I know this seems a silly topic, but bear with me:

Any time Michael, Vito, and Vincent are "in business", their hair is slicked straight back. It's a signifier of their status.

For example, compare how Michael wears his hair at the beginning of the first film, parted, and then compare it to the end - slicked back.

Compare how Vito wears his hair at the start, compared to the end - from slicked back, to longish and unkempt. One signifies his power and regal status as Don, the other is a rustic gardener who has retired.

Michael in GF II is seen with his hair not slicked straight back only twice: During the assassination attempt and after, when he comforts Kay, and when he entrusts Tom with the protection of his wife, his children and the Family as a whole. In these scenes, Michael is not the Don. The other scene is in the flashback to 1941, when Michael is a civilian utterly disconnected to his Family's business.

Vincent, likewise, goes from wearing a more loose style in the beginning of the film, to adopting Michael's GF II slicked back style when he becomes Don.

Another hair signifier:

When Vito is an aspiring gangster (but otherwise, really, a nobody) he is cleanshaven.

After he murders Fannucci and has pretty much taken over the neighborhood and established himself as the local Don, he has grown a mustache (much like Fanucci himself, and Don Ciccio). It is a symbol that he has become THE MAN.

In GF II, when Fredo has aspirations of having something "on his own" we see he has grown a similar yet pathethic version of Vito's mustache in a likely conscious attempt to emulate his father.

To me, this signifies that the characters' hair was meant to signify certain things about the characters.

Ah, yes. But then, even in real life, several actors slick their hair back when they want to come across as "serious". The floppy hair denote a young and carefree demeanor.

FFC's fanatical attention to detail is at work here. Latin males traditionally grow moustaches to denote maturity and machismo, and Sicilians and Mexicans still do. Note that Michael never had a moustache--he wanted to be "legitimate" and "American" (n.b., at the end of the novel, Kay takes vows in the Catholic Church. Michael is disappointed because he wanted his kids to be raised as Protestants--'it was more American").
Slicked-back hair was common among gangsters and tough guys--longer hair, curly hair or parted hair was considered not part of the image.

Also something to denote is that when Fredo is disowned by Michael, in the boat house scene, he still has a mustache. Afterwards, when he's nothing anymore, just a ward of the Corleone's - the gypsy who belonged to no one he always feared he was - at Carmela's funeral, he's cleanshaven. That can't have been an accidental choice on Coppola's part - it's like saying, to be vulgar, he got his balls cut off completely.

Yeah Michael didn't grow one because he didn't want to be seen in any way publicly as an Italian. He has a nice white American wife from a Protestant background, moved to a very non-ethnic state, and honestly, he doesn't seem to have any special love or appreciation for his heritage or culture. He's an Italian-American with an emphasis on the American; he notes his fighting career as a Soldier when defending his reputation, but doesn't consider it an act of persecution because he's Italian. Honestly, it almost seems like Michael has a DISDAIN for Italians. He speaks the language, sure, but the culture seems alien to him, despite having lived there. He's almost a self hating Italian. Like, I feel he may have loved his father, respected him as a man, but viewed his way of doings things as rustic and backward. Michael didn't believe in community, he believed in Michael.

Astute observation. Hadn't noticed that before.


In a deleted scene from II, when Gardiner Shaw asks for Francesca's hand in marriage, after Michael says yes, he turns to Tom and says, "Make sure her dowry's big--these people think Italian brides go barefoot." It's as if he's speaking of Italians as a species separate from himself.

I think everyone to Michael but him was a species separate from himself, and even he fully didn't understand himself as a human being, just whatever wants, needs or obsessions he had at the time. Like an engine being constantly in motion, not really aware of WHY it is moving, just that it is, and has to be.