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UdoConstantini's Replies
I thought this film might be kinda lame, but it was beyond awful, in fact it was downright putrid. Brady can't act worth a damn.
As I recall, the Chinese were assisting North Korea (including with providing troops) without making a formal declaration of war, but if the US had made an incursion into Chinese territory, we fired the PRC would have entered the war unconditionally. IMHO Truman was absolutely correct and justified in firing MacArthur, who was aptly given the moniker "The American Caesar".
The scene that I thought really stood out, as far as great acting, was the one where they show Jesse look at himself in the mirror and hurl at himself the vicious attacks and slurs that he had faced his entire life. Majors gave an amazing performance.
That was my thought. You can't win for losing on this issue. If they had portrayed more racism, there would have been cries of protest that it was "woke" and anti-white. As it is, the film included plenty of evidence of the racism Jesse Brown faced: apart from directly showing the hostility of the army guy who thought he had a chance with Liz Taylor (as if), it gave plenty of indirect evidence, such as the way he had of motivating himself by hurling at himself in the mirror the ugly racial epithets that had been thrown at him his whole life, his story about how he was forced to do the swim test ten times and the others tried to make him fail, his worry that the carrier radio control would purposely misdirect his plane so that he would crash, the fact that his CO refused to pin his wings on him at his graduation, etc.
While he is no Laurence Olivier, he is not such a bad actor as you suggest (e.g., watch Seven or Seven Years in Tibet). He even won a supporting Oscar recently. I assume the director wished for him to play it this way - childlike and ignorant, the idea being that he was incarnated for the first time, so had no experience of being a living being. You can criticize that decision and Pitt's performance, but let's not distort the film just to gratuitously insult Pitt.
OMG, it's a movie (and not a realistic one at that), not a forensic investigation. Susan falls madly in love with Death, but your problem with the film is that she did not inform everyone right away that daddy had passed away. Seriously?!!! In fact, she didn't even see his body. For all she knows, he walked to the other side of the bridge and she didn't follow him. It's his birthday party. At some point they will realize he is missing, search for him and find his lifeless corpse. An autopsy will clearly establish that he died of natural causes.
Luca was a loyal lieutenant, so he did what he was told. It was Vito who appears to have badly misjudged the situation. What we see in this film is the importance of knowing when to strike, doing so ruthlessly, and lulling your opponent into a false sense of security. Vito clearly saw Sollozzo as someone to be concerned about, but he completely underestimated him and did not foresee that he and the Tataglia's were about to strike. That was not Luca's fault - he was just following orders: he was putting out feelers, having no conception that they were about to knock him off (if they were going to assassinate Don Corleone, obvious they would have to take out his "muscle" first).
Michael learns this both in his idea to nail Sollozzo and his ultimate plan to knock off the heads of the other families. The other families thought he was a vulnerable greenhorn, and he lulled them into a false sense of security by accepting the offer to meet with the Tataglia's, which they took as a sign that he did not see his assassination coming. So they didn't see his move and were much easier targets as a result.
I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse.
I agree with your point that this is a key scene, but I think it provides more insight to the audience than to Michael. Michael was a marine who fought in WWII and was decorated. I have to imagine he had already realized that he had very steady nerves and was cool as a cucumber under fire.
After the meeting in which he turned down Sollozzo, Vito very angrily upbraids Santino for "letting someone outside the family know what you think". For this reason, I have to assume that the reasons he gave Sollozzo for turning down his offer were not necessarily the actual, genuine reasons. However, we don't really gain much other insight into why Vito says no. Santino and Tom both are in favor and give there reasons, but when they ask Vito what his decision is going to be, the scene ends and we don't find out.
Quite honestly, I don't know what his actual reasons were. He's smart enough to know that this might incite a war (of course, his casual behavior that got him shot might indicate otherwise, that Sollozzo was right and he was "slipping"). In any case, in the end, he was nearly killed, Sonny was killed, Michael joined the family business (which upset his lifelong plans for Michael), Luca Brasi and Paulie were killed, as were Sollozzo, Captain McClusky and Bruno Tattaglia (and I assume there were many other corpses strewn about the place that we didn't see). All of this was unleashed because of Vito's refusal, yet, in the end, he gave in and agreed to the drug trade. So wasn't his initial refusal foolish and costly?
"they show no 'non-combatants', or very few, getting hit."
