crimeculture
A Study in Ambiguity: The Godfather and the American Gangster Movie Tradition
Geoff Fordham, The Open University
It is perhaps stating the obvious to say that issues surrounding law and order have traditionally been a central theme of crime movies in general and gangster movies in particular. That is what the films are about, since the central characters operate outside the law, the narratives encompass their relationships with the agencies of law enforcement, while the plots are (generally) structured around the processes by which they are brought to justice or otherwise get their come-uppance. But running through what has been characterised as the gangster sub-genre1 is a series of ambiguities about the definition and enforcement of laws and social norms more generally, reflecting a fundamental ambivalence in audiences’ (and indeed society’s) stance towards the gangster-hero.
These ambiguities are displayed in a variety of ways. Firstly, as Thomas Leitch points out, the dynamic of every crime film focuses on the relationship between three sets of characters: the perpetrator, the victim and the avenger, (official or otherwise) – but typically gangster narratives seek to ‘…undermine and blur the boundaries (between) the typological figures.’2 So, the captain of police is routinely corrupt (as with Captain McCluskey [Sterling Hayden] in The Godfather [Coppola, 1972]); the gangster dispenses justice (passim throughout the sub-genre, but for example the young Vito [Robert De Niro] in The Godfather Part II [Coppola, 1974]); while the gangster becomes victim (again passim, but as an example, Tony Montana [Al Pacino] in Scarface [De Palma, 1983].3)
These ambiguities also infect audiences’ response to the gangster. A central and broadly universal foundation on which Hollywood’s portrayal of the underworld is constructed is the moral imperative to demonstrate that crime does not pay. This imperative provides the moral underpinning to the ‘rise and fall’ narrative that characterises many gangster movies (for example The Public Enemy [Wellmann, 1931], White Heat [Walsh, 1949] and Al Capone [Wilson, 1959]). But it is an imperative that has often been respected grudgingly, and at critical points in the development of the gangster film, only after external intervention. Munby explains how Hawks’ Scarface was released after two years’ negotiation with the censors, leading to the insertion of moralising homilies and a name change (through the addition of a sub-title: The Shame of the Nation).4 But despite these genuflections, Paul Muni’s Tony (and George Raft’s Guino) are more attractive than any of the representatives of the forces of law and order – a characteristic of the gangster film perhaps reaching its apotheosis with Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967). Particularly in that subset of the gangster film that focuses on the Prohibition era, audiences’ ambivalence reflects that of society more generally: ‘law-abiding’ members of the community started to associate with the gangster who has become a preferred supplier.5
The ambiguities extend further to the gangsters’ own stance toward the law and its enforcement. Although in many gangster movies the gang leader is himself a source of law enforcement within a closed gangster society, a powerful theme running through much of the sub-genre explores the gangsters’ desire for acceptance in the straight and official world, particularly in those films which locate gangster activity within immigrant communities. Since the ‘classic’ gangster cycle of the early thirties, the ambitions of those from immigrant families to use lawlessness to secure the wealth, power and prestige of ‘official’ society commingle with a profound longing for assimilation and acceptance.
Finally this use of the gangster film as a device to explore the tensions between economic disadvantage and the illusory promises of acquisitive capitalism (brutally symbolised by the neon sign promising ‘the world is yours’ in the Hawks Scarface) points to the most significant of the ambiguities that pervade the subgenre, displayed in the ambivalence of its stance towards the social, political and economic context in which its narratives are worked out. Browne argues that Jack Shadoian is correct to say that the crime movie is ‘…the central paradigm for investigating the inherent contradictions of the American dream of success.’6 For others however, the emphasis on the family as metaphor for social order, the extensive religious iconography that pervades the sub-genre, and the perverse imitations of capitalist organisation which characterise movie gangsters’ approach to business development, all serve to show how the subgenre is typically, if not inevitably, fundamentally supportive of the status quo.7
This paper focuses on how these themes are explored in an epic gangster movie of the early seventies: The Godfather (drawing where appropriate on the development of its core themes in the rest of the trilogy). The paper seeks to locate these films in the traditions of the gangster movie, exploring in particular how the themes, emblems and motifs which support its claim to authentic subgenre status have responded to the changing socio-economic context in which it developed.
