There's a lot of connotation that comes with discussing "The Godfather." For starters, it embodies the pinnacle of cinematic achievement - at least from an American perspective. The gangster story that follows Michael Corleone's rise to power as his father Vito "Don" Corleone faces his autumn years, it's a traditional drama featuring the reluctant hero, the call to action, and enough subtext to show the inability for evil to not be persuasive. This can be applied to Mario Puzo's original book as well, which has a little bit more of everything to chew on. It may have a reputation for being smutty and dated, but it's hard to imagine the masterpiece without the blueprints. In this respect, what Puzo has created may be greatly flawed, but is a fascinating look into a seedy culture that has only become more prominent in years since.
The idea of a mafia is alluring for the sheer fact that it's the individual taking control of his destiny. He doesn't subscribe to the laws of the country, but to his own group. Vito is such a noble man who does his best to maintain peace while determining what petty crimes deserve which poignant punishment. The book opens with several different scenarios in which mostly Italian characters go through obstacles that require his assistance. He has the financial and man power to fix anything, and on the day of his daughter's wedding he is forced to accept all offers. There's conflicts of Italian identity, what justice means, and how the generations differ. Vito is old school to the point that he only talks about the act of sex in respectful terms. Because of this nobility, he is able to control the Corleone family, which is one of the five major crime families (referenced as "The Five Families") in America; most of whom fled Italy when it became corrupt.
Despite Vito's nobility, his offspring are of a different variety, and it doesn't take long for Puzo to explore this. At daughter Connie's wedding, brother Sonny has a passionate row with his wife Sandra that involves several paragraphs straight from an erotic novel that include emphatic details regarding his genitalia. The Corleone children are a little dirty in their politics, and things only get more smutty from there. There's several more subplots that thankfully have been forgotten to obscurity, most notably an infamous scene involving vaginal surgery, again with the procedural details being explained in elaborate detail. There's even a thinly veiled "Frank Sinatra" character named Johnny Fontane, who turns to the mob to help him jump start his acting career for an unnamed film that ends up winning a lot of Academy Awards, including one for himself for a role where he's said to play a role like himself (anyone who has seen From Here to Eternity will know how close to plagiarism this story is). After that, it's more of the hanky panky as he wallows in one night stands and potential career ending medical problems.
However, Michael is the black sheep of the family; a man who defiantly joined the military and refused to be part of the Corleone profession. From the offset, he is the good egg who wants nothing to do with Vito. This is so much the case that the high society guests at Connie's wedding makes Michael's wife Kay go stargazing. Yet with the changing tides, Vito's life is put in risk and the phrase "It's nothing personal, just business." turns into a recurring motif for everyone in the story. Michael desensitizes himself as he takes over for his sick father, eventually finding that of his brothers, he's most competent to run the business amid the tragedy he specifically tried to stay out of. With a war between The Five Families going on, he mostly takes the role of Don (or leader) as a necessity.
It would be easy to see hardcore fans of the book being disappointed in the film. Many of the film's smuttier elements were smartly dropped, and the macho Italian prose was reduced significantly. Whereas the book makes a significant point of noting everyone's physical appearances - even their skin color - the film focuses on the central family dealing with the conflicts at hand. One of the film's director Francis Ford Coppola's smartest moves was only showing the conflict between the mafia. The book seems to feature countless unnecessary subplots that make for a more interesting worldview, but often does little to contribute to the central theme of Michael's rise to power. In fact, one could argue that Puzo's prose is almost a self parody of the Italian gangster culture it inspired from its sometimes masochistic view of men to the now familiar mafia tropes. Even the casual swearing makes this feel more attuned to the HBO series The Sopranos than the Coppola film that Puzo actually helped co-write.
Despite its excess baggage, it's hard to hate this book for one reason. It has all the great moments that the movie perfectly captured. There's the infamous horse's head scene; Sonny's visit to the tollbooth; even the Vito origin story that wouldn't be seen on film until the sequel. Puzo created all of these moments brilliantly and they pop with life in between redundant and sometimes unnecessary descriptors of the characters. The book warrants an epic, and one could only imagine what the film would be in less capable hands. It likely wouldn't be the iconic masterpiece it is today. Puzo may be at times making a caricature of his subjects, but he still knows how to pick scenes that grab the reader, forcing them to be shocked by the decadence on display. "The Godfather" may be flawed, but it's often interesting at its best parts.
It is doubtful if "The Godfather" is an authentic account of 1950's mafia culture. Then again, it doesn't really matter. According to Puzo's biography on the back flap, he purposely set out to write a bestseller, and this was it. It would be the subject that would define him for the rest of his life, even as he wrote many sequels as well as movie scripts for other studio films. Even if some of the prose makes you grateful that Coppola cherry-picked his focus, it still is incredible to see such creativity shine with an assurance. Puzo slowly takes the reader into this world and he spent the rest of his life wanting us to stay. Coppola and Puzo were working on a film version of The Godfather Part IV at the time of his death. When he died, the franchise went with him. That is the power that this one book has, and it's a pretty great one to be associated with - warts and all.
OVERALL RATING: 3,5 out of 5
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