The Saga of the Corleones: Puzo, Coppola and "The Godfather": — An Interpretive Essay

—
Author(s): GIOVANNI SINICROPI
Source: Italian Americana , AUTUMN 1975, Vol. 2, No. 1 (AUTUMN 1975), pp. 79-90
Published by: Italian Americana

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/29775866

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 The Saga of the Corleones:
Puzo, Coppola and The Godfather
? An Interpretive Essay ?

GIOVANNI SINICROPI
University of Connecticut

Justice is finally done. Italian honor has been vindicated and the prestige
of the community is soaring to new heights. All documents and files
have been assembled, prizes and rewards have been awarded and duly
accepted, the panegyrical testimonies of the accomplices have been
delivered on the organs of intellectual respectability. The last ritual?the
consecration of the Saga by the omnipotent and omnipresent domestic
video?has already been announced, as anxiously expected. After
which, the whole material can be handed down to the eternal archives of
history.
What could not be accomplished by one hundred years of sweat and
tears, of ditch digging under the sun or hard labor on the assembly line,
in the shade of the new temples of our Moloch, by the dignified misery
and alienation of men who, no matter what, could never shake loose
from the humiliating leash of suspicion and scorn, was achieved in six or
seven years, and single-handedly, by Messrs Mario Puzo and Francis
Ford Coppola (pronounced, as a very well-informed interviewer assures
us in Playboy, Cope-uh-laH). In the country of Elvis Presley, Evil
Knevil, and Billy Graham the names of Guglielmo Marconi or Enrico
Fermi have always lived a clandestine existence, hardly recorded in
specialized manuals; bringing up their names is regarded as patent proof
of the old pompous rhetoric that has afflicted their compatriots for cen?
turies.
Now, however, there is hope. If it is true that crime does not pay, it is
always equally true that an acceptable recounting of it does indeed. Not
only for the author, but for the collectivity in general, as the "Saga of the
Corleones" stands to prove. It must be admitted that the apologetic lines

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 Italian Americana

flashed on the video when Godfather I made its triumphant debut into
the living rooms of America were somewhat redundant. But this slight
touch of hypocrisy did not disturb the event, for the screen has the
strangely sublime power of unifying all diverse elements into the
superior level of organized fiction.
Things change, they say. There was a time in this country when you
would tacitly be expected to demonstrate that, although bearing an
Italian name, you were of the "other kind," and that neither you per?
sonally, nor your ancestors and kin had anything to do with the
"honored family." And even then, the understated truth was that even if
the FBI could not waste a drop of ink on your personal record?at least
so far?well, Italian you were, and certain things run in the blood. It
would take generations before your genes could adjust to the situation
and you would be really worthy of being safely admitted to the "sancta
sanctorum" of respectability of middle-class America.
During the fifties, one had the distinct impression that the country
was being ruled by Mr. Clean in person, who was interested in those
years, not so much in shiny floors as in bright souls and minds. To some
people this seemed a bit unexpected from a nation which, a few years
before, had been scandalized at the amount of castor oil being poured in
cities like Moscow, Berlin, or Rome. This time, of course, the process of
semantic degeneration characteristic of the senility of Western civiliza?
tion was able to forge an ironclad alibi: the purge was being ad?
ministered, not in the name of the People or Race or Nation, but in the
very sacred name of Freedom. Mr. Clean could in full conscience and
tranquillity acknowledge Monsignor Torquemada among his ancestors.
It was logical and desirable that alongside the series of autos-da-fe
organized by the Committee on Un-American Activities another series
should be devoted to the "Untouchables."
In the fast world of today two decades are a long time, and we do not
know to what extent the authors of "The Untouchables" have lost face.
It is said, however, that if the "Saga of the Corleones" had come out?in
its written or its movie version?twenty years ago, it would have been
submerged in universal indifference, or even run the risk of being con?
fiscated; it certainly would not have fattened the bank accounts of
Messrs Puzo and Coppola. It is only an hypothesis, of course, and for
that matter completely void of any content, since it is certain that the
"Saga" was conceivable only in that particular period of time in which it
was in fact conceived.