A subgenre of dissent?
The genre theorists’ approach to the analysis of film stresses those elements of continuity which provide the unifying features that establish the films as legitimate candidates for genre status, irrespective of the social, political and economic circumstances under which they were made. Andrew Tudor has pointed out the contradiction at the heart of this process: we can only identify the common features by examining the films; but until we have decided on those features we do not know which films belong to the genre and which therefore deserve examination.8 According to Mason, implicit in genre theory is the notion that a genre is a ‘…common set of practices that can be identified by its iconography, narrative formulae and semiotic codes.’9
This approach to gangster movies is adopted by Edward Mitchell, when he argues that ‘Most of the study of film genres is taken up with an examination of formulas, icons, motifs – in short, the elements of repetitive patterning common to all films that we call detective films, or westerns, or gangster films. This is as it should be. Indeed, no serious discussion of genre is possible without recourse to those elements that a particular genre film shares with others of its kind.’10
But a number of critics have challenged this view, arguing that to focus on generic continuities distracts us from an analysis of those shifts and variations, albeit within a common framework, that show how films of particular eras respond to the economic, political and importantly industrial circumstances prevailing at the time they were made. Leitch argues that ‘…genres are best thought of as contexts that evolve in both personal and social history…rather than eternally fixed and mutually exclusive categories.’11 For Munby, gangster movies are ‘…analogous to a Venn diagram with both areas of overlap and areas of distinctiveness.’12
Munby, among other writers, sees the development of the American gangster movie as a series of cycles, each drawing on and evolving from its predecessors, but at the same time reflecting the distinctive concerns and characteristics of its time.13 The ‘classic’ cycle of the early thirties was – and more importantly was seen by audiences as – an explicit response to the Depression, and more explicitly, the ‘…widespread despair over the value of public policy and the institutions of government, finance and the law’.14 This helps explain the appeal of the central figures (like Muni’s Tony in Scarface or Robinson’s Rico in Little Caesar [Le Roy, 1931]), strong figures who succeed (at least until the final reel) in the face of official opposition, by their own efforts.
Following the controversy over Scarface there was a brief moratorium in the production of gangster movies, though some of the impetus behind the classic cycle had evaporated with the abolition of the Volstead Act (which had introduced Prohibition) in 1933. But by the mid-thirties a new cycle of post-Prohibition, post-Production Code gangster movies was underway, exploring similar themes and using many of the same actors – but shifting the focus away from the gangsters, concentrating instead on the enforcers. The pessimism of the Depression gave way to the optimism of the New Deal (introduced after Roosevelt’s election in 1933), and the gangster movie sought to reassert the legitimacy of official authority through films like G-Men (Keighley, 1935). But this cycle was still able to provide audiences with the same vicarious experience of heroic violence and corruption as their predecessors, even though the violence now was carried on (more or less) lawfully. Warner’s publicity for G-Men stressed the continuity: ‘Hollywood’s most famous bad man (Cagney) joins the G-Men and halts the march of crime.’15 The message was clear: adopt their tactics or fail, explicitly echoed 50 years later in The Untouchables (De Palma, 1987), through Malone’s (Sean Connery) streetwise cop’s advice to the purist Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner); and Ness’ response later in the film when he pushes Malone’s murderer off a courtroom roof (‘I am in contempt of all that I swore to uphold’) – another example of crime films blurring the boundaries between gangster and law enforcer.
