Don Barzini

1. Tessio was complaining that Barzini was chisseling on his territory. What were Barzini's men doing excatly? Were they killing some Corleone employees in Brooklyn and started managing their businesses? Or did they threaten the Corleone Family Employees with guns and told them to take a hike? I know it never said exactly what Barzini's people literally did to Tessio's crew members, but I just wanna hear your opinions.

2. At the meeting of the Five Families, Barzini only agreed to the peace because Vito said he would do whatever it takes to put their problems away. Had Vito kept arguing the case about how Drugs being the Downfall of the Mob would their have been a peace? Or would Barzini declared more war.

I always took the "chiseling" comment to mean that the Barzini people were opening up competing businesses in territories that "belonged" to Tessio/Corleone. Specifically, bookmaking, gambling games, and loan sharking.

Barzini played that perfectly. He knew the Corleone Family was in decline, and Don Vito's agreement to the drug dealing was a move made out of weakness.

Vito's main concern here was getting Mike back safely, and in light of that, Vito would have agreed to ANYTHING to "stall" the other Families. Vito would not have argued against dealing drugs.

Not sure how well, exactly, Barzini played it, as he wound up dead.

Seems to me Barzini failed to make the distinction between retreating and surrendering.

Don Corleone retreated to allow his family to regroup. The rest of the Dons were too foolish to understand that.

Vito called the meeting, following Sonny's assassination. He told Tom, "this war ends now." He was clearly throwing in the towel. Barzini had every reason to think that Vito was acting out of weakness. But Vito did argue the case against drugs, then he said he'd do whatever it took to "keep the peace." Thus, Vito was able to maintain his "integrity" on the drugs issue, but capitulate on the "peace" issue.

Yeah I couldn't agree more than this. Just to add though, if this was reality Tessio did the right thing going to his Boss to complain. His Boss should then have took it up with the rival Boss in a sitdown with the other Commission leaders present. Which would have showed good faith to Tessio and who knows, he may never have defected. But Michael was wise in not following this orthodox route as we all saw in the Machiavellian end results. Weakness was the impression he wanted to give as his father had earlier given like SC and Turnbull had said. Also a Commission meeting could have proved fateful for him depending on the level of alliances Barzini had with the other members.

Agreed Turnbull, thats why this is my favorite scene. He was able to more or less concede, without appearing weak, especially when he said "I will hold some of the people in this room responsible"