Originally Posted By: Don Cardi
 Originally Posted By: Lilo
Interesting.

I always thought that the Don was being old-fashioned (and implausibly scrupulous) in not wanting to get involved in narcotics.


Yes. And that's EXACTLY how FFC and PUZO wanted us, as viewers to perceive him. I've written about this many times in the past. It's a director and a writer's way of making you root for the bad guy. You look at Vito and say,

"Hey he's not that bad of a guy. He won't deal in drugs and he looks down on infidelity. He won't kill at the request of Bonasera. After all, he's not a murderer like that undertaker thinks he is. He just handing out the deserved justice. That's a man with scruples."

But when push comes to shove, he's really no better than the drug dealer, the whoremaster or the womanizing pimp. Because no matter how many times you throw it in the wash, it still comes out the same - he's a manipulating law breaking murderer. Crime is crime and sin is sin.

But we still like him and look on him with more respect than we do Tattaglia, Barzini and The Turk.


Oh, I agree, which is why I wrote it was implausible for the Don not to get involved in narcotics.

FFC went to great lengths in the first film to show the adversaries of the Corleones as evil men. We NEVER see the evil that the Corleones do. We never seen Corleone loan sharks terrorizing dock workers or Corleone labor racketeers shooting some businessman who had the temerity to open up a garment factory or garbage hauling company.

FFC was alternatively amused and irritated by criticisms of his depictions in the first film which was part of the reason he made the second film darker. There the victims of the Corleones are not as deserving of their fates - a prostitute just doing her thing, an oldtime gangster who got confused and the protagonist's older brother.

You could even argue that everything Roth did was in self-defense...

Having said all that though I still wonder if the Don really was looking WAY ahead when he spoke against drugs.

"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives."
Winter is Coming

Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.