Mike & the lighter outside the hospital

This is probably a weird question, but I'm a relatively new Godfather fan and just getting into the minutiae of the details.

In the first movie, Michael is standing outside the hospital with Enzo the Baker. The car just left the front of the hospital, and Michael takes the lighter from Enzo to light the cigarette for him.

Michael seems extraordinary interested in Enzo's lighter while fingering it. Is there anything to this scene that I'm missing? It takes up several seconds of screen time, and I was just curious why the lighter seemed significant.

Welcome to the board. There are no weird questions but there are a few weird board members...

It's not the lighter that Michael is interested in but the fact that Enzo's hands are shaking very badly as a result of just having bluffed off a carload of killers. Michael on the other hand (pun intended) was calm. Very angry but calm. This showed that despite his protestations, Michael really was cut out for the life.

Yes. And the novel makes a point of saying that Michael's amazed at how steady his hands are.

Thanks for the answers! I do remember that bit in the book, but for some reason the action in the movie didn't translate into those thoughts for me when I watched it.

Good deal. Thanks! :-)

Great question!

As I have posted before,in my opinion, that was the defining moment for Michael. He and Enzo face death when those cars pull up, and after they pull away Enzo, understandably, is shaking uncontrolably. Mike takes the lighter and calmly lights Enzo's cigarette, and looks long and hard at what he is calmly doing. I think at the very moment Michael realized that he could live this "life" without any problem. That he was a natural at it. I think that many things ran through his mind at that split moment. He also realized that had he not been there to stand outside and act like a bodyguard, his father would have been killed in that hospital. Mike, thinking all this knew that he now must get involved in order to save both his father's life and the family itself.

Also keep in mind that Michael was a combat veteran, a Captain in the Marine Corps which is a rank you don't achieve without guts and smarts (although Army captains are gutsier and smarter).

Good points, both of you. Thanks so much! :-)

"you father.....you father"


This scene has a funny part....

In the book, the baker is said to have hightailed it out of there when he heard the sirens....(i think because of possible immigration issue).

In the film..one second you see him next to Michael...the VERY next second he vanishes...into thin air...

More than that. In the novel it states that somehow Hagen et al quote the baker as stating that he stood by Mike throughout that episode. Now, how did they learn that unless the baker told them and if he told them, when could that have occured?

olivant,


The baker stood by Mike when it counted....when Mike told him to put his hand in his pocket and they wanted to scare off the hit squad.

Once that was over with.....the baker heard the cops and (assumed) all was well....and got the F out of dodge.

He stood tall for his godfather when it counted and had no way of knowing or reason to think that cops arriving would cause more trouble.



I think in the film and the book..Mike was knocked out for a while and when he came to, perhaps after medical treatment...Tom had spoken to Enzo and gotten his version of the story


We're led to assume that they either stopped enzo's car on his way home from the hospital or that saw him leaving the hospital on foot.

You father..you father...