his
wisdom insufficient to meet his challenge, and his virtue too shaky to stand up
to the life of vice that he inherited. The Godfather, without even trying, is a cautionary fable:
it’s not about crime, it’s about sin.
*
Blood is a big expense.
—Sollozzo, The Godfather
The uncanny thing about The Godfather is the way it presents its
“heroes.” There had been dozens of gangster movies before, of
course, particularly the Warner films of the ’30s and ’40s starring
James Cagney and Ed
ward G. Robinson; but in these films, although the
protagonists were portrayed as charismatic, virile, at times even admirably so,
there was never any danger of mistaking them for ordinary men, and they
inevitably got their “comeuppance” in the end. They were
“heroes” only so far as they were the protagonists at the center of
a story. We identified and even sympathized with them, but only up to a point. The
Godfather begins at
this point, and then passes way beyond it.
Coppola
gives us decent, loyal, soft-spoken (Sonny excepted) family men in a shady
business, who happen to be capable of great evil. But he never attempts to
define them by their acts. No more than the man who collects garbage is a
garbageman, these men who order murder as casually as other people order pizza
are not simply murderers. They are, as the character Sollozzo (Al Lettieri)
puts it, “businessmen,” who “don’t like
violence,” but find it necessary, from time to time, to advance the
business. The film, while “justifying” murder as a part of
business, is at the same time condemning business as a form of murder. This
ambiguity, or ambivalence, is at the heart of the picture, and is never
resolved (Coppola had to make a second film to do that). The film is so
brazenly stylish, rich in atmosphere, so affectionate, and above all romantic,
that we are drawn into the world of the Corleones from the start, barely having
time to question just what we are doing here. It fulfills an old audience
fantasy to “see behind closed doors,” and to “get in with the
big boys,” to hobnob with the rich and dangerous. And, unlike Don
Vito’s flunkies and associates, we don’t have to stand in line to
see him. (Unless we go on a Saturday night, that is.)
Brando commands the screen from the very first
moment he’s on it (the camera spins around over his shoulder and there he
is). He’s menacing, slightly monstrous, but also mesmerizing, seductive
(just as Robert De Niro would be in the second film)¾a man who
commands our immediate, undivided attention. These qualities are what make
Brando, the actor, perfect¾essential¾for the role.
When Don Vito berates the singer Johnny Fontaine (Al Martino) for whining about
his failing career, he is unexpectedly crude, and even comic, in his mockery of
the singer’s crocodile tears. “Be a man!” he snaps, and we
know at once that nothing is more important in this world than keeping up
appearances: never show your weakness. Don Vito has a genuine dignity, a sort
of stature that seems to come from an inner strength and serenity, such as the
other characters are conspicuously lacking. Indeed, as the film progresses,
Coppola contrasts the three sons with their father, always to the sons’
detriment. Sonny is rash and unthinking, Fredo (John Cazale) is weak
(he’s never even involved in the business discussions), and Michael,
though he’s cool and intelligent, lacks the strength of character¾the integrity¾of his father. As the new Don, he resorts to
cunning and deceit as Vito never did, unable to rely on simply being formidable
(as Blake wrote¾“the weak in courage is strong in
cunning”).
All of these characters (each of them
involved, to varying degrees, in the bloodshed) have our deepest sympathies
because Coppola and his actors make them so real¾so alive¾that we instinctively accept (as we do in life) that there is far more
to them than meets the eye, that they are more than just the sum of their
(visible) parts, and that we cannot judge them by their acts or words. In a word,
we always give them the benefit of the doubt. Coppola plays on this doubt for
all it’s worth, and on our desire to like characters who, as played by
these actors at least, are so eminently likeable. And he draws us into their
world like a master, seduces us and converts us, and before we know it, their
thing has become our
thing¾cosa nostra.