Gangster movies within the post-war film noir cycle may have displayed a shared iconography with their predecessors from the thirties, but they brought a distinctive mood, and a tone darker than anything that had gone before. As many commentators have observed,16 film noir offered a clear reflection of a darkening and pessimistic mood in the aftermath of the war, amid the challenges to ‘traditional’ values that returning servicemen experienced. Although the film noir cycle has been ‘…posited as aesthetically experimental and deviant’, displaying little connections to what went before, for Munby noir gangster films picked up where pre-war crime films had left off, and were ‘…received as an awkward reminder of problems whose resolution had been postponed by the need to prosecute the war’17, a sentiment echoed by Muller, who sees noir as incorporating ‘…a bundle of unfinished business (that) lingered from the Depression’.18
Although it co-existed with the noir cycle, Leitch argues19 that increasingly through the 50s and early 60s the gangster movie supported the Establishment – with Hollywood galvanised by the perceptions of the threat of the Cold War: no more bent cops, no more romanticised villains. But by the late 60s, Hollywood’s gangster movies put ‘…the Establishment on trial’, most completely through Bonnie and Clyde, which ‘…managed to demonise the same American institutions as the gangster cycle of the thirties – the police, the banks, the law – but this time in metaphoric terms, using a pair of criminals of the thirties to attack the moral injustice of the draft and the violent injustice of the American experience in Vietnam.’20
So within certain generic conventions, the gangster movie provided a format in which contemporary social and political concerns could be explored. For Munby however, paradoxically given his insistence on the mutability of the format over time, within these variations there is a crucial constant theme: for all the ‘conservative’ elements which have been in evidence in gangster movies throughout their history, and the ambiguities these generate, the format is inherently subversive. He insists that the gangster film ‘…has mediated perhaps the most profound periods of crisis and transformation in twentieth century US history, from the Depression to the cold war’21 – to which one could add Vietnam, since the period of his review predates American involvement. Other writers have expressed similar views: Leitch for example, though he perhaps overstates his case when he says that ‘…every crime in every crime film represents a larger critique of the social and constitutional order.’22 However, these subversive strands express themselves in a variety of ways:
- Through a critique of the acquisitive society which is implicit in gangsters’ heady ambitions and, once successful, their grotesque and excessive lifestyles: Hardy describes De Palma’s Scarface as ‘…an infantile celebration of the gaudiness of wealth’23.
- The romanticisation of the anti-hero despite the requirements of the Production Code: however immoral their means, gangsters nevertheless offer practical (often ‘real life’) examples of the dispossessed triumphing over the Establishment.
- Frequent demonstrations that society’s official institutions are as corrupt as the criminal institutions they oppose (politicians in The Untouchables, multi-national corporations in Scarface, the church in The Godfather III, the police just about everywhere.)
- Exposing the gap between ‘ideology’ (America as the land of equal opportunity for all), and the actuality: success is not for the dispossessed or immigrant, unless pursued violently and illegitimately.
These strands are to be observed throughout the subgenre, in most if not all its cyclical variations, and are to be observed today. Munby notes that black gangster movies continue to provide ‘…an uncomfortable reminder of the racist nature of economic and spatial destitution’24 – like many other movies that have chronicled the same phenomena from the perspective not just of Italians, but Hispanics (Scarface), Irish (Gangs of New York [Scorsese, 2002]), and Jews (Once Upon a Time in America [Leone, 1984]).
But offering yet a further example of the ambiguities that run through the genre, the gang structures that provide the route out for all these groups, embody and are emblematic of the discriminatory economic structures against which gang members are rebelling. Gangsters may rebel against conventional moral codes and create alternative systems of governance and morality; but this does not necessarily mean they are subversive. As Leitch says, ‘…gangsters cannot help imitate the society whose norms they seek to violate.’25
In the next section we consider how these strands are developed in The Godfather: does the film justify Coppola’s claims that it ‘…was always a loose metaphor: Michael for America’?26
The Godfather: a metaphor for America?