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 The Saga of the Corleones

The intriguing question then arises: What happened between the Un?
touchables and the Corleones? Why did the same social reality appear
(and was accepted) in the same medium the first time as Bogeyman and
the second as Mr. Hollywood in person? I doubt if Professor McLuhan
himself would be able to give us an adequate answer; he probably would
first have to add a well-wrought appendix to his theories.
For some of us the answer could be found in the magical appeal ex?
erted by art in general. But do you mean to tell me that Puzo and Cop?
pola succeeded in restoring the honor of the family where the likes of
Frank Sinatra had failed? He was an artist who, during many of these
bobby-sox, giggling years, only had to exhale a tune in order to tear by
their roots the hearts of millions of girls, many of whom, now in their
forties and fifties, still cherish those ecstatic moments among their most
charming sensations. And yet his attainment and success did not prevent
him from falling into the trap: sooner or later, folk-hero acclaim
notwithstanding, if you scratched Sinatra long enough, a shallow
American press would find in him the godfather type and so label and
seek to diminish him.
Could we perhaps find the answer through the artistic merits in?
herent in the literary and cinematographic monuments of this so-called
saga? In 1939, one of the most interesting novels on Italian-Americans,
Christ in Concrete by Pietro Di Donato, appeared in this country. It was
perhaps the first important Italian-American novel written by an
authentic narrator, whose name is recalled today only in academic
seminars devoted to that elusive genre. In 1949 Edward Dmytryk
directed the film version of that novel, Give Us This Day, which is
doubtless one of the great works in the history of the movies and certain?
ly the best film ever made on the life and tears of Italian-Americans. I ex?
pected that some of the learned reviewers who spent their best
vocabulary on The Godfather (I and II) would have mentioned, even if
only in passing?one of these two names, perhaps at least Dmytryk's.
His name was unaccountably ignored even by reviewers writing for
periodicals which love to be regarded as pillars of leftist radicalism.
More recently, perhaps the most authentic film dealing with life in Little
Italy, Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, (which revealed an original direc?
tor), although admired by the most intelligent critics did not stir much
enthusiasm in the general public.
From these episodes one can see how much impact true artistic merit
really has upon American public opinion. How, then, do we explain the

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 Italian Americana

sudden change that made it possible for a not particularly endowed

novel and a not particularly endowed film to explode into an un?
precedented financial, social, and cultural success?
To find a satisfactory answer, one must remember what happened
between "The Untouchables" and the "Saga of the Corleones." During
those crucial years, from 1963 on, the American people began to realize
that Mr. Clean had been cheating. The floor was shining, all right, but it
was found that Mr. Clean had in the meantime engaged in the old rou?
tine of hiding the dirt under the rug. Hercules could clean the Augean
stables in one long day, but ten years would not be enough to rake out
the dirt Mr. Clean had so cunningly concealed. Only the rising of a new
American conscience could lend a true socio-semantic content to the
words that Mr. Michael Corleone, in a blue double-breasted suit, speaks
to the priceless senator from Nevada, in a blue double-breasted suit:
"We are part of the same hypocrisy." The reason The Godfather could
be taken (or mistaken) for a work of epic proportions depicting the cor?
ruption of American society is that this side of the aisle understood the
sense of Michael Corleone's words to the carefree senator from Nevada.
And many in the audience expected Michael to ask a few questions of
the senator, as for example: "What is after all the difference between the
St. Valentine's Day Massacre and My Lai? Why do you suppose that
omerta is functionally worse than the heavy dust of silence that covers
the footprints of 'political' murderers? Do you really believe that our
justice is less efficient simply because we use the services of corporation
lawyers only?" And the list of questions could go on and on. I am afraid
that the senator, at a certain point, would run out of convincing replies,
especially after Mr. Corleone exhibited the proof of his organization's
efficiency in its happy and adventuresome alliance with that source of
national pride which has been the CIA.
It seems, however, that this interpretation answers our question only
in part. The "Saga of the Corleones," in fact, did not appeal simply to
one side of the American people, those scandalized by the tricks of Mr.
Clean, but it also appealed?perhaps even more so?to those on the
other side of the aisle, the silent majority for whom Jupiter Maximus has
only one name worthy of twentieth-century civilization: Success. The
silent majority has never been very meticulous in scrutinizing the rituals
practiced in the worshiping of its divinity. After all, as someone in the
know once said, the business of America is business, and the difference
between one kind of business and another is only a question, as Mon

