Originally posted by UnderBoss:
My point is no one can assume the drapes were left open on purpose as part of the assassination plot. For all we know the assassins could have taken him out in the kitchen or any other place with uncovered windows. For that matter they could have waited til the lights were out and shot up the bedroom.
The drapes could have simply have just been left open and not closed by some random person. The assassins could have noticed the drapes were left open and capitalized on that. It's a pretty big assumption to say they were left open by Fredo or by anyone for that matter.
I don't think we can assume anything
but that the drapes were left open intentionally.
A shrewdie like Roth would not have plotted an assasination attempt in which the hitmen wandered around the grounds, presumably in everyone's view, waiting for and hoping to get a clear shot at Michael.
I believe that Kay's comment to Michael ("Why are the drapes open?") is inserted in the dialogue specifically to make it clear to the viewers that the drapes were not normally open, and I also believe we are meant to conclude that someone left them open deliberately.
So the question then becomes "Who"? Well, if not Fredo that would mean that there was a co-conspirator, or another conspirator that Fredo wasn't aware of, a scenario that I find quite unlikely given the fact that it would have been totally out of character for Michael to not figure that out and find him.
Something that you may not know, UnderBoss, is that there's an early draft of a screenplay for GF II which has been floating around here for awhile (I think there's a link to it somewhere, but I can't tell you where).
I have a copy, from which I quote the following dialogue from the scene when Michael returns from Cuba and first meets with Tom Hagen:
Michael: "I want you to reach Fredo. I know he's scared, but have one of our people reach him. Assure him that there will be no reprisals. Tell him that I know Roth misled him."
Tom: "My information is that Fredo thought it was a kidnapping. Roth assure him that nothing would happen to you."
While I would agree that an unused script should not be the first source of information for facts which help us to analyze and understand various elements of the plot, consider the following:
If you accept Fredo's statements to Ola during the late night phone call ("You guys lied to me...you got me in deep enough already"), and
if you accept Fredo's statement to Michael ("I didn't know it was gonna be a hit"), then the idea of Fredo believing that it would be a kidnapping is perfectly consistent with your points A and B in your post above.
What I am trying to say is assuming Fredo actually left open the drapes contradicts the following points:
[b]C) What I think is an underlying theme of GF II, which is the tyrannical nature of Michael Corleone, which entails a totalitarianistic way of dealing with problems of this nature.
D) I don’t think there is doubt in anyone’s mind that Fredo didn’t love his family and his brother Michael. I don’t think he would sell his family down the creek for anything but to benefit them, he after all was perhaps the kindest character in the whole trilogy with Mary as a possible rival.
[/b]
As far as points C and D are concerned, while they may very well be true, I don't see how assuming Fredo left the drapes open contradicts either one of them. Frankly, I don't see how assuming Fredo left the drapes open even has anything to do with "C"
What I am trying to get at with this overall is there are big holes in the movie (questions left unanswered). This means we can not conclude that Fredo consciously betrayed Michael or was just duped into giving one piece of information that in Fredo’s mind would have been used to benefit the family and speed the alleged negotiations up. In fact under the evidence that's available in the movie we can more readily conclude the later due to the multiple references given to the fact that Fredo had been duped.
I think every member here with more than a passing interest in the trilogy would agree that there are major plots holes in Part II. I would agree that Fredo did nothing that he thought would hurt his brother. I agree that he was duped and lied to by Roth and Ola. The only question is, what was he duped into doing, or what information was he duped into giving? If you believe, as I do, that the drapes were left open on purpose, then Fredo is the only logical candidate when we wonder who was responsible.
Furthermore if we take all the possible explanations or scenarios into consideration due to what is presented in the movie as plot pieces, we can conclude that there is a far higher probabilistic chance of the latter (Fredo being duped) that he former (Fredo consciously betraying his family).
This is an entirely separate argument than "Was it Fredo who opened the drapes?" And I would agree that he was duped, rather than trying to consciously hurt Michael.
By extension if we now assume that Fredo was somehow then contracted to leave the curtains open (the Johnny Ola phone conversation implicitly contradicts this premise BTW), then we are left with implicitly an even lower probability chance that Fredo actually was involved even this far in the plot. This would as a whole limit the logical possibility of him actually consciously betraying Mike.
I think the phone call from Ola supports, rather than contradicts, the premise that Fredo was the drape-opener. What else could Fredo have meant in his comment to Ola?
I also don't see the "even lower probablility that Fredo was involved this far in the plot"