In his study of The Godfather trilogy, Nick Browne sees the three films as ‘…deeply rooted in the conventions of the American crime film and the social experience of the ambitious outsider that shapes that genre’s attitudes.’27 Presented on an epic scale the cycle portrays the rise of a ‘family’ of Sicilian immigrants from the point where Vito Corleone (De Niro then Marlon Brando) arrives as a young boy, to Michael, (Al Pacino) his son’s emergence as one of the richest and most powerful men in America. Although Coppola uses a variety of cinematic techniques (many consciously harking back to earlier examples of American gangster films) in his exposition of narrative, including montage, and in The Godfather II, flashback, the film’s power derives from a deceptively simple narrative structure, assisted by powerful ensemble acting, with superb performances from Brando, De Niro (both of whom won Best Actor Oscars) and Pacino. Within its narrative structure the films explore the tensions between first and second generation immigrants (even successful ones), and the dominant WASP culture to which they aspire; and contrasts the highly regulated and ruthlessly enforced codes of honour and obedience imported from Sicily, with the ineffectual and corrupt structures of authority that immigrants encounter in America.
We saw earlier in this paper that throughout its history the American gangster movie has been characterised by ambiguities, in the way criminals have been presented, in the blurring of boundaries between outlaw and law enforcer, and in the perspective the films take on the social and economic circumstances from which gangsters emerge and in which the films were made. The Godfather trilogy is no exception.
The films have been seen by many commentators as a critique of American capitalism. Man for example, argues that while the gangster genre has generally displayed a ‘…prosocial ideology supportive of the status quo’ (if grudgingly), the Godfather films challenge this dominant ideology, (if grudgingly as well). ‘On the whole, the trilogy indicts American capitalism for the rampant materialism within society and subverts the dominant prosocial myth’ (our emphases).28 But the films’ pre-eminent and enduring themes and images offer powerful emblems of stability, order, tradition and hierarchy.
The films’ central theme focuses on the family (in two senses, including the role and significance of the blood family, and in the context of the gangster format, the structure and significance of the business Family) while their narrative explores both Vito’s and more significantly Michael’s (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to protect and maintain the integrity of their families. This focus reflects one of Coppola’s personal obsessions,29 which he integrated directly into the film, not just through its narrative and thematic explorations, but through his casting, choice of associates and source material: his father provided the music, his grandfather wrote the turn of the century melodrama (Senza Mama – Without Mama) which the young Vito watches in Godfather II, and his daughter Sophia plays Michael’s daughter Mary.
One of the distinctive features of Coppola’s direction of the trilogy and especially the first two films is his use of set-piece mises-en-scène, which invariably help establish the family structure, as well as the relationship between the Corleone family and its wider Family business. The Godfather opens with an extended set-piece which introduces us to the Corleone family through the wedding feast of Vito’s daughter Connie (Talia Shire). The sequence deftly establishes the key elements of characterisation, context and plot – all within a family occasion. Traditional Italian music sets the ethnic context (what Vera Dika has called the films’ ‘Italianicity’30); we see Don Corleone dispensing ‘justice’ to a supplicant (in an exchange which contrasts the value of official legal structures with the Godfather’s traditional methods); the police taking down the registration numbers of guests’ cars establishes the nature of the family’s relationship with the forces of law and order; Sonny Corleone (James Caan), Vito’s hot-headed eldest son, reveals the rash and compulsive nature (through his seduction of a bridesmaid and his impulsive attacks on the agents) which will lead to his death later in the film; Michael and his fiancée Kaye (Diane Keaton) are introduced as outsiders; but critically, Vito is established as above all a family man whose abiding concern is to keep the whole family together: he refuses to have the group picture taken until Michael has arrived. He is also established as the patriarch – his authority over both his family and his Family is absolute.
(A similar family gathering set-piece opens Godfather II, after the family has relocated to Lake Tahoe as part of Michael’s doomed attempt to distance himself from the Family’s criminal past. Its contrast with the wedding scene – the traditional Italian musicians replaced by an anonymous ‘show-biz’ band that turns an Italian folk-song into a nursery rhyme for example – offers ironic comment on what has happened to the family in the intervening period.)