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 The Saga of the Corleones

sieur Verdoux would put it, of efficiency and organization. As for the
rest of it, every house has its dark corners.
I think that in addition to all the Oscars bestowed upon the "Saga of
the Corleones" there ought to be two more, which, though not usually
awarded, were fully deserved by Puzo and Coppola: one for timeliness
and the other for displaying a supreme sense of equilibrium in placing
themselves at the very point of separation between the two aisles, thus
receiving the applause and consensus of both sides. With a little effort
and a better control of style, Puzo and Coppola could have given us the
greatest example to date of "Litterature" or "Cinema verite." After all,
ambiguity is the only form in which we can perceive truth today. Unfor?
tunately Puzo and Coppola are not looking for truth but for certainty.
And certainty is another divinity which has its recognized tabernacle in
the box office.
Puzo's complaint, recorded by solicitous interviewers and spread to
the Philistines by affectionate colleagues, was that he tried to remain
faithful to the oath of chastity that binds every student of the Muses, but
to no avail: his previous works, born gratia artis (especially The For?
tunate Pilgrim) had fallen into a general indifference of publishers. He
saw himself on the steps of the public library but was miles away from
any entrance to the Hall of Fame. The situation was obviously risky, and
the least he could do to reverse the disparate distances was to change his
literary agent: leave the honest but retarded Calliope and resort to the
cunning Madison Avenue ways of the best procurer a writer can hope
for, who today has acquired a reputation under the German name
Kitsch.
No wonder, therefore, that the alibi worked against Puzo himself,
for the tendency of panegyrists and accomplices is to assign all the credit
for the ambiguous achievements of the "Saga" to the moviemaker at the
expense of the novelist, thus causing some basic misunderstandings
which stood in the way of a more correct evaluation of the whole work.
Puzo is a sound, powerful narrator and an excellent shaper of
characters. One has to go back to writers such as Victor Hugo to find
figures with natures comparable to the fiendishness of Luca Brasi, or
such logical metamorphoses as the one that turned Albert Neri from
policeman to killer. To be able to develop five main themes from one
narrative matrix and keep them logically and tightly intertwined is no
small accomplishment for a twentieth-century writer. And it is no small
accomplishment to handle five main characters credibly and at least

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 Italian Americana

nine or ten of secondary rank. To handle such vast material one has to
fully master narrative syntax and be able to assemble the four themes in
prospect and one in retrospect with a rhythm both perfectly timed and
untiring. The enormous material is distributed along five main narrative
knots (the attempt on the Don's life, the execution of McKloski and
Solozzo, Sonny's death, the summit conference, Michael's return from
Sicily), sustained by one chronological axis (the passage of power from
father to son). The consequence of such a tight structure is that Puzo
never loses his narrative breath or his reader. Puzo is without any doubt
a thoroughbred novelist. His problems are not of a technical nature.
Puzo's novel mimetically reflects a world?solidly autonomous and
self-righteous?governed by a three-dimensional time, treated as
something that can be neatly sliced into chronological units, each one of
which occupies a well-defined and suitable place within a series. Some of
those units come before, some after, and between before and after there
must be a relationship by virtue of which the before is always responsible
for the after. Readers and author resemble passengers on a Swiss ride,
who jump on a chair travelling along a fixed cable, pylon after pylon,
from the very beginning to the very end, and enjoy the landscape. From
their chairs the passengers can see things, perhaps find them interesting
and exciting, but at the same time, inaccessible. Though living in a cen?
tury that has destroyed the conventional conception of time as a series,
Puzo embraces the temporal structure that governed, for example, the
novels of Dumas pere. The retrogradation appears gratuitous. To any
observer of the twentieth-century novel, Puzo must appear as a tenor
who, composed and collected, rises up in the middle of a Woodstock
festival to sing a romanza by Paolo Tosti. The impeccable execution and
perfect register cannot prevent one from finding the whole operation
rather naive and kitschig.
A prisoner of the insurmountable distance across which he views his
world, Puzo builds (I should perhaps say describes) his reality from the
outside. Since he cannot penetrate beyond the surface of his characters,
he piles along their path fact after fact, to which they must react, thereby
manifesting themselves. The character is thus empirically inferred piece
after piece as the sum of diverse reactions. But he never manifests
himself as a whole.
Puzo dwells with leisurely competence on a surgical operation in?
tended to restore gynecological peace of mind to a girl. His description is
precise and technical, considered and cautious, punctiliously methodic,

