The Family Corleone

 

The Family Corleone - Ed Falco

The first two Godfather movies are often referred to as two of the very best movies ever made.  Back in the day, the original novel by Mario Puzo was widely heralded as well.  Anytime you have something as impactful as the Godfather movies seen and studied by masses of people, you can always expect others to somehow “acquire” the rights to the completed works and then try to keep the story alive.  I mean, just look at all of the “Star Wars” movies, books, and television shows that are out there even though if we’re completely honest, the original trilogy was enough.  So what we have here is an original story about the Corleone family that covers a period of time not covered in any of the 3 movies.

Now, this book claims that it’s “based” on a screenplay by the author of the novel, Mario Puzo.  I did an internet search and I really couldn’t find much to back this up, but readers can assume that this is probably true.  I bring this up because anytime such an endeavor is tried, multitudes of grouchy fans will queue online discussion forums and gripe about how this offering isn’t “as good” as the original, or originals.  Whatever.  I found this story to be very good, and with the right care, I can see how a future film could be made by someone who gives the story the proper care, pacing, and attention it deserves. This book helps flesh out the characters and provides a lot of new insights and backgrounds as well.

The story takes place in 1933.  This is about 12 years before original story started, and about the same amount of time after the “early” scenes occurred in the second movie.  Vito Corleone is smart, powerful, and has his own “family”, yet he isn’t quite top dog yet.  There are an awful lot of other mafia families out there vying for a stake in whatever turf they can conquer, and none of these individuals play well in the sandbox with others.  Vito, as we all know however, is a very smart and patient man, and knows how to use every setback and every gain to his ultimate advantage.

For those who don’t know their history, 1933 was right around the time the Volsted Act ended, repealing prohibition that went into effect 13 years earlier.   With alcohol once again legal, this meant a massive amount of ill-gotten cash that was coming in for the various crime families is now about to get a lot smaller.  Those on the wrong side of the law need to figure out a way to keep the coffers filled by other means.  So a lot of chaos ensues, and a lot of people are rubbed out (of course it’s nothing personal, it’s only business) and there are lot of loyalties being shifted among the rival factions. Things get uglier than normal. It turns out that the Italians aren’t the only bad guys in the big cities, the Irish also have a very tarnished reputation during prohibition, and a lot of key players in this book belong to this faction.

Most of the characters from the original book and first two movies are present here, yet the two characters who get the most space are Santio Corleone and Luca Brasi.  Santino’s story is a bit expected.  We all know him as Vito’s hot-headed first born, and nothing that Santino does as a defiant violent 18-year-old surprises us here.  The Luca Brasi story, though, is the one that’s the most interesting, and it is so on multiple levels.  Without going too far off on a tangent, I always thought that the character of Luca Brasi was underutilized in the film, and even though we got a taste of what the man was capable of, it was a rather small taste before his character is eliminated rather early in the story.  This book gives us much more and it helps hammer out the fact that none of these people are nice people; especially Luca Brasi.

This was one of the minor sins of the first movie. When we watched the movie, we “rooted” for the Corleone family and we kind of got the impression that Vito wasn’t really that bad of a guy since he seemed to only hurt “other” bad guys.  I mean, he was such a nice family man etc.   Well, reading this book may give you a different impression of Vito.  True, we still admire him because of his smarts, but when one really reads between the lines, we can see he’s far from innocent regardless of how well he treats his wife and kids.  The Luca Brasi story here helps get this point across.

A minor gripe I had with this novel is that even though we read about a lot of familiar faces from the novel/movies, there are an awful lot of new, minor characters in this book and it’s hard to keep all of the names straight.  Most of these minor characters serve in the exact same role; they’re all soldiers for the various crime families. It’s awfully hard to keep track with who is who, especially since in many cases these individuals shift loyalties in various parts of the story.  I seem to recall having to distinguish between a “Cork” and a “Corr”, a “JoJo” and a “Joey” (it didn’t help when the author also referred to the “Joey” guy by his last name), and in one scene we have two characters that both have the name “Anthony”.  Now, I get that this may mimic real life, but for the sake of writing a novel, it’s probably best to give characters more distinct names; especially when they aren’t major players.  Better yet, there were many times when we really didn’t need to know the names of these individuals at all.  It would have been fine to say something like “Clemenza was in the car with two of his men….” as opposed to the author actually giving these two inconsequential characters names.  Too much to juggle.

This wasn’t too much of a hindrance though and it really didn’t hamper the story at all.  This was a great story. It was far from simple, and it helped fill in a lot of gaps and explained a lot of motivations that we saw in the original novel and two movies.   For me anyway, this story was a welcome addition to the Corleone family.