The films’ apparent endorsement of a traditional and conservative view of the family is also established by their exploration of the roles of women and their place within family (and Family) decision-making structures. Until Connie intervenes to sanction an assassination after Michael is taken ill in Godfather III, women’s presence in any decision-making exercise is restricted to serving refreshments. In one sequence in Godfather II, Michael visits Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg); as the two men sit discussing business Roth’s wife serves sandwiches – but since the camera remains fixed on the men, we never see above her shoulders: she remains invisible. With the exception of Kaye (whose WASP origins leave her permanently excluded from the family even before her divorce), the women in the films are either subservient domestics (beaten by their husbands if they fail in these duties) or whores. The brutal murder of a prostitute in Godfather II (contrived as part of the Family’s plot to blackmail Senator Geary [G.D. Spradlin]) provides a graphic account of the violent commodification of women the films display: she is found tied, naked to a bed, with a large gash running from her groin to her breasts. Of course this dual view of women formed a traditional element within the American gangster movie: for example in both versions of Scarface, Camonte/Montana demands chastity from his sister – exerting quasi-paternal authority in doing so – while following a quite different set of values himself.
A second traditional authority pillar which features significantly in the film’s imagery is the church – once again, a traditional source of iconography in the gangster genre. (In the near contemporary Mean Streets [Scorsese, 1973], Charlie (Harvey Keitel) at one point faced a choice between becoming a priest or a gangster). Throughout, the church appears to offer a route to redemption, contrasted with the venality of the gangsters’ business operations. We see Michael in the baptism sequence that closes the first film (which we deal with in more detail later in the paper); a parallel sequence in Godfather III where Michael is invested with a Papal medal; and in the final movie we are introduced to Fr. Andrew Hagen (John Savage), whose father Tom (Robert Duvall) had been Vito’s consigliere, entrusted for example with making an offer he couldn’t refuse to the film producer threatening the career of Vito’s godson Johnny Fontane (Al Mancino) – an episode culminating of course in the famous horse’s head scene. The Hagen family, unlike the Corleones, appear to have completed the transition to legitimacy.
But within the films’ embrace of these essentially conservative themes there is an ambiguity that reflects the ambivalence of the immigrant, torn between the pursuit of assimilation within and recognition by his adopted culture, and the maintenance and defence of traditional customs and values. This extends to the notion of patriotism itself: the opening sequence of The Godfather, in which the camera pans back from a shot of the supplicant slowly to reveal Brando exuding authority, has the undertaker saying ‘I believe in America,’ even as he reveals how American justice has failed his family. Michael returns as a war hero who served what he clearly regards as ‘his’ country; but in the flashback scene where we learn of his decision to enlist, Sonny expresses his anger and astonishment that anyone would risk their life for anything other than their family.
This reflects one of the key underlying tensions within the films, which Dika argues, ‘…take as a central theme the order and power of traditional Italian ways in confrontation with the corroding effects of America.’31 But this perception that America’s effects can be corrosive – Don Vito refuses to become involved in the drugs trade for broadly this reason – does not inhibit the family’s desire for acceptance within their adopted community, corrosive or otherwise. Vito tells Michael that he dreams one day his son could become ‘Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone’, while much of Michael’s efforts are directed explicitly towards accommodation, receiving ‘respect’ from the rest of America as well as his own people (the drive to legitimatise the business, the charitable work through the Vito Corleone Foundation, the papal medal.)
But a similar ambiguity suffuses the Family’s attitude to the law more generally: codes of fierce (if often unfulfilled) loyalty and obedience within the Family co-exist with a complete disdain and disregard for ‘official’ structures, which are there to be ignored, corrupted or purchased. The ambiguity surrounding order and lawlessness that characterises organised crime on the screen is, according to Alessandro Camon, intrinsic to the Mafia itself: ‘At the same time that it rapes and pillages a land and a population, the Mafia has always claimed to protect them and evince a sense of belonging’.32 This dual morality – absolute ruthlessness to enemies, absolute devotion to friends – is brilliantly expressed in the baptism sequence at the end of The Godfather (which also encapsulates the tensions between assimilation and tradition.) In a montage reminiscent of Eisenstein, Michael, in the process of becoming Godfather (in the original sense) to Connie’s child, renounces, in separate vows, the Devil, his works, his pomp, each vow intercut with one of the executions he has ordered to consolidate his control in his new role as Godfather in the Mafia sense.
