"the dark people, the colored" (Zaluchi)

As far as I can see, in GF1 we see black people only at Woltz' place: Tony and Woltz' servant during the dinner with Tom.
Am I wrong?

And your point being?

The lack of black people in the GF was a quite accurate reflection of pre-civil rights movement America. Don't forget that until the late 40s, even the Armed Forces were racially segregated. Until 1947 baseball was racially segregated. If you peruse the newsreels of the 40s taken at ballparks you won't see any black faces. When did football (pro or college) integrate?

You might also remember a line in the novel where Clemenza decides against promoting someone to take Paulie's place because he got along too well with black people which indicated a flaw in his character. Yes, both the novel and film accurately represent the racial divide in America at the time.

Not looking to turn this into a racial debate. But I don't agree with you in that it "accurately represents the racial divide in AMERICA."

It represented the racial divide within the world of the mafia and their dislike for the black people. The old world mobsters looked down on the black people and did not "openly" do business with the black people. But behind closed doors the mob used the black people to make money for them with their harlem gambling and bookmaking operations. They looked down on them as being an inferior race of people.

Yes there was a racial divide in America, no doubt. But back then many black people did work as servants and maids. It wasn't an uncommon thing. In that I think that once again it was FFC's fine attention to detail more than his intent on representing the racial divide in America.

But what was said in some scenes in the Godfather did not neccesarily represent the feelings of Italians or Americans in general as much as it represented the Mafia and how they felt about the "dark people, the colored."

The old Sicilian mafia in the 40's and 50's saw themselves as sort of the ruling elite of Italian-Americans, who themselves back then were victims of serious prejudice. Growing up Irish and attending Catholic school in New York in the fifties, it was common for Irish kids to call Italian kids "Wops, Dagoes, & Guineas." Perhaps the one thing we all had in common was our belief that we were superior to blacks. They would not have dreamed of having blacks rising up in their organizations any more than AT&T in 1947 would have hired a black CEO.

In GF II Frankie complains about the hiring practices of the Rosato brothers, and even in GF III Zasa's hiring practices are caled into question and he famously shoots back "This is America."

So the idea of selling drugs to people in "the dark areas" and not in schools or in the old Italian neighborhoods would have been a reasonable compromise in those days.

I agree. It is a sordid comment on race in America. The novel points out that the disrespect for blacks was due to their having let society beat them down. It took a while, but things have changed quite a bit.

No point. Just observation. As I watch the film again and again I look more and more into tiny, ornamental details which don't seem to make any point, for example: How often do kids hit each other, what do characters hold in their hands, how the cameras are being used, how many non-alcoholic beverages do we see, etc.
The forum sometimes tends to be very much focused on narrative and characters, which is fine. But film is much more than just story.
So, I was simply wondering if my observation was correct.

About the racism. It seems a little strange that Michael repeats the reproach of having business with blacks that's had been made against him by Frankie in GFII. On purpose?

On details, you might conduct a search about our discussion (about a year ago) of the changes that Mike made to Vito's office once Mike became head of the family. That's just one. Another is whether in one office scene about whether Vito was holding a transistor radio or box of fish food. We've discussed even more details such as cars and even the WWII stickers on the car winshields and the NY landmarks along the route Clemenza took before he murdered Paulie ... the list goes on and on.

One scene that kind of bothers me (REALLY nit-picking) is the one in which Mike calls the family compound as soon as he learned that Vito had been shot. He called from a pay phone and its plain to see that the phone's dial is not set up properly (the numbers and holes on the dial are not aligned).

Now, the movie was filmed in 1971, and from what I remember the pay phones were still using the roitary dial phones then (I MAY be mistaken - I'm sure Turnbull would know for sure), but if thats the case, and they were using rotary dial phones, why would they use one in the movie that was plainly fake?

(My research showed that AT&T [whom TB worked for then] introduced the touch tone phones in the mid 60's, but I can't find any info when they changed the pay phones to this new style).

Like I said, its real nit-picking.

MIGHT seem like nit-picking??

Kudos, SC, for picking up that misaligned dial. And there's another, bigger nitpick:

The phone booth and phone shown are 1950's models. A 1945 phone booth would have been made of wood (even an outdoor one), and would have had a phone with a separate mouthpiece and earpiece--the mouthpiece was fixed to the body of the phone, and you held the earpiece in your hand.

