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nothingenoughao3 · 3 months

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We interrupt our regularly-scheduled Reanimator reblogs to address a very important Godfather-related point made in this post by @frodo-of-the-nine-fingers.

Visual storytelling used to be A Thing in films. Some directors still do it (lookin' at you, Ari Aster, in equal parts terror and admiration), so I'm not arguing that it's totally lost to time, but... kind of, maybe. Compared to what I'm about to discuss, it feels like it's gone.

See, there's this thing about hair. It once was that hair in movies could matter a lot! There were not clauses in contracts requiring that the actors always look fuckable, and so actors sometimes were made to look gross or messy! This is where we get tropes about, say, Shaving The Beard or a Meaningful Haircut. You grew the beard/hair because you were overwhelmed with tragedy and immobilized by grief, torment, and anhedonia. When you were ready to shuck that off, even temporarily, you'd cut off the hair/beard, typically while staring at yourself in a mirror.

Double points if the mirror was the door to a medicine cabinet, so there could be a shot of the camera/you looking into the cabinet as you set the scissors away, then a dramatic click of the mirror closing to reveal you with your new, stern, cleaned-up features. But I digress.

Hair was, in other words, chosen for reasons other than "This hairstyle will make the character visually recognizable when they are a tiny CGI doll puppeted around during the hyperdense finale".

Now we could also probably make a post about the hair of the Corleone women, but in this post, it's just dudes. Sorry for being gay.

First let's look at Vito.

In the first second film, we see Vito as a boy. His hair is loose, slightly parted down the middle. This connotes immaturity, boyishness, and innocence. His hair isn't particularly styled or controlled. That last word will be important for this analysis.

By the time he's an adult, we see that Vito's already adopted the style he'll maintain for the rest of his life.

(i cannot with you robert. how dare you.)

Vito's hair is a simple, but powerful visual metaphor for control. Vito was out of control when he was a small boy, and it cost him his entire family and his safety in his homeland. It nearly cost him his life. No matter how gentle he seems, the truly gentle, childish, boyish Vito is gone forever, and he will never return.

He will keep himself and his family safe, even if he has to fucking kill people to do it.

Vito keeps his hair under the same kind of control he keeps the rest of his life under. The only times we see it out of place are when he's out of control--after he's shot and never really recovers.

Even more so, as seen above, after he loses Sonny.

The Corleone boys' hair also reflects how closely they adhere to the family, but more than that, how closely they are adhering to Vito's personal values. So, for example, Sonny does not have this hairstyle. He's got loose, kind of curly/frizzy hair which is never styled like Vito's.

(god he is devastatingly attractive it is untrue)

Clearly, Sonny's hair reflects his character: he's wild. Untamed. He can be the Don, and he serves very well when he's a wartime Don, but he never really adopts Vito's perspective on life/family management/Donship. We see this in how he doesn't pay much attention during the scenes where Vito's giving favors at Connie's wedding, even though he has at least two daughters and will have to do this ritual himself at least twice. He thinks he'll make his own way--beat up a photographer, bang Lucy--and he won't have to worry about all this crap once Pop turns it all over to him.

Then there's Tom.

(hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhggggggh look at him)

Tom has his hair slicked back from the very first time we see him, and he keeps it that way throughout both films. He is loyal to a fault. Not just to the mafia, but to Vito. When Tom tells Sonny he's as much a son to Vito as him or Mike, nobody argues with him. They all know it's true. And we, the audience, can literally see this loyalty in how Tom presents himself.

Notice, though, that Tom didn't say "I'm as much a son to him as you, Mike, or Fredo"? Yyyyeah.

Fredo starts off with the same kind of style as Michael, a more grown-up version of Vito's childhood hairstyle.

And a clearer shot of Michael because why not this is a Pacino appreciation blog

(their faces have transported me to heaven, free of all sin)

These are more controlled versions of the same hair Vito had as a child. This communicates that Michael and Fredo are not part of the family. They're adults, they brush their hair and use product on it, but they don't style it like men. Despite being a soldier (in Mike's case) or casually involved in the family business (in Fredo's), they're both treated kind of like kids. They have the potential to grow into men, men like their father, but they haven't yet.

