Tightrope Walker in Little Italy: Layers of Duality in “The Godfather Part II”

Through expert direction and cinematography, The Godfather Part II (1974, dir. Francis Ford Coppola) conveys complex emotional ideas through deft visual composition. One sequence in particular overtly portrays the oppositional forces that constitute the film’s most potent narrative (and extra-narrative) tensions, namely those between private identity and public influence, European tradition and American opportunism, and organized crime and conformity. The Feast of Saint Rocco parade sequence from The Godfather Part II constitutes a microcosm of the film itself, revealing the dualities and convergences both intrinsic to the movie and its production. Various visual metaphors convey these and other oppositional forces and thus comment on the “dual” nature of the film as a whole.

            The sequence takes place during a Feast of Saint Rocco parade in New York’s Little Italy in 1917. Vito Corleone (Robert de Niro) mobilizes to assassinate Don Fanucci (Gaston Moschin) amidst the outdoor celebration. The sequence, which begins roughly around 1:58:43, begins with an extra long establishing shot of the crowd celebrating on the city street. It is a rich tableau, lit with warm, nostalgic light; the frame is peppered with string lights, Italian flags, and more subtly placed American flags. Already, convergences between cultures are evident; the street is an inherently dualistic milieu.

            The camera’s treatment of Don Fanucci, juxtaposed with Vito’s pursuit of him, is significant in evoking the rising tension of the “chase.” The establishing extra long shot of the city from overhead cuts to a medium long shot of Don Fanucci. He proudly waves to passersby before admiring a vendor’s necklace—he is the social and economic master of this domain. Nevertheless, he comes to be but a speck in Vito’s field of vision. This visual evocation of a “hunt” here highlights the predator-prey dichotomy underscoring the chase. Later in the sequence, the camera shows an overhead wide shot of the street below, looked down upon from the roof by an out-of-focus Vito. Vito is shot from behind and blurred; as of yet, his intentions are just as opaque. A cut to a “street-level” wide shot of the building on which he stands cleverly matches an opposite perspective; wherein the shape of Vito dominated the last frame, the same predatorial man is now nearly unnoticeable as he retreats behind the roof’s edge. This cuts to a long shot of Don Fanucci paying homage by tacking some of his own money to a nearby post as the crowd applauds. The next frame is another long shot, now of Vito, as he slinks from rooftop to rooftop; the camera pans right as Vito follows the Don’s movement. Now Vito’s intentions are clear, as his movement coincides with the Don’s. An eyeline match to a medium long shot of Don Fanucci from above shows him progressing through the crowd as the camera follows. Don Fanucci’s world is beginning to close in on him, and the camera visually reflects this in its steadily confining frame of focus. The “high-low” dichotomy and other perspectival manipulations are exaggerated here to reinforce Vito’s expressive dominance.

            More profoundly, the visual matching of the “predator versus prey” pursuit is informed by undercurrents of classism, represented most overtly by the distinctions between “high” and “low.” As Vito expertly slinks overhead, bounding on rooftops and separating himself from the masses, it becomes clear that Vito is quite literally above the social life of the community, and thereby above the law. Vito’s literal elevation visually alludes to his transcendence of preordained socioeconomic strata in his ascent to power. Regardless of his immigrant status, the viewer knows that this is but Vito’s first major foray into crime, signaling his impending rise to the top of American social and political power by breaking the rules rather than abiding by them. In stalking his prey—the white-frocked, self-proclaimed king of the commoners—from above, Vito foreshadows his impending dominance over the community.

            The building of suspense between Vito and the Don is only exacerbated when this cat-and-mouse visual matching is punctuated by shots of the parade, the expressive significance of which takes on a meaning of its own. Following the first shot of the Don, the camera cleverly cuts to another sort of icon—the effigy of Saint Rocco. This wide shot places the statue at the center of the frame; it is the focus of the shot, as well as the sacred object of veneration of the men carrying it. Their heads occupy the very bottom of the frame; its bearers are subservient to the effigy’s symbolic power. Notably, however, the totem is festooned with paper money, presumed to be donations to the Church. Herein the convergence of two different (or similar?) institutions is made quite overt—those of the Church and the economy, bound together in one cogent symbol. The decking of dollar bills onto the religious effigy signifies an ironic merging of American capitalism and “old-world,” Christian tradition. This merge suitably manifests itself in New York’s immigrant community of Little Italy, a microcosm of tradition within a larger context of metropolitan capitalism and opportunism.