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 The Saga of the Cork ones

and perhaps even longer than the actual event. From the same writer,
however, we cannot get a word of what really goes on (and I do not mean
the strategic speculations) in the hearts and minds of his characters.
The most obvious example of the lack of internal dimension in
Puzo's characters can be found in the episode of Michael Corleone,
fugitive in Sicily. The experience does not seem to have any observable
psychological impact on the character. What did he find on the island?
Did he find himself estranged or did he feel as one descending into the
ancestral riverbed to recover a forgotten and dispersed moment of his
life? Did he discover in the faces of the people a forgotten friendly
memory and a sense of security, or still one more nightmarish shadow of
a past that he had tried to reject? All this is not important to Puzo; what
seems to be important to him is that Michael revived what was once the
dream of the Brooklyn immigrant, who hoped he could one day go back
to the island to find the ancestral virtues of the dark-eyed virgin.
At one point Puzo has in his hands a wonderful narrative opportuni?
ty: tracing in the character of the young Vito Corleone the passage from
a virtuous workman into a man of destructive violence?a passage that
could not have taken place without a dramatic struggle that left his in?
nocence and integral humanity devastated. The casting of dice that
resulted from moments of dehumanizing desperation must have been
accompanied by the bitter taste of anguish. None of this stuff is in the
novel, where Vito Corleone's decision to become a killer is presented as a
result of a simple calculation. So that the tragedy that the character
might have inspired is submerged by commonplaces and cliches. The
conversion took place as if the purple alleys of Little Italy were suspend?
ed in a geographical and historical vacuum, as if the society that Vito
Corleone was soon to meet in the busy backrooms of Manhattan or
among the leisures of Long Island was not even in existence at the time
of his fatal decision. Was he alone responsible for his decision? In other
words, did the vocation to live by the gun overtake him simply because
he was a Sicilian, or because he was a brute and could never overcome
the inexorable drive to destroy? And if so, how credible can be the mix?
ture of virtue and baseness of which he is made?
Puzo does not seem interested in these problems: he is only in?
terested in facts. But facts, as another South Italian writer, Pirandello,
used to say, are like flour bags: unless they are filled they fall down flab?
bily on the ground; they cannot stand up. It seems that every time Puzo
has to choose between truth and convention, he has no hesitation: he

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 Italian Americana

opts for convention. And conventions, in these cases, yield only

gratuitous folklore.
The trouble is that Puzo, as a narrator, has technique but he has no
guts. The dilemma is quite simple: either the Mafia is a kind of inclina?
tion strongly affecting individuals of Sicilian extraction, in which case
society has to "treat" it as a terrifying infection, and no explanation or
celebration of its "gestes" is justifiable. Or, on the contrary, the Mafia is
a social phenomenon that has its roots and origins in certain social con?
ditions, and, consequently, these conditions become the subject ol any
inquest that intends to explain that phenomenon. The responsibility of
the narrator goes beyond putting Fanucci in Vito Corleone's way in
order to explain the latter's deviation. At this very point Puzo would
need all his guts to proceed. But he stops at Fanucci. The unfortunate
result is that the Mafia can once again be safely traced back to the
Sicilian (or Italian) heritage, tout court.
If there were room for an accent of irony in the novel, one might find
it highly amusing that the "honored family" has become the last citadel
in which the old virtues of Western civilization?family, honor, per?
sonal pride, religion, and so forth?are still strenuously defended and
preserved.
The congenital whorish tendencies of cinema have always been
known. It was therefore fatal that the "Saga of the Corleones" should
enjoy the connubial favors of the silver screen. What is good for the
goose must be even better for the gander. If we cannot grasp the pulsing
rhythm of reality, we can always find a protective oblivion in the
flashing surface of color. What was it like to live in Little Italy during the
teens of the century? Somewhat like living in Virginia City during the
happy time of the gold rush? Fewer gunshots, more color and slightly
different music, and an idyllic Mulberry Street comes alive before your
eyes. Just as you would expect it.
In the movie part of the "Saga" everything is just as you would ex?
pect it to be. An Italian wedding is just that; and so is the pastoral Sicily
of Godfather /and the funereal and blasting Sicily of Godfather II. Does
it take a great deal of imagination to figure out what a party is like at a
wealthy estate on Lake Tahoe? Or a meeting of bosses in Havana? It
seems that it takes little imagination indeed.
We are confronted here with an artistic talent, genuine and un?
deniable, that comes through only in details and not in the whole, for
Francis Ford Coppola certainly knows the grammar of cinema. Few