So, the Godfather films focus on a series of the traditional icons associated with conservatism: the family, church, country, hierarchy. But, given the traditions of the gangster movie it is perhaps almost inevitable that their treatment should reflect ambiguity. For as the films’ narrative unfolds each of these symbols of authority systematically disintegrates. As we saw earlier, the principal leitmotif of the films is the sanctity of the family, continually alluded to by Vito and Michael (and indeed Sonny during his brief period as Don after his father has been shot). But the pursuit of family stability is illusory, rendered impossible because of the treachery and cruelty with which it is surrounded. ‘If you’re strong for your family you can lose it’, says Michael, which is precisely what happens. The conflicts within the Family and between business and blood families directly or indirectly lead to the execution of Michael’s brother and brother-in-law; Kaye’s decision to abort his child; and his daughter’s killing on the steps of the theatre in Palermo.
Similarly, the moral authority of the church is eroded as the narrative unfurls. The institutions of the church are revealed as corrupt: Michael’s investiture with the papal medal at the start of Godfather III suggests that even Michael, with all his sins can purchase redemption, as though from a mediaeval pardoner. Ultimately Michael’s plans to legitimise his business through investments with the Vatican are defeated by criminality and corruption within the church (though the suggested murder of a Pope is perhaps a little melodramatic).
Dika even suggests that Michael’s commitment to his roots is undermined as a result of his corruption. With his commercial involvement with the Vatican, ‘…Michael comes full circle. As a landowner in association with northern (Italian) businessmen and the church, he becomes the symbolic exploiter of his own people.33
There is a strongly nostalgic feel to Coppola’s cinematography, set decoration and direction, in both the urban sequences and the rural idylls of Sicily. For Browne, these nostalgic historical settings, and the perverse American dream they portray, gave audiences in the early 70s ‘…a reality substitute – an imaginative vehicle for occluding and reworking contemporary anxiety and discontent with the changes in America wrought by the Vietnam war.’34 Dika echoes this when she argues that the films’ focus on family chimed with a collective wish for something lost in ‘…an era that saw not only the disintegration of the family, but also the deterioration of America’s faith in government.’
It is the films’ underlying ambiguities that create the opportunities for audiences to work through contemporary issues – in the process of course also creating the scope for conflicting readings. For example, although as we have already seen, the films portray women mainly as either servants or mistresses, they do not do so uncritically. The men’s relationships with their women are displayed through a variety of pathologies (possessiveness, jealousy, protectiveness), many of which are used to reinforce ethnic stereotypes of the traditional Italian male. But as Camon argues, Kaye’s relationship to Michael shows the limits to the preservation of tradition alongside assimilation: his expectations and values are challenged by Kaye’s contemporary, non-Sicilian, ‘proto-feminist’ view of conjugal roles and relationships.35 Moreover as the family disintegrates, and with it Michael’s authority, the behaviour of the women changes: Kaye resumes a position of equality with Michael in their relationship with their children, while Connie, in a assumption of responsibility that would have been unthinkable to her mother, effectively assumes the role of Don during Michael’s illness.
Similar ambiguities are to be observed in the films’ stance towards the economic and power structures of contemporary America. The gangsters in the Godfather movies may be rebels but they are hardly freedom-fighters or radicals (despite De Niro’s performance as an urban Robin Hood in Godfather II): as Hyman Roth says, ‘We’re not communists’. As we discuss in our conclusions, the ambiguities reflect a dilemma that has beset Hollywood beyond the Godfather and indeed the gangster movie. So far as this trilogy is concerned, we see a massive and powerful business empire created through corruption, intimidation and murder; and we also see the consequences, in the disintegration of the main architect and all he holds dear. But whether this signifies (even in extremis) the corruption inherent in American corporate capitalism, or a sign of what can happen if unscrupulous individuals step beyond the boundaries of competition, is less clear.