            Soon, however, in classic Coppolan, neorealist fashion, a nearby street stand dominates the frame. Obstructing the view of the statue, the totem is now partitioned; only Saint Rocco’s face is visible. This symbol of the Church seems to be liberated, at once suggesting the primacy of religious reverence over base capitalism. However, the next stand’s roof inverts the previous image: now, only the money at the saint’s lower half can be seen. Both of the visual metaphors get equal “face time,” and their ironic dialectical relationship remains intact. (Additionally, this expressive representation of distraction and obscuration—the lack of a clear view—mirrors the mindless crowd’s lack of knowledge of Vito’s quiet, methodical stalking.) The world of the Americanized festa is not ultimately one of just familiar reverence or newfound capital—it is one where these two concepts sustain each other.

            This cuts to two joining medium long shots of other members of the crowd; in once again interrupting the tense intimacy of Vito’s chase of the Don, the camera reveals a plethora of oppositions within the community itself. The camera follows girls dressed as angels, boys fighting with sticks, men in bowler hats, and women in veils bearing gifts, while panning right as the parade progresses. Herein the world of battle meets that of reverent serenity; American well-to-do fashion converges with the humble textiles of the “old world.” The street below is a cornucopia, at once mixing and obscuring symbolic markers of gender, class, and ethnicity, but remaining an altogether cogent entity—a unified marketplace of difference. If the ground level of Curtiz’s Casablanca is a gritty, deglamorized marketplace exchanging bodies and goods deflected against lofty ideals—the world of spires and heavenly aircraft and escape—then Coppola’s 1917 Little Italy is more complex. It is the combination of the European and the American, the lofty and the base, the sacred and the profane; it is Heaven and Hell.

            More importantly, the social, ritualized marketplace of the ground is a clear divergence from the narrative’s focus. In being above it all, Vito can both reject and embody this oppositional world, constituting a movement of his very own—not unlike a tightrope walker, carefully treading the line between these two worlds to which he now belongs. Later on in the sequence, the camera cuts to a long shot of Vito jumping from one rooftop to another with careful skill; the camera tilts down as he methodically descends, and pans left as it follows his movement towards the edge of a wall. This cuts to a medium panning shot of the parade below: young men carry Italian and American flags (juxtaposed ever so nicely, perhaps to suggest the Corleones in symbolic form). Vito seems to be plunging from his metaphoric tightrope into the convergence of dual worlds—the European and American—and yet remains above them both. In the next medium shot, another crowd-based “interruption,” women bow and bless themselves as clergy passes by. In the most oppositional juxtaposition of frames, the camera cuts back to Vito at the edge of the brick wall, engaging in behavior that is anything but holy: he retrieves a gun, wrapped in a towel, from behind it, and exits to murder the Don.

            The many dichotomies at play in this sequence—predator versus play, Europe versus America, the reverence of religion versus the crassness of capitalism, “high,” meticulous crime versus “low,” distracted ritual—are not at odds, or even in conflict, but dialectically dependent upon each other to produce a jarring effect in the viewer and hint at the ironic nature of the film’s thematic tensions. Additionally, all of these oppositions are encapsulated in the portrayal of dual sequences—the parallel threads of the parade’s progression and Vito’s stalking. In this way, Coppola’s unique brand of filmmaking is on display. Helmed by an American director inspired by European genre, The Godfather Part II is, at its core, a crucible of oppositional influences and themes. Most obviously, it is a commercial and critical hit, piggybacking off the success of its predecessor, a more intimate film with a smaller budget and less “global” narrative arcs. However, The Godfather Part II remains an artistic and personal piece for Coppola, an attempt to “have it both ways” amidst the oppositional poles of European and American aesthetics and artistic and commercial value. This is narratively mirrored in both Vito’s and Michael’s efforts to secure sociopolitical dominance through respecting tradition, origin, and family, whilst assimilating into and subverting modern American structures. Perhaps the parade is just Hollywood, or even America, then—a crude mélange of the religious and the economic, a showy series of rituals that dictate where vision, pleasure, and ideology should go, all to distract its spectators from the violent and unpleasant truths taking place overhead—or at least behind the scenes.