I don't really buy "all the innocents are left alone" argument. Even though the film does not show more of it, when Don Corleone (and one assumes the other family's) want something from civilians, do you think they get if from friendly persuasion? NO! They used muscle. The famous line "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" makes this clear. It can't be refused not because the offer is so advantageous, but because it is backed by a threat of unacceptable harm if the offer is not accepted. The band leader who had Johnnie Fontane under personal contract was threatened to have his brains splattered on the contract he refused to sign. The Hollywood "big shot" who didn't want to give Johnny the role of a lifetime was intimidated by having his prized stallion (worth $650,000 - A LOT of money in those days) butchered, but this act also contained the implied threat, "Do what we tell you or next time it will be you." Yes, the film highlighted a certain code of ethics (Vito Corleone wouldn't kill the men who attacked Bonasera's daughter because, as she hadn't been killed, "justice" did not demand they be killed), but this code of ethics didn't seem to apply when a civilian refused an "offer" from one of the families. It's clearly not "justice" to murder someone because he does not wish to be extorted.
Excuse me, but did you SEE her breast?
Okay, joking aside, he fell head over heels in love at first sight. It would not be right to marry someone, if you are crazy in love with someone else. He was dating Kay, but they were not engaged, so he was under no obligation to marry her instead. And since he was banished from America, it probably seemed unlikely that he would see her again any time soon or that she would wait for him. Frankly, I think she was crazy to accept his offer of marriage after his return. Have you ever in your life seen a colder and more emotionless "I love you." as the one Michael offered her?
Coppola intentionally omitted to include subtitles. For the scene between Michael and Solozzo, just before Michael shoots him, the body language was critical, so I can understand why Coppola wanted the audience to focus on the faces of these two characters, and if he had added subtitles, they would be reading the subtitles, not looking at the faces. However, NO subtitles were used in the film for any Italian spoken. When Luca Brasi is pretending to switch to the Tattaglia family, he and Solozzo speak in Italian. Actually the same rationale of wanting us to see the body language may apply here, and in any case, what they were saying was pretty obvious. Still, for the whole segment where Michael was in Sicily, it became a bit annoying to always be wondering what they were saying. You can gain some of the meaning through context (Apollonia's father was insulted because the two Sicilian bodyguards were obviously telling him that Michael saw a hot piece of ass and the father realized they were talking about his daughter).
Yes, but there are some people who insist on referring to marinara sauce, or any sauce to be placed upon pasta, as "gravy". As far as I am concerned, gravy is made from the drippings of roasted meat. The topping for pasta, which is generally based on tomato, onions, garlic, herbs and spices is called sauce.
Clearly only your lower half is awake.
I think you are quite wrong for the exact reason that you cite. The fact that he is so good-looking and charismatic put into even stronger relief her repulsion at his ACTIONS.
I think he was quite good in this role.
It's also strange because, while the actress was likely over 18, the character is meant to be a minor, so showing her breast was more than a little creepy.
While I'm sure this question isn't meant seriously, I'll answer it in a serious way. While not a crime to want the perfect family, since that desire is a chimera, the obsessive and utterly uncompromising insistence upon having the perfect family plants the seeds of the crime of murder. Nobody is perfect, so clearly a group of people are even less capable of being perfect, but the self-righteous insistence on perfection in others, while ignoring your own flaws (like the willingness to slaughter people because they disappoint you) can lead to very bad results.
I think the key here is found in one of my favorite lines (if I can remember it correctly), "It's ME - Addison." (delivered flawlessly by George Sanders). This scene is about unmasking and power games, not sex (which is not to say that sex isn't often used in power games). One of the more interesting aspects about this film is that it shows how theater people all go through life playing roles, which is why nobody spots (except Addison) it that Eve is playing a role and is a total phony. With the "It's ME - Addison." line, he is basically unmasking both of them, saying "We are birds of a feather and understand each other." ("It's important right now that we talk, killer to killer.")
I agree with your view. I think using rape (or omission to rape) as evidence of a character being straight or gay is misplaced. Rape is about power and control, not sexual desire. Men who rape other men do not necessarily do it out of homosexual attraction, but to dominate and humiliate. If we compare this scene to the rape scene in A Streetcar Named Desire, they illustrate a difference in the characters - Stanley Kowalski is a working class, highly physical brute: he establishes domination and control by brute force and forced sexual relations. Addison DeWitt is too refined for that. He wouldn't get his fingers dirty. He establishes domination and control by manipulation and non-physical coercion. In my mind the scene says nothing about his sexuality.