"The Godfather" is a Horror Movie

50 years later, people still mistake the Corleone saga for a glamorization of the mafia.

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The Godfather turns 50 years old right around now. It’s universally beloved, but also widely misunderstood as a romanticization, or “glorification,” of the mafia. 

Part of that can be blamed on just how ubiquitous the movie and—by extension—its characters have become over the years in global pop culture.

But while we might be fascinated by the Corleone family’s trials and tribulations, any rational viewer can see upon first viewing that Sonny Corelone is a borderline psychotic, a truly reprehensible spoiled brat with a lust for blood and carnage, whose monomania nearly destroyed his family. But man is he fun to watch, just like the rest of his vile family. 

However much critics and audiences might continue to come away with the wrong impression, I’d argue that Coppola knew what he was doing the whole time. The Godfather isn’t a romantic epic set in the world of organized crime—it’s a horror movie about a clan of money-worshiping glory hounds all eventually turning on each other.  

Can’t Remember a Time Before Godfather Was in My Head

The keepers of the film pantheon generally place the first chapter of Francis Ford Copolla’s magnum opus somewhere in the Top 3—typically grouped among Citizen Kane and Casablanca as the holy trinity of American cinema. Notably, it’s the only color film among them—offering it a distinct advantage over its GOAT-movie cohort in its ability to maintain cultural relevance. 

That the film is a sweeping, operatic epic about one of pop culture’s enduring sources of fascination—Italian-American gangsters (as opposed to a gloomy character study of a reclusive early 20th century media magnate, or a sociopolitical WW2 melodrama about a star-crossed love triangle)—also does not hurt its modern day rewatchability. 

The Godfather saga inspired numerous classics and innumerable execrable knockoffs. It made high art out of lowlifes. And yes, in some respects it naively romanticizes its protagonists as “men of honor”—predatory animals, sure, but unlike their rivals, the Corleones are the kind of killers who will shoot you in the eye rather than the back. (Honor!)

I can’t immediately recall a time in my life when I was unaware of The Godfather. 

In the days when cable, VHS tape, and I were all relatively young, one of the first two Godfather films always seemed to be screening somewhere—whether it was a cheesy TV edit on Channel 5, or the real deal on HBO, or my Dad watching a rented copy on the VCR—the last of which inspired endless comedy when trying to put the tapes back in the appropriate “Be Kind Rewind” rental boxes. (Was this Godfather Part I Tape 2 or Godfather Part II Tape 1?”)

I probably saw every individual scene in The Godfather before I ever actually sat and watched it start to finish. That’s part of The Godfather’s endurance—every goddamn scene is legend. And so I came to understand the story’s themes through individual moments, removed from the overall narrative. 

Vito, weary from a long afternoon fielding endless requests for murder or immigration fraud—because no Sicilian can refuse a request on his daughter’s wedding day—slaps around his godson, the Sinatra-esque Johnny Fontaine, mocking his manhood for acting so forlorn over a minor career setback. 

Loyal Corleone family meathead goon Luca Brasi gets stabbed in the hand just before he’s strangled from behind with piano wire. 

The exiled Michael catches the thunderbolt of passion when he comes across the stunning (and doomed) local babe, Apollonia, in Sicily. 

Sonny beats the shit out of his wife-beating brother-in-law, Carlo, on a sidewalk on Pleasant Avenue. 

And, of course, the horse’s head.

As far as I can recall, the revelation of Jack Woltz’s decapitated prized pony is the first time I ever saw such gory on screen violence. 

The Corleones Don’t Smile

Sure, The Godfather at times glamorizes elements of the perverted mythology afforded to some monstrous people. But, it does not glorify the mafia. 

Critics have complained about The Godfather’s depiction of the mafia since before the film was released. Even the real-life head of one of New York’s “Five Families” thought Mario Puzo’s book was a stain on Italian-Americans, and staged a protest in Columbus Circle against the film’s production that drew tens of thousands. (Italian-Americans protesting bigotry in Columbus Circle, how’s that for irony?)

I’ve long been exasperated by this interpretation of The Godfather, because nearly every single scene shows there is “no honor among thieves.” 

But perhaps none more so than the final scene of Godfather II. 

