114
PARTISAN REVIEW
vendettas seemed to be the gangsters' sole activity, the sole definition ofwhat
a gangster was. Odd, often very funny, but certainly not tragic.
I don't mean to imply that Puzo and Coppola let us off the hook entirely.
The Corleones might have been merely exotic, irrelevant to America's central
concerns, but in a twist to the joke, Puzo and Coppola patterned their Mafia
types after American big businessmen at the turn of the century-those grim
Horatio Algers, predatory heroes in the war of all against all. In
The God–
father,
as opposed to the Kefauver hearings, the Mafia was not simply some
imported ideology or conspiracy; it was the result of two cultures meeting and
interlocking, the grafting ofone tradition offraud and violence (Sicilian) onto
another (American) . I believe the audience, far from being appalled, widely
accepted this cool' 'sociological" or "historical" view of the Corleones-that
they were immigrants pursuing a corrupt but distinctly American road to
power and status because legitimate roads had been closed to them-and also
accepted and admired their success. The brilliant triumph of the movie itself,
its glittering power as a media event, only confirmed that the Mafia had made
it-at least in terms ofpublic appreciation. The explosive question ofwhether
the public's use of the words "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" constituted an
insult to Italian-Americans faded as an issue once
The Godfather
had become
such an irresistible success, for in this country the large-scale media exposure
of a given phenomenon often creates legitimacy-through-celebrity. In no
time at all, a widely publicized' 'slur" can become,
if
not a badge of pride,
then at least a means of plugging into the irresistible circuits of media excite–
ment-in other words, an advantage. "It makes me proud to be an Italian," a
man behind me said to his companions at the end of the movie, and he said it
without irony .
Perhaps he was proud (and non-Italians admiring) because, in the
movie's central conceit, the Corleones were that rare thing in America, a
happy family; and they were portrayed-at least in the first half of the
movie-as a model of health , yes, as happy monsters whose violent behavior
emerged from a high appetite for life as much as from the family's peculiar
way of doing business. The ambivalence was morally audacious for a popular
movie, and it's a mark ofCoppola's skill that he got almost everyone to accept
it. By the time Michael Corleone shoots his father's enemies in the restaurant
scene, Coppola had most of us where he wanted us; the hair-raising use of
conventional narrative techniques secured our acquiescence and complicity .
With an awed laugh, directed at ourselves as much as the screen, we accepted
the notion that Michael's violencewas an act offamily piety, a way of accepting
his father, his family past, his natural destiny .
Those few who didn 't accept it, who were alarmed by the mixture of
graciousness and murder, complained of sentimentality . For the anti-senti-