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 The Saga of the Corleones

other directors know as well as he does how to choose his actors and fit
them into a narrative texture. Although it is difficult to lend an ounce of
credibility to Marlon Brando (who could not help but look disguised,
even with his usual talent and bravura), nobody else would have the
glance of Al Pacino, sweet as that of a llama and cold as that of a snake,
to work the venomous seduction of Michael Corleone. No one else
could have the intricate agility of James Caan to run swiftly towards
fate, or the svelte and pensive fortitude of Robert De Niro to cast dice
with an inexorable destiny.
And when his imagination catches fire, Coppola is really able to give
us unforgettable moments. In Godfather II, the sense of rhythm with
which he constructs the sequence of the senate hearings and the dosage
of casualness and commitment, hypocrisy and emotional thrust, cun?
ning and indifference, clearly manifest the strategic astuteness of a great
director. Here the verbal element has the very function it ought to have
in cinema, that of an accessory, while the sustaining structures are
presented by the visual and spatial elements of the frame. And in the
frames that constitute this particular sequence nothing is missing and
nothing is superfluous. The whole sequence, distributed in its various
sections, is narratively constructed around a pivotal moment toward
which all elements dramatically converge: the encounter between the
witness and his brother, and the silent exchange of glances between
them, so significant as to decide the destiny of everybody involved in the
scene.

Later on, the sequence of Tom H?gen visiting the witness in jail, with
the Socratic dialogue that follows, is one of the best I remember ever see?
ing at the movies. The vivid immediacy with which the maze into which
the man has thrown his life is suggested by the steel fences slicing the
vain emptiness of the courtyard is to be remembered as one of the best
moments of modern American cinema. Here, verbal and visual elements
are distributed along two parallel and clashing coordinates: the distance
between them is the same that separates what should have been and
what is, a hope irremediably lost and a relentless fate that closes in. In
the sequence of the rounding up of the Cuban rebels, by preserving the
psychological distance between the involved impassivity of Michael and
the fury of the scene that unfolds before his eyes and in which other men
fight and kill and destroy in the name of principles and ideas, Coppola
achieves a tension which bears witness to his intelligence. Equally ad?
mirable is the grace and taste with which he evokes the theater of the