The second installment of the trilogy bounces back and forth in time between Vito Corleone’s early 20th century childhood journey—as a dumbfounded Sicilian orphan of murdered parents arriving at Ellis Island, to 1920s Lower Manhattan where he transitions from impoverished young family man to upstart crime boss (ahem, olive oil importer)—and his son and successor Michael’s descent into embittered isolation in the early 1960s. 

Vito’s rise is the dark side of the Horatio Alger myth, and when he dies near the end of the first film, his greatest lament is there “wasn’t enough time” to launder the shame of his family “winning” the American dream through theft, murder, and the exploitation of the working stiff.

By the end of the second film, Michael has survived an assassination attempt orchestrated by his idiot brother, a Senate investigation into the mafia that ensnared his caporegime Frank Pantangelli, and Hyman Roth’s long conspiracy to whack out the Corleone boss—but only after he’s invested in the Havana operation. 

In the final shot of The Godfather Part II, Michael sits pensively, alone, in the near dark. His enemies are vanquished, his power is consolidated. But he’s destroyed his marriage. His only son is a basket case. And he’s only just begun to endure the guilt of ordering the retributive murder of his idiot brother. 

But it’s the last actual “scene” of Part II—a flashback to events just a few years before the beginning of Part I—that for my money is the most emblematic scene in the entire saga. 

It’s Vito’s birthday, December 7, 1941—which we know because of the table talk about “the japs” bombing Pearl Harbor on “Pop’s birthday.” 

Sonny swaggers into the dining room, introducing his friend (and later, his brother-in-law) Carlo to his sister, Connie. Idiot brother Fredo is there, as is family lawyer and adopted son, Tom Hagen. Sonny, at last, points to “that droopy thing over in the corner”—his kid brother, Mike (a.k.a “Joe College”).

This is the scene where Michael tells his brothers that, against his father’s strong wishes, he’s enlisted in the Marines and will soon be joining the war that his father pulled a lot of strings to keep him out of. 

It’s an incredible scene, laying bare in just a few minutes the main beats of the Corleones’ complicated family politics. 

But it was only after watching the film dozens of times over several decades that I was struck by the true meaning of that flashback scene. 

Almost all the characters are dead—all of them directly or indirectly murdered by the hands of someone else in the room. 

Sonny was whacked out at a tollbooth on the causeway in a hail of bullets fired by Barzini and Tattaglia assassins. 

Carlo’s the one who told them Sonny would be there, which of course, was Sonny’s revenge for the beating Sonny laid on him, following the many savage beatings Carlo laid on Connie. 

Michael would orchestrate Carlo’s murder barely hours after standing as godfather to Carlo and Connie’s son at his Roman Catholic christening. Connie, no dummy, immediately surmised that Michael was responsible, and confronted him as a “lousy cold-hearted bastard” and spat on him. 

Fredo would betray Michael, after being duped by Hyman Roth (and his Sicilian messenger boy, Johnny Ola) into thinking “there was something in it” for Fredo. Michael later ordered Fredo’s killing (which would torment him for the rest of his life). 

Even Sal Tessio (played by the late great Abe Vigoda) makes an appearance, strolling in with Vito’s birthday cake.

We hadn’t seen Tessio since the end of the first film, when he asked Tom, “Can you get me off the hook?” for setting up Michael to be assassinated at a would-be peace summit with Barzini. (Tom’s response: “Can’t do it, Sally.) Tessio accepts his fate, walking dutifully into the car to be driven to his own murder.

Nearly everyone in this flashback scene of a Christmas season Corleone family gathering is dead, and nearly all of them had a hand in killing each other. 

THAT’S what these movies are about. For all the Italian Sunday gravy dinner scenes and “going to the mattresses” lingo and revenge fantasies fulfilled—the Corleones are an evil family in an evil business and they literally are the bringers of their own destruction. 

These films show the life of permanent fear, paranoia, stress, and shame that “success” in this business brings. The similarly (originally) misunderstood Sopranos faced similar criticisms, but fifteen years after it went off the air, it’s correctly been re-interpreted as a commentary on American decline and soul-destroying materialism. 

THAT should be The Godfather’s legacy. Not that it inspired lesser films and shows that made organized crime seem “cool,” but that it inspired great ones, each with their own profundities on the American immigrant experience, the necessary brutality of dog-eat-dog capitalism, and the contradictions of the human condition.