Who Was That Masked Man?

Warren Rose WRT-201-051 Professor Bordowitz Essay 1 9-27-2017

Who was that masked man?

What if novels were missing some of their pages? Some movies depicted from books seem to have this effect. Though it’s impossible to shed light on to that which each character deserves in a movie, often insufficient details in scenes about these individuals leave their influence in the story unclear. This is what happened in The Godfather. Though Francis Ford Coppola did do The God Father justice, still important facts the novel contained written by Mario Puzo, weren’t in the film. When a movie’s focus is on their protagonist for the sake of entertainment, it diminishes the whole context of the book. Whenever certain characters in a book are vaguely portrayed in a movie, it undermines the importance of how that character affects the story.

The Godfather movie dismissed the importance of its characters that supported the books story. In Coppola’s tale, Luca Brasi’s past was scarcely mentioned by Michael Corleone in a story he told his fiancé about a bandleader his father made “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” as Brasi held a gun to his head (Coppola). The extent of Brasi’s identity is lost in the movie. In Puzo’s version, Brasi was a stone cold, ruthless killer, who executed six men in two weeks that ended the famous “olive oil wars,” as well as two others hired from Al Capone to kill the Don (Puzo 20). Brasi alone saved the reputation of the Corleone family during this time because of being so atrocious of an individual capable of doing so. This man is pure evil, and the reason he is given so much notoriety in the novel is because Luca Brasi is the only man the Don himself fears (Aurora). However, this man’s character was weakened by Coppola, where clearly Don Vito Corleone fears no man. This devalues Brasi as just another unimportant thug, when in truth, without this man the Corleone crime family would not have risen to such great power.

Coppola’s viewpoint has also created a mystery in how Michael Corleone escaped prosecution for the murder of Sollozzo and Captain Mark McCluskey. The significance of these two murders by Michael Corleone turns the tide of the plot and forces Michael to fulfill his destiny in the Corleone family. This was never mentioned in the movie, nor was Felix Bocchicchio (Daniels). Bocchicchio’s character in the book is not only to show the brilliance of Don Corleone in bringing his son home from exile in Sicily, but also to give a plausible explanation as to how Michael could have gotten away with killing a New York City police captain (Puzo 286-288). These details are too substantial to exclude, and will remain unexplained throughout all The Godfather movies.

The endings of the movie and the book are much different from