The Wedding Godfather

25 Things You May Not Know About 'The Godfather'

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Fredo, his second oldest son, is particularly marginalized within the framework of the wedding. The blocking of the action in the scene—with Fredo kneeling between Michael and Kay—also conveys his awkwardness and divisiveness.

When Fredo sits between them, he separates the two and effectively disrupts the natural state of the couple. Cazale acts slightly too drunk, with his hands too active in touching both Michael and Kay and his way of speaking too oblivious to have a continuously flowing conversation.

He is too drunk to function properly at the wedding, is unable to have mature social interactions, and fails to understand the intricacies of familial relationships. His reckless and impulsive nature is dramatized in his interaction with the FBI agents who are documenting, in an act of surveillance, the people who are attending the wedding. After unsuccessfully attempting to get the agents to leave and being met instead with a stoic face and an FBI ID, Sonny takes his frustration out on one of the agents, yanking his camera away and throwing it on the ground.

Then, in classic gangster fashion, he drops a couple of crumpled bills on the ground to pay for the broken camera.

The Godfather wedding

This scene speaks volumes about Sonny, especially his inability to control his temper: By committing such irresponsible actions, he distances himself from his father. During the wedding, especially in his dealings with Amerigo Bonasera, Vito is defined by his poise, gracefulness, and eloquence. He does this not only to maintain control over intense situations, but to handle them maturely and ensure that they reflect well back on to him.

By contrast, Sonny lacks the foresight to control his emotions, and fails to understand how his outbursts will reflect back upon his family. In a cruel irony, Sonny takes advantage of the drama around the celebration of a new family to cheat on his wife.

This moment from the wedding scene encapsulates well the cruelty of the irony. His wife is in the foreground, busy talking to other guests and joking about the size of his phallus—which in its own way is a form of endearment.

The Godfather: Behind the scenes in the Sicilian villages where the movies were filmed | Escape

He is cheating on his wife literally behind her back, and her close proximity to him while he commits this act suggests how normal this sort of betrayal has become for him. He puts a little care into hiding his unfaithfulness, but his suspicious activities are not unnoticed by his wife, who looks behind her to find him, only to see that he is already gone. While talking to Johnny Fontane, he asks him if he spends time with his family, which Johnny replies affirmatively to.

His placement in the background suggests his participation in suspicious activities and his attempts to keep them out of sight from his family.

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Consequently, Sonny is the opposite of Vito in both personality and moral conduct, and his obvious lack of belief in traditional Sicilian family values indicates how inappropriate he would be to succeed Vito as head of the Corleone family. While Michael may not be as immature as his two older brothers, the moment he walks into the wedding a distinction is already made between him and the rest of his family.

As he walks into the estate with Kay, noticeably late—13 minutes already into the film to be exact—his military uniform sticks out like a sore thumb. Michael makes deliberate choices to differentiate himself from the rest of the Corleone family, showing up when he wants to instead of at the beginning of the wedding, wearing what he wants to instead of a tuxedo like the rest of his brothers, and bringing a non-Italian-American date who herself chooses to wear a dress that is Americana in style.

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These choices construct his character as just another attendee and not a central member of the Corleone family. In his first interaction with a member of the family, Michael hears from Tom that his father is looking for him. Coppola cuts to a close-up shot here, placing emphasis on both the importance of the statement as well as the secrecy of it—as it is family business—to ensure that Kay will not overhear. But Michael barely reciprocates, simply nodding before sitting back down to continue dining with Kay. This is a direct rejection of Vito, and more generally a rejection of any effort to craft stronger ties with his family and the dubious business they deal in.

It appears that Michael, decked out in his military uniform, is attempting to rebrand himself as a law-abiding, patriotic citizen — the exact opposite of a Corleone.

However, we can make a crucial distinction between the three sons: Furthermore, we can see that, outside of his decisions to distance himself from the family, Michael is still a bearer of Sicilian values and culture: And so, with Michael finally present at the wedding, the photographer lines up the family once again.

It is at this spot that a besotted Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino, asked the wrong man about a beautiful young girl he had seen, Apollonia Vitelli. Savoca, near the prosperous coastal resort town of Taormina whose station was used in Godfather III was chosen as a stand-in for the real village of Corleone in the movie because it was relatively untouched by progress and had fewer issues than Corleone with the local mafia.

Locals led a hard-scrabble existence, farming on terraces and growing citrus trees and cactus, a perfect backdrop for a story of a Sicilian family who migrated to the US and made it good, mafia style.

A Family in Celebration, and in Transition: The Godfather’s Opening Wedding Scene

Savoca, unlike inland Corleone, looks to the Ionian Sea from its lofty perch, a pretty village surrounded by sun-blasted hillsides and the occasional old stone farmhouse. When Francis Ford Coppola filmed here, all the scenes were shot looking away from the stunning view for authenticity. In contrast, a modern sculpture of Coppola, crouched over his cine camera, looks to the sea. There is one winding, narrow road up from the coastal highway to Savoca, which is now augmented with some modern villas, and then a gentle upward stroll past tiny houses and old ruins to the church on the hilltop, begun in the 14th century and known as Santa Lucia, where Michael married Apollonia.

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If more is better, the cafe in the piazza has a large collection of Godfather souvenirs, from Marlon Brando mugs to fridge magnets and dolls. While she is doing really well for herself, 18th-century Bar Vitelli is showing its age. Plastic protects the upper windows and the cracked stone walls look unlikely to make another years.

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