But what is clear is that as the narrative progresses, and as Michael’s empire grows, he becomes less and less distinguishable from the ‘straight’ businessmen with whom he associates. When challenged by the corrupt politician Geary about both his ethnic background and his real business, Michael replies: ‘We’re all part of the same hypocrisy Senator.’ When he joins the consortium seeking to do business with Batista’s Cuba, Michael sits, with equal and indistinguishable status alongside representatives of ‘legitimate’ corporate capitalism like AT&T.
Conservative symbols may dominate the films’ imagery, but are ultimately shown to be illusory because of the corruption of the Corleone family. We are left under no illusion that for Coppola, the Family’s business, if not identical to, is at least sufficiently close to mainstream US corporate capitalism to provide a vehicle within which to explore its excesses. Finally Man sees the trilogy as subversive since it ‘…undermines wholesome family relationships, attacks the capitalistic base within American society as malevolent aggression’;36 and we may add, also exposes the corruption of authority, the hypocrisy of the church and the misogyny at the heart of gender relations.
The Godfather trilogy shares many of the themes that have characterised gangster films throughout their history: the lack of clarity in the distinction between outlaw, victim and enforcer; the attractiveness of the gangsters, linked with their inevitable demise to ensure crime is seen not to pay; the difficulties faced by immigrants seeking a foothold in the New World. Although Coppola pushed it further than other directors, his focus on family also reflects themes from earlier films including Scarface and The Brotherhood (Ritt, 1969).
Also like its predecessors, the trilogy’s presentation of these critical themes is shrouded in ambiguities which may reflect directors’ intentions, but which, as Leitch points out, have often been interpreted as ‘anti-intentionalist’, since the various critical approaches to gangster films have sought ‘…the meaning of popular genres not in the avowed purposes of their creators, but in something broader and deeper – universalistic myths, patriarchal hegemony, industry-wide production styles, material and cultural forces beyond the creators’ control and sometimes their understanding.’ 37
Nowhere is this more apparent than in interpretations of gangster movies’ stance towards the structures of twentieth century US capitalism – these variations supported by the films’ inherent ambiguities. The uncertainties surrounding the underlying critique within the Godfather trilogy reflect the same dilemma running through many of its predecessors in the genre – and indeed much else that Hollywood has produced. It may be legitimate to criticise specific aspects of a specific example of the system at work: but explanations typically shy away from a systemic critique, focusing instead on individual hubris (as an explanation of criminal behaviour instead of one based on inequality and deprivation), or individual greed and corruption. Coppola’s insistence on showing the growing similarities between Michael and his legitimate associates hints at broader systemic criticism; but ultimately, in the Godfather movies, just as with all their predecessors, neither the gangsters nor the films pose any serious threat to the American way of life whose shortcomings they reveal.