Before the breakup of the Bell System in 1984, each of the 23 Bell telephone companies had stocks of old phone booths that they used to lend to movie and theater companies who requested them through parent AT&T. After the breakup, the booths disappeared.

Touch-Tone dials appeared in 1966.

I read somewhere that the whole scene is one of the big mistakes in the film, because in 1945 there were no outdoor phone booths at all in New York. In the novel Michael is calling from a hotel.


They also owned stock in some of the hotels, I think, but very little.

That was ITT, not AT&T. When I worked at AT&T, we'd never let a gangster buy our stock!

How about a President?

I don't know...maybe it's just me, but it seems like the original topic somehow changed. Oh well...

Anyway, I do have one thought about the original topic. There isn't a single race, ethnic group, or people whom have not been enslaved at one time or another in its history. My grandfather who came over on the boat from Naples, Italy, suffered terrible prejudice by the Irish and other groups in Chicago. Not to get religious, but Catholics have always been "picked on" throughout the history of the Church--especially today. So, I don't understand why one group's enslavement is more important than anothers. The Jews were enslaved for centuries--and even now there is a large population of people who can be called "antisemitic". What happened to the Jews during WWII, in my opinion, trumps any other groups' history of enslavement. Like I said, just my opinion.

~ Sadie

I would bet that most Board posters are Americans and this website pretty much concerns the American organized crime. Since it was Americans who enslved black people in America and it took a war and a Constitutional amendment to stop that enslvement and that enslavement left we Americans with a bitter legacy, it seems appropriate that we Americans would be more conerned about that enslavement than any other enslavement.

Exactly. In the American context, except for what was done to the Native Americans, there's not a worse crime. The American context is the milieu in which the Godfather takes place.

It's always impossible to rank genocides or tragedies. Everyone of them is different and yet in some ways the same.

The Jewish Holocaust lasted for six years. American slavery lasted for almost 300 years, with an additional 100 years of socially and legally sanctioned anti-Black discrimination in every facet of life. No other group (again Native Americans excepted) had to go through anything remotely similar. Because of the color of their skin my grandfathers couldn't join unions or live in certain areas or have access to capital that immigrants took for granted. Jewish enslavement is something could have happened over 2-3000 years ago.

Getting back to the GF, I think Puzo did an excellent job of capturing of how SOME (not ALL) Italian American mobsters of the early and mid 20th century thought of Black people. There were exceptions to this though, like Al Capone, Henry Matranga or Joe Gallo...

Well, this was not the original topic. I just wrote about a curious observation. Anyway, I have to correct myself. There are two more black people at Woltz' place: A second stable boy and a second (male) servant at the dinner. And there's a black guy at the Las Vegas hotel who opens the door of the car for Freddie (here played by a diferent actor) and Michael.
Yes, it was made clear several times in the film, that the Mafia guys were racist. But were are the black people in the few street scenes: In front of "Genco Olive Oil Company", in the christmas street scenes?

Danito, I am not sure this topic would not better be discussed in a different thread because of the myriad sociological issues you are raising. The bottom line is that in the time frame the Godfather took place there was not a lot of interracial mingling, and people of color were more likely to have been servants etc., back then. The only street scenes we see in the movie are outside the Genco office in Little Italy, presumably, which was an Italian neighborhood, and outside of Rockefeller Center with Kay and Mike, and outside some Fifth Avenue store where Tom was buying a sled. What color the extras were is of little consequence to those scenes (if there were extras... I really dont remember. Likewise, Louis restauant in the Bronx probably never had a black clientele.

You are partially correct in pointing out this is evidence of a "racial divide," but as I posted earlier, in those days there were significant ethnic divides. Germans, Irish, Poles, Italians, etc. pretty much stayed among "their own." Its just the way it was.

Neither was I the one who raised the sociological questions nor was I the one who made a point of any evidence.

My observation was just made in terms of cinematographic composition and probability. I didn't know that it would stir up such a discussion.

Anyway, I'm curious about the responses on my next thread which will be about non-italian food. Just kidding

Italians probably endured more discrimination and bigotry than any other white immigrant group in America. Typically, people "at the bottom" look to scapegoat or look down on other groups as a kind of "compensation." That's what I think Puzo was trying to convey.

Nah, we just contributed to their election campaigns.