just wanted to know your opinions on the bochicchios...
the intersting characters in the novel. they could have emphasized it in the movie. although simple-minded, the bochicchio are ruthless in their ways.

I thought the tale of this family was one of the best back stories in the novel, and I was also very sorry that it didn't make it into the movie. And when Puzo tied it all together to have Vito find a way to bring Michael home, that was perfect.

Well, there was that one deleted scene where the police commissioner comes up to Mike and says "I'm so sorry Mike. How could I have been so stupid. It was right there in front of me all the time - Felix Bocchicchio did it. I know, everyone said it was you and, of course, you're thin and Felix is fat. But hey, mistakes get made, right."

I agree 100 percent, SB! Although the novel wasn't a great literary work, Puzo shared in the great Italian storytelling tradition--and the story of the Bocchicchio's and their special niche in American Mobdom was a great story. Puzo told it in an ingenious and compressed way. The Bocchicchio's and their role in rescuing Michael stands alongside Neri's background and recruitment as the two best (as you put it) backstories from the novel that would have enhanced the movie.

It seems very likely to me that Puzo saw them as the fifth of the Five Families, under the Six Family Theory.

Paying my respects to the estimable plawrence, this is his kind of question.

I agree, TB. Neri's "backstory" was wonderful. It would have done much to explain his ferocious loyalty to Michael, had it made it into the movie.
On a strictly personal level, I just love the "Italianess" of it all. Michael taking him to his mother's house for a lunch of peppers and eggs and a glass of wine.
Gets me every time.

Me, too--that personal touch. And Vito chiming in with his admission that he was "wrong" to advise Michael not to get involved with Neri's troubles. Wonderful stuff!

Indeed it was plaw's type of question. That wonderful guy and I (and many others here) went round and round on the old issue of five vs. six families.
But I doubt that the Bocchicchios were the sixth family, if there was a sixth family. If memory serves, the Bocchicchios were limited by a "strain of stupidity" that ran