Great American Tragedy (SPOILERS)

Rating: 10/10 (23 April 2002)

I suppose it's difficult to qualify exactly what formulates a tragedy. Are tragedies about fate, disillusionment or death? Are they about language? Must the plot adhere to a strict set of rules? Must the climax come in the third act? Well, my concept of a tragedy is when the flaws of one or more of its characters destroy a high goal. In the case of the Godfather, this goal is the prevention of Michael's entry into the family business by making him a true American; the tragic flaw is Michael's inability to forego vengeance.
Certainly many efforts are made to prevent Michael's tragic fate. Michael himself seeks to evade becoming like his family. When telling Kay about how his father released Johnny Fontaine from a band contract by making the band leader `an offer he couldn't refuse,' Michael says, `That's my family Kay, not me.' While the rest of his family wears tuxedos at the wedding, Michael wears his dress uniform. While his family talks about the drug business with Solozzo, Michael and Kay go shopping and go to the movies.

By the time Michael saves his father in the hospital, it is already clear that Michael has no desire to be involved in the family business, but the attempt on his father's life is the first revelation of Michael's tragic flaw. In the scene where Michael agrees to kill Solozzo and McClusky, Hagen tells Sonny that he is taking business matters personally. When Michael agrees to kill them both, Sonny accuses him of the same. Of course, a central irony of the Godfather is the fact that the family is the business, ties of blood and ties of money become inseparable. Sonny's accusations are correct, Michael is taking the matter personally, the only major difference between Michael and Sonny is Michael's calculating patience. This difference is painfully obvious by the end of the film. Sonny dies because he carelessly charged after Carlo when he discovered that Connie was beaten after his initial death threat. Michael waits for the perfect opportunity to have Carlo murdered, never allowing Carlo to suspect his motives. After his betrayal, Tessio asks Tom Hagen to `tell Michael it was strictly business.' Hagen replies that Michael knows. Despite the fact that murdering Tessio and losing his knowledge of the Bronx is bad business, Michael has him killed. This is further evidence that Michael is not acting out of his business interests, but his inability to forego vengeance.
Kay is a very important figure in this tragedy, I say `figure' because to Michael, Kay as a person is irrelevant. Kay's value to Michael is her lack of connection to his family. She is from New Hampshire, so he most likely met her at Dartmouth (he went to college while his other brothers learned the family business). At the beginning of the film, Michael has Kay appear in his family photo. He tells her everything about his family and while his family is planning, he is spending time with her notably shopping at the store `Best & Co.' and watching a movie about a nun. These details are significant because Michael views Kay as a better sort of person than his family; he sees her as a figure of salvation. When he returns from Italy and has entered the family business, Michael tells Kay that he has to marry her. `The old way is finished. Even my father knows that now. In five years the Corleone family will be completely legitimate.' Michael sees Kay as a figure through which he will achieve that legitimacy. When Kay asks Michael if he had Carlo killed Michael's reaction is the exact opposite of what he would have told her at the beginning of the film. Instead of telling Kay everything and defying the old rule of never letting women know about the family business, Michael told her all of his family's stories willingly and with complete honesty. In this scene, Michael reveals not only that he won't let Kay know about his affairs, but lies he finally agrees. The final shot of the movie, the closing of the door as a wiping fade out is significant because it shows Kay's separation from Michael. She has literally and figuratively been removed from him, salvation rejected.
Easily the most telling scene on this film's tragedy is the scene in which Vito tells Michael that he `didn't want this' for him. He tells Michael that he wanted him to be a Senator or a Governor. This is interesting when compared to Michael's rationalization of his work to Kay in which he suggests that all men of power are the same. Vito dies in the very next scene of natural causes, but with the knowledge that the son for whom he had such great hope had been damned. The scene immediately following the death of Vito is the baptism of Michael's nephew, which is brilliantly cross-cut with the murders of the heads of the five families and Mo Green is a sequence in which holy water is crosscut with blood, renunciation of Satan is juxtaposed with acts of murder and the sacred is connected to the vile. Vito's way of doing things is finished. Vito openly told the heads of the families that `I forego the vengeance on my son' and `I will not be the man to break the peace of this day.' It is Michael who breaks the peace. Vito was a reluctant Godfather who spend his life running `harmless vices' and declaring that `we're not murderers' when refusing to hit the men who assaulted Bonassera's daughter, ultimately has a cold, calculating man who rationalizes murder as his successor, defying all his hopes for the future.