Coppola’s talent is so formidable that
he doesn’t need to be manipulative to achieve his ends, and there is
little cunning, and no deceit, in his maneu
vers. The very first act of violence
we see, for example, is arguably the most heinous. Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall)
goes to talk with a film producer who’s keeping Johnny Fontaine’s
career from taking off, and Tom is so incredibly cordial, soft-spoken and
respectful (even in the face of a barrage of vulgar insults) that we can only
marvel at the serenity that such confidence and power brings. When the producer
refuses to “grant this favor,” Tom leaves, remarking simply¾and ominously¾that “Mr. Corleone is a man who insists on
hearing bad news immediately.” The following morning, the producer wakes
up to find blood on the sheets, and draws them back to find his beloved
racehorse’s severed head staring back at him. Coppola doesn’t
linger on the sight: he cuts from close-up to medium shot to long shot; then,
as the producer begins to scream, he cuts to outside the mansion, as the scream
breaks through the early morning air. It’s an emotionally devastating
moment, both repulsive and appalling. The film then cuts to Tom, sitting with a
drink in his hand, telling Don Vito about the flight! And so we know, less than
half an hour into the film, that this is what these men are capable of. And they are
capable of far more besides, we have to imagine (this having been just a minor
run-in with some “small fry”¾a hotshot
producer who didn’t know just who he was messing with).[7] But Coppola doesn’t make too much of
it, either. He’s as matter- of-fact in his exposure of the evil that
these men do as he is in the demonstration of his affection for the men
themselves. As Kael writes: “we look at Clemenza (Richard Castellano) as
objectively when he is cooking spaghetti as we do when he is garrotting a
former associate.”[8] He doesn’t condone or judge them, but
nor does he justify or defend what they do. That’s up to us, and somehow
(until the end of the film at least) we remain in two minds.
These men are not heroes¾they are simply unusually ruthless, capable men in a dirty business.
By the same token then, they are not villains, either. Coppola¾without the least fanfare¾seems to be doing away with such childish
ideas as heroism and villainy, and even good and evil, once and for all. (The
second film, which though far less romantic, gets into deeper, almost
metaphysical territory; it demonstrates what Hitchcock once observed—see Hitchcock
on Hitchcock—“our
good and evil are getting closer together,” and finally despairs of ever
separating them again.) This is what makes Don Vito, and later his son Michael,
the ultimate anti-heroes: both of them, Don Vito in his own grandiose, mythical
way, Michael in a more sordidly realistic way, negate the concept of hero
entirely, as something that has no place¾no meaning¾amid the moral complexities of the modern world. Yet the film (or
Coppola anyway) does betray a certain morality, or at least a fondness for
tradition, in the way in which it juxtaposes Vito with Michael. Although on the
one hand, it is mapping the inevitable, inexorable progress of corruption¾or moral decay¾on the other hand, Coppola seems to be saying,
“they don’t make gangsters like they used to”; or even,
“crime ain’t what it used to be.” Because, although Don Vito
is a ruthless, unforgiving, vengeful, violent man, he is also an honest, caring,
loyal father and husband¾a family man. Michael, on the other hand (in
the acts that end both films), turns even on his own family, and so renounces
the one thing that can redeem him, along with it all honor, all decency, and
finally, all humanity. Ostensibly, he acts according to the Sicilian code of
vengeance, but he is really only acting out of cold, unfeeling, and personal hatred and bitterness¾business has now completely eradicated family.
This vicious cycle of bloodshed may be seen,
in the second film, to have its commencement when young Don Vito (De Niro)
returns to Sicily to avenge the death of his family at the hands of a local
mafia chief. The one-time mobster is now a frail, half-deaf old man living out
the last of his days sitting pathetically on his porch, like a stuffed dummy.
He cuts a truly pitiful figure,
harmless to anyone, and we can only feel sadness and pity at the sight¾this man who was once so powerful and dangerous has been reduced, by
the ruthless passage of time, to a decrepit, senile husk. If Don Vito felt the
same way, if he could see beyond his own pathological desire for blood, for
“justice,” he would undoubtedly walk away, and leave vengeance to
nature, or to God. Vito, by
claiming vengeance as his, commits a hideous act of hubris. He slaughters the old man, slicing
him practically in two with his knife (losing one of his men in the process),
and for what? When Vito kills Fanucci, the Black Hand, he is doing it to
protect his own interests and even, to some extent, to liberate the
neighborhood from Fanucci’s reign of oppression. It is an atrocious act,
but at least partially justified. It is not, in any case, gratuitous, because
it serves some positive, practical purpose. When Vito kills the old Sicilian,
however, he is acting purely out of petty spite (disguised as Sicilian
justice), and he thereby starts a cycle of family-revenge and senseless
bloodshed that will, finally, culminate in the act of fratricide, between his
own sons. There is no escaping this vicious circle, Coppola seems to be saying,
once it has been set in motion.