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 Italian Americana

guitti in the old Little Italy, where S. Giorgi offers us a performance

worthy of the best traditions of the Neapolitan vernacular stage. In God?
father I, the dynamics of the baptism sequence in which the narration is
paradoxically suspended between the ritual of life and the ritual of death
is the greatest moment of the entire film.
These are great moments which unfortunately remain circumscribed
and occasional. How could Coppola not perceive that the paradoxical
intonation of the baptism sequence was the real key by which he might
have transformed the literary text into an authentic screen story? What
evil spirit prompted him to believe that the only way he could proceed
was to transform himself into an illustrator of Puzo's work?
Puzo's strength is in his narrative syntax, which however is Cop?
pola's weak point. His construction is paratactic, in which frames and
sequences are connected by juxtaposition. He seems unable to give a se?
quence or episode the dramatic relief that can only derive from a dis?
crimination between accessory and dominant narrative elements. Con?
sequently, his discourse continually needs the support of verbal
elements: this is the reason for, and at the same time the result of, Cop?
pola's firm adherence to the literary text. The argument that this
adherence is the unavoidable characteristic of any translation of a
literary text into a film is not only theoretically untenable but also un?
true in practice, in the context of both European and American cinema.
And even if Coppola had decided to remain faithful to the text, this
faithfulness should not have been confined to the scene but should have
reflected first of all the hypotactic construction characteristic of Puzo's
narration.
The most damaging result of Coppola's parataxis is the smothering
of the character's inner dimension, resulting in a kind of leveling
flatness. Let's take, as an example, the arrival of Vito at Ellis Island. A
little boy has left his homeland and is arriving, alone, with a bundle un?
der his arm, in a strange country, into a strange language. His father and
mother have just been murdered before his eyes, he does not understand
anything of what goes on, and the future for him is a long dark alley
between high walls. His first experience in the new country is to be
stripped of the only sign of identity he possesses: his name. He is
immediately confined to a kind of cell, alone with his solitude. One
would expect Coppola to find a way to suggest somehow the sense of
tragedy clotted in this boy's heart. Not an emotion is suggested, not a
gesture connecting this sequence to the preceding or following ones, not

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 The Saga of the Corleones

a single element of the frames (except, again, verbal ones) that

characterizes the sequence, giving it the peculiar stature of an event. By
simply changing the verbal elements, the sequence could be utilized for
any arrival to this country of any boy from any country at almost any
time.
The weakness of Coppola's syntax makes some of the sequences
completely redundant and useless. What, for example, is the narrative
function of the encounter between Lanski and Michael in Miami? What
is the function, later on in the movie, of the scene preceding the murder
of Lanski at the airport?
A discourse based only on grammar can generate only platitudes: a
man is reciting the Ave Maria on the calm surface of a lake, the sound of
the shotgun that kills him is immediately followed by the crying of a gull;
the jolly face of the famous singer gingerly arriving at the wedding and
starting to sign autographs; a boy and a girl quietly strolling under the
autumn leaves of New Hampshire, the shiny black car slowly moving
behind them; and so on and so forth.
The artistic achievements of both the literary and the movie version
of the "Saga" seem therefore more uneven and nebulous than its social
ones. It is true that they brought to the foreground for the first time the
indisputable fact that the Mafia could never have gathered the strength
it needed to prosper without the connivance of the political and financial
structures of the system, showing that in this country it developed into a
new institution modeled on the organizational statutes of the big cor?
poration. But as long as the analysis is not brought deep into the heart of
the structures sustaining both the corporation and the Mafia as op?
pressive and alienating institutions, we are bound to remain in an am?
biguous zone in which condemnation and exaltation are confused and
confusing. In this zone, the Mafia receives a patina of luster that makes
the mark of infamy that relentlessly smeared a whole ethnic group in the
country of self-determination look tolerable and even acceptable.
What I find disconcerting about The Godfather is its portrayal of a
world totally pessimistic regarding human nature and society. Even
though the work has to be seen, as I pointed out before, as genetically
justified by the deep crisis which made it possible, it was also generated
in a moment when a new American conscience seemed to be on the rise.
At the instant when Michael Corleone decides to become the new "don,"
any possible alternative was wiped out. Along with this alternative,
Puzo (and consequently Coppola) lost the only vehicle that would have

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 Italian Americana

allowed him to get out of the grey zone of ambiguous alibis and attain
truth instead of certainty; a vehicle that would have allowed him to give
us a dispassionate and courageous analysis of both the Mafia and the
corporation, instead of a fresco glorifying the family "gestes." Puzo
refused to go that far; as I said, he simply did not have the guts. He knew
very well that in order to give us the truth about the Mafia and the whole
brotherhood of its associates, he would have to go beyond the New York
police force and beyond the occasional judge and the occasional politi?
cian. Thus the Mafia, even elevated to the rank of a corporation,
remains as mysterious as ever. The mystery will never be solved as long
as we do not have the guts to go and uncover its true origins in this coun?
try, back to that Little Italy which was not as idyllic as Coppola's Mul?
berry Street and San Gennaro's fireworks would like us to believe?a
Little Italy that was much more monstrous and infinitely more tender,
as was the untold life of Vito Corleone.

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