Bibliography
Allsop, Kenneth, The Bootleggers (Hutchinson, London, 1961)
Browne, Nick, FrancisFord Coppola’s The Godfather Trilogy (CUP, Cambridge, 2000)
Browne, Nick, ‘Fearful A-symmetries: Violence as History in the Godfather films’, in Browne (2000)
Alessandro Camon, ‘The Godfather and the myth of the Mafia’, in Browne (2000)
Chapman, James, ed., Popular American Film 1945-1995 (Open University, 2000)
Chapman, James, ‘Film Noir and society’ in Chapman (2000)
Vera Dika, ‘The Representation of Ethnicity in The Godfather’, in Browne, (2000)
Friedman, Lawrence S., The Cinema of Martin Scorsese (Continuum Publishing Company, New York, 1999)
Cowie, Peter, Coppola (Faber & Faber, London, 1995)
Grant, Barry, ed., Film Genre Reader III (University of Texas Press, Austin, 2003)
Hardy, Phil, (Ed.), The BFI Companion to Crime (University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1997)
Hardy, Phil, ‘Crime Movies’, in Nowell-Smith, (1997)
Leitch, Thomas, Crime Films (CUP, Cambridge, 2002)
Man, Glenn, ‘Ideology and genre in the Godfather films,’ in Browne (2000)
Mason, Fran, American Gangster Cinema: from Little Caesar to Pulp Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2002)
McCarty, John, Bullets over Hollywood: the American Gangster Picture from the silents to ‘The Sopranos’ (Da Capo Press, Cambridge MA, 2004)
Mitchell, Edward, ‘Apes and Essences: Some Sources of Significance in the American Gangster Film’, in Grant (2003)
Muller, Eddie, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir (St. Martins Griffin, New York, 1998)
Munby, Jonathan, Public Enemies, Public Heroes (University of Chicago Press, Chicago1999)
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, ed., The Oxford History of World Cinema (OUP, Oxford1997)
Shadoian, Jack, Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster/Crime Film (MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1977)
Tudor, Andrew, ‘Genre’, in Grant, (2003)
Filmography
Al Capone (Michael Wilson, 1959])
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
Brotherhood, The (Martin Ritt, 1969)
Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002)
G-Men (William Keighley, 1935)
Godfather, The (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
Godfather, The Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
Godfather, The Part III (Francis Ford Coppola, 1990)
Little Caesar (Le Roy, 1931)
Man Who Knew Too Much, The (Alfred Hitchcock, (1934 and 1955)
Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973)
North by North West, (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984)
Public Enemy, The (William Wellmann, 1931}
Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983)
Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (Howard Hawks, 1932)
Untouchables, The (Brian De Palma, 1987
White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949)
Notes
1 Mason, F. (2002), American Gangster Cinema: from Little Caesar to Pulp Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, New York), p. xiv
2 Leitch, T., (2002) Crime Films (CUP, Cambridge) p. 13
3 Pacino’s Scarface character belongs more clearly in this category than does Paul Muni’s earlier version (Scarface, Hawks, 1932), since in the later film Montana is killed by other gangsters; Camonte is killed by the police. It is perhaps worth mentioning that there is a subset of the crime genre in which the victim becomes the avenger – particularly to be observed in the work of Hitchcock (North by North West, [1959], or The Man Who Knew Too Much [1934 and 1955])
4 Munby, J (1999), Public Enemies, Public Heroes (University of Chicago Press, Chicago), p. 19
5 Allsop, K. (1961), The Bootleggers (Hutchinson, London)
6 Shadoian, J., (1977) Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster/Crime Film (MIT Press, Cambridge MA), cited in Browne, N., (2000) FrancisFord Coppola’s The Godfather Trilogy (CUP, Cambridge), p.14
7 Man, G., ‘Ideology and genre in the Godfather films,’ in Browne (2000), 109-110
8 Tudor, A., ‘Genre’, in Grant, B., ed., (2003) Film Genre Reader III (University of Texas Press, Austin)
10 Mitchell, E., ‘Apes and Essences: Some Sources of Significance in the American Gangster Film’, in Grant (2003) p. 219
13 This categorisation characterises the approaches of Leitch (2002) and Mason (2002) as well as Munby (1999)
16 For example Chapman, J., ‘Film Noir and society’, in Chapman, J. ed., Popular American Film 1945-1995 (Open University, 2000), p. 26-29
18 Muller, E., (1998) Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir (St. Martins Griffin, New York)
23 Hardy, P., ‘Crime Movies’, in Nowell-Smith, G., ed., (1997) The Oxford History of World Cinema (OUP, Oxford), p. 306
27 Browne, N., ‘Fearful A-symmetries: Violence as History in the Godfather films’, in Browne, N., (2000)
29 Cowie, P., (1995), Coppola (Faber & Faber, London) p. 63
30 Dika V., ‘The Representation of Ethnicity in The Godfather’, in Browne (2000), p. 76
32 Camon, A., ‘The Godfather and the myth of the Mafia’, in Browne (2000), p. 59