In the first film, Don Vito attempts to do
just this when he “foregoes” his revenge for the murder of Santino
in order to make the peace between the warring families. This is his gesture,
and it is the most magnanimous, noble gesture in either of the films (though
the mild-mannered baker Fabrizio’s selfless protection of Don Vito may be
more touching to us[9]). We see that, hopeless as it may be, Don
Vito wishes somehow to repent of his former evils, to forsake or even to
renounce them, and knows instinctively that the only way to do this is to break
out of the circle that he stepped into so many years ago, a circle which
demands ever more blood for blood, endlessly, ad nauseum.[10] Unfortunately, by now it is too late, because
he has already “infected” his own son, Michael, with the bloodlust.
When Don Vito dies, the pact dies with him, and Michael (admittedly acting out
of self-preservation) initiates a bloody series of revenge-murders to eliminate
his enemies and consolidate his position as the new don, thereby setting the
circle spinning again. The film brilliantly intercuts these killings with
Michael’s assumption of the role of godfather to his sister’s
child: as blood flows and bullets fly at his command, he is asked by the
priest: “Do you renounce Satan and all his works?” Michael answers without hesitation,
“I do.”
In Brando’s last scene¾also his best¾he admits to Michael that he had hoped,
dreamed, of better things for his son¾that he would
become a senator, a president, but not a gangster. By admitting that he had
never wanted Michael to follow in his own footsteps, Don Vito betrays his own
ambivalence, his doubts and his regrets, about his own life, the things that he
has done and the path he has chosen. He’s saying, it may have been good
enough for me, but it’s not good enough for my sons. The irony¾the tragedy¾of this is that, in an almost Biblical, yet
also quite mundane fashion, the sins of the father will indeed fall, tenfold,
onto the sons. Don Vito’s own acts, his own choices, have, in spite of
all his best intentions (perhaps even because of them), condemned his children
to face the consequences of these acts, consequences of which he himself has
only the merest intimation. After all, Don Vito dies (playing in the tomato
grove with his grandson) a fulfilled,
reasonably happy man. Michael, on the other hand, who was never cut out
for a life of crime,
lives on, a soul in torment. When he assures his father,
“We’ll get there, Pop,” where exactly does he mean? Where is
the road chosen by young Vito leading, if not to hell?
31. From an early age my development was informed
(some might say impeded) by a steady imput of American movies¾my first clear memories of the cinema, significantly enough, are of
the Spielberg films Jaws
and (later) Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
32. Where once we had warriors and gods,
however, we now have movie stars and action heroes. By ignoring the reality,
the importance, of archetypal symbols in our society, we have thereby rendered
them infantile, degrading them to the level of mere childish things, fantasies
and obsessions, to be put away in maturity.
33. In a way, the question raised at times¾and by actors themselves¾as to whether or not an actor is an artist,
hinges on this point. The artistry of an actor comes from his whole being¾even more than a dancer, he himself is his craft, there is no point at which a
separation can be established, and when an actor is successful in his art and
his craft, that actor disappears, and is replaced by something else. As such, he is
entirely at the service of the director, and beyond this, the film itself. He
becomes rather like paints in a box, or colors on the canvas¾he’s not the artist, he’s the art.
34. As Pauline Kael writes: “The
killing, connived at in the darkness, is the secret horror, and it surfaces in
one bloody outburst after another. It surfaces so often that after a while it
doesn’t surprise us, and the recognition that the killing is an integral
part of business policy takes us a long way from the fantasy outlaws of old
movies. These gangsters don’t satisfy our adventurous fantasies of
disobeying the law; they’re not defiant, they’re furtive and submissive.
They are required to be more obedient than we are; they live by taking
orders.” “Alchemy,” from Deeper into Movies, p. 422.
35. Coppola retained some of this wizardry
even up until Apocalypse Now, in the opening scenes and in the sequence where the Playboy bunnies
dance for the troops, who cannot contain their excitement and spill out onto
the stage, forcing the bunnies to flee into their helicopters. The sexual
tension of the scene, like the tension of the restaurant scene in The
Godfather, is overwhelming, and overall
the effect, for equally unfathomable reasons, is spellbinding.
36.
Rumors that the Johnny Fontaine character was based on Frank Sinatra, and that
Sinatra had similar such links (and debts?) to the Mafia give an added layer of
authentic horror to this sequence.