The Tragic Greatness of

Arts & Letters

Tragic Greatness

Michael Corleone is successful precisely because he corrupts American institutions and puts on a show for respectability in the business world.

Francis Ford Coppola directed “The Godfather: Part II” based on Mario Puzo’s novel. Photo by CBS via Getty Images

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, one of very few movies in the last half-century that can contend for the title of greatest film made in America. Coppola is still identified with it, although he has other great films to his name, and in our public memory he has simply taken possession of the story, although it was already an incredibly popular 1969 novel by Mario Puzo when Coppola got the idea to make it a movie, with the novelist’s help. Both are very different, with the film being elegant and poignant in its dignity and the novel lacking an intricate structure and being trashy.

The Godfather is worth celebrating, but it is no easy feat to celebrate it, beyond putting the disc in and watching it again, remembering the times before. Three major issues prevent us from expressing our affection for the film, or from fully understanding its greatness and its artistic potential.

First, Coppola, a master filmmaker who was important to America, was awarded Oscars. Now, there are almost no masters and movies almost have lost all their popularity. Some people worship films as art, while others worship Marvel movies and the like. With the degrading of audiences and time separation, the fragments Coppola created have become less important than they once were. As a result, no American movie has any significance to them as Americans.

Second, like we’ve forgotten about rare talents, so have we forgotten it is possible to be together, and not get distracted by distractions we can forget quickly. These days, Americans tend to pass onto their children Star Wars films that are worse than those they watched as kids.

Third. Perhaps as a result, we’ve lost sight of America. A story of greatness and promise can tell the tale about the pain and hope involved in loving America as people used to love it. It is possible to see the country through the eyes of someone who wishes to live it. The Godfather is a story about Americanization and it has a protagonist made remarkable for his virtues and vices, remarkable compared to the boring ones now common.

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This perspective might help us to look again at the film and understand why its quality is so remarkable. My friends and I wondered when Michael Corleone became an American after I last watched the movie. ‘

Perhaps it was at the start, as he arrives at his sister Connie’s wedding dressed in an Army uniform. He is a college student who had volunteered for WWII. His girlfriend is distracted by him explaining that he doesn’t look like his family. They shock and delight in continuing to live in Old World habits and beliefs, and in the midst of deadly violence. Kay is a WASP in the Ivy League. Kay may be a sign that he has become Americanized and wants to abandon the life he was raised.

But Michael is famous for pursuing his heart’s desires and becoming the father he wished he never would have to be. The great transformation masks Michael’s Americanization. He proposes, for example, to convince his criminal family members that they ought to kill cops, and then he will volunteer to take the responsibility. They didn’t think of it. There are limits to the power struggle between authority and crime, they believe. Although assassination may not be very American, feeling confident that authority doesn’t matter and that the public can be persuaded by the media and public opinion is a good thing. Michael is more familiar with America than his brothers.

After this horrible crime, Michael runs to Sicily in an attempt to hide from the police. While he learns about his country, he also tries to get away with it. He continues Americanization upon his return. To achieve his high ambitions, he marries Kay who had long forgotten about him. He then sets out to murder his brother-in law to realize his ambition. This foreshadows the eventual death of his brother. These bloody acts are common wherever cruelty, intrigue and treachery are prevalent; they’re not American. However, the concept behind these crimes is an individualistic form of individualism. This destroys the only non-American principle Michael left behind: an unconditional devotion to his family. One cannot change or dissolve this bond without adding to its grandeur and its clientele. The mafia’s success depends upon a perverse but determined insistence on family that is not common in modern times. This is the reason we don’t know how to prepare for it. Michael, who is a man who holds nothing sacred and loses all his loved ones, must be left alone.

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Michael is a successful businessman and plans to relocate the family’s business to Las Vegas. He follows the symbolism of America’s expansion and is a proponent for Americanization by being as flexible as possible. He is the right man to help you make your fortune. After his situation as an heir is overthrown by his enemies and his own hands, a cold calculation appears to be left. Money replaces old rivalries and fidelities. This is also part of Americanization. It’s a perverted view of self-interest and modern rationality. You might even say that the corporation has replaced the family in light of our society’s fifty-year history.

Michael is a cautionary tale for Americans. His father is an immigrant, and he’s ambitious but also humiliated. He is a victim of discrimination. It’s the old liberal summation all the problems in the world. But he refuses to be equal with other citizens. Michael learned from his father that he had great ambitions and a desire to be a senator, governor or one of the rulers.

Father & son are both worthy to play the lead in any drama. They’re men of a far greater stature than we normally see, and can give us a glimpse at what drives great companies. In America, we believe that anyone can be elected president without much reflection about what it might mean. Maybe more discrimination in the case of mafia would have made it safer. American hypocrisy is one problem but organized crime corruption city politics is another.

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Religion is also under attack by Michael. He plans massacres while attending church with the brutality of a Cesare Bogia. His indifference towards moral rules is astonishing, suggesting that modernization might not be as pleasant or as decent as we think. It is possible to be truly terrifying for individuals who are free from any form of restraint. This was even true before the advent of the cults of authenticity.

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The immigrant’s story, the self-made man’s story, the American story of achieving great success, which is compatible with and perhaps even necessary to national greatness, is almost entirely reversed in the Godfather. Michael Corleone is a corrupt American politician who puts on an appearance of business respectability. His part in a progressive political corruption that has affected America, especially the elites. It is at their level that he works, often behind closed doors. Corleone’s conspiratorial activities make every notion of representation and deliberation vulnerable. However, he is more of a sign than a source of the decline in political virtue.

Maybe the strangest thing about the movie and its fame is that The Godfather suggests the most interesting men are not people we could get along with, much less depend on. Americans in the ’70s were shedding, perhaps, a certain naivety, but in favor of what? Now, we are at a similar point. The best thing that we have is a Dark Knight, who protects law and order without any hope for a reward. Perhaps we should revisit The Godfather to see our predicament, the reality that greatness is often tragic, and to wonder why we are disunited and misled. We might be able to take tragedy again in times of political turmoil.

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