I’ll do business with you, but the fact is I despise your masquerade the dishonest way you pose yourself. “Dressed up in those silk suits, trying to pass yourselves off as decent Americans. “I don’t like your people,” Geary says, explaining his reasoning for the “fee.” “I don’t like to see you come out to this clean country in your oily hair.” Coppola ironically cuts to the German-Irish Hagen for a second. It’s an unfair charge, meant to “squeeze” Michael, and an insult from a WASP native to the invading Eastern horde, as Geary pronounces “Corleone” in a parodic fashion. Geary’s fee – which is a bribe – is $250,000, plus 5% of monthly profits. Michael wants to settle an issue about a gambling license connected with a casino the Corleones are acquiring. Geary admits that he plans on being “blunt,” switching his attitude from honored guest to bellicose racist. The contrasts between light and dark are both more extreme in some places, and in others, more muted: the underworld and the legitimate establishment co-exist in the same dark water (notice the abundance of fish in Dean Tavoularis’ production design, which of course ties into Fredo’s demise). The pleasantries of the opening turn bad when Geary sits down in Michael’s office, and we are again in the murky water of underworld dealings, albeit with a slightly different reverberation, as the windows are often open and the walls transparent, displayed when Tom Hagen is sent out and looks back in. Geary, the two men shaking hands and smiling, holding a plaque. He’s posing for a photograph not with family members, but with Senator and Mrs. A choir has dedicated their performance of “Mr. Instead of the godfather hidden in the shadows of the dark office where we can barely make out the whites of his eyes, Michael is wearing a light-colored suit and standing in plain view to receive accolades. The “covert” payoffs are now publicly acknowledged endowments: Geary holds a check as he speaks into the microphone, saying that it is a gift of $1 million made in the name of “Anthony Vito Corleone.”īut in pronouncing the name, Geary removes any phonetical Sicilian flavor: “Anthony Vy-toh Cor- lee-on.” Was this the old don’s original dream? To have the Corleone family’s apparent legitimacy so grounded in artifice? Geary asks that the signers of the check stand up: “Mike, Pat – er, Kay," a mistake that, for an audience in 1974, attaches the Corleones to the corruption of the Nixon Administration. Law enforcement officials now get champagne cocktails from the hired Corleone servers photographers are roam freely and most importantly, the special guest addressing the crowd is a U.S. The old-school Pentangeli, who apparently never wanted to come out West, feels that the ritual is drifting too far from Italian culture and tries to re-direct the band into doing a tarantella. The tango dancers on stage are 180 degrees from the Italian songs and dances that delighted Carmella Corleone and Pete Clemenza, belonging to a glitzier, glossier, and whiter America. The new Don Corleone has gone through the looking glass. We remember how Santino antagonized the FBI agents waiting outdoors, angrily spitting on their identification cards (“Goddamn FBI don’t respect nothing!”) and smashing a journalist’s camera. We remember in Part I how Tom Hagen relayed messages to Don Corleone of Senator Cauley and several other political and judicial figures apologizing for not being able to make it, though they’ve sent gifts. The principle guests in the Lake Tahoe sequence are those who were outside Don Vito Corleone’s Long Island wall. A dozen years before at Connie’s wedding, the environs were still culturally separate from the mainstream world of American law and government. At Anthony’s First Communion, Vito Corleone’s grandson patiently waits for the holy wafer while surrounded by blond haired and blue eyed children. All three open with a family gathering, and each respective event gauges the family’s symbolic power, which always seems in inverse proportion with its foundational or corporate power. The Godfather films are a hall of mirrors constantly reflecting on each other.
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