The power ofThe Godfather’s script should perhaps come as no surprise, given the names behind it.
The director and studio clashed over budget, running time, casting, shooting, and more.
Coppola’s well-documented struggle to makeThe Godfatherextended far beyond individual lines.
The director and studio clashed over budget, running time, casting, shooting, and more.
Michael always had the capacity for brutal, calculating criminality.
Michael, of course, endsThe Godfatheras a mafia don even more ruthless and cold-blooded than his father.
It’s enough to turn an honest, wholesome man into a heartless killer.
The scene represents the strongest and most emotive example of Michael distancing himself from the Corleone business.
It’s explicitly condemning his family’s activities that makes Michael’s fall from grace feel so shockingly transformative.
The Godfather chronicles the Italian-American Corleone crime family from 1945 to 1955. Following an assassination attempt on family patriarch Vito Corleone, his youngest son Michael emerges to orchestrate a brutal campaign of retribution, cementing his role in the family’s illicit empire.
Without that line, the collapse of their marriage loses a notch of its dramatic impact.