Both Fredo and Michael do adopt their father's style at specific points in the narrative, and it's relevant to note when this happens.

When Michael is in Sicily, after making his bones, he still parts his hair. He's still maintaining his separation from his family. Despite him being utterly and totally dependent on his family for survival, given he's being hunted by half of the country.

(to be a bruise on that man's cheek)

It's Apollonia's death that changes everything for him.

But first, hats. Hats are another thing with Michael: he wears them when he's uncomfortable in a social situation, as though he's 'hiding', then takes them off to show he's more relaxed and comfortable. Frex, him wearing his uniform hat when he arrives at the wedding, then doffing it after he's been there a while. Likewise, he wears a hat in Sicily to literally show the audience that he is in hiding. He ditches it once he starts courting Apollonia, because now he's not in hiding--he ratted himself out and he's trying to integrate.

So when Michael meets Kay outside the school, and he's wearing a hat and keeps it on the entire interaction... we know, without being told, that he is telling porkie pies. He is lying. He is hiding in plain sight. More than that, it tells us he's not really comfortable or happy being there. He's doing this because he feels like he should, and not because he wants to.

(Notice, for instance, that when Michael is lying out of his asshole to Carlo about his chances of surviving the next ten minutes? Michael's wearing a hat for that entire scene.)

The other purpose of the hat is to disguise what's going on with Mikey's hair. He starts out with the newsboy cap in Sicily, so we can't see whether he has been fundamentally changed by making his bones. Then we see... no, he hasn't, he's not really that bothered by shooting two dudes. Okay. Then he goes to see Kay post-return and the hat disguises how deeply Apollonia's loss has affected him, until the next scene, where we see...

... oh.

It's still parted. But it's far closer to Vito's traditional hairstyle than before. Far closer. We are shown without being told how profoundly Michael was affected by all of his losses in Sicily (we can definitely include Sonny's death, and the general PTSD of that carbomb was meant for me, along with Apollonia's demise). He is transforming. Corroding into Vito.

Now the next major scene lets us compare Michael's new hair directly with Fredo. Fredo's hair has also changed. From the fluffy semi-parted look from before, we now see him like this:

His hair is slicked back--severely, sharply. However, when added to the rest of his outfit, it looks like he's a parody of Vito. He's trying to hit the same notes, but he's failing miserably. He's too tone-deaf to get the song right. But Michael?

Still very slightly parted, but that boyishness is almost gone.

While Fredo's transformation seems fake, it's more that he never really makes it. However, from this point on, he is involved in family business, the way Pop would have wanted him to be--at a distance, where his clowning does the least damage--so his new Vitoesque hair remains for the rest of Parts 1 and 2.

Is there, then, a specific scene where Michael's hair is unambiguously, entirely slicked back in a Pure Vito? Not with the little knocked part left in the front, as though some vestige of his own personality remained?

Well, yes. There is.

There's so much going on during the Baptism Scene that this understandably is left by the wayside, but we almost never see Michael with his hair exactly like this ever again.

Part 2 shows him with hair that's sometimes parted (when he's doing public-facing stuff) and sometimes slicked back (when he's doing Mobster Stuff). We do see him with this perfectly-slicked back look when he meets Hyman Roth. You know, when he's trying his hardest to project a sense of Vito-ness, of Donitude.

Overall, though, nothing really tops Michael's look in the Baptism Scene. He has fully embraced Vito's life, Vito's philosophy, and Vito's plan for the total destruction of all their enemies. He may be a little bit more Michael later on, but in this specific moment, Michael is Vito.

He is exerting total and complete control over dozens of lives, ending or changing them for the worse across the board.

Because, when he was still young and kind of boyish, he lost his family and his homeland and, very nearly, his own life.

And he will keep his family, The Family, and himself safe, even if he has to kill everyone outside The Family to do it.

#we interrupt our scheduled reanimator reblogs #the godfather #the godfather part ii #michael corleone #vito corleone #sonny corleone #fredo corleone #tom hagen #visual storytelling #film analysis #i live for analysis #in which i talk about hair about as much as junji ito #nothingenough speaks #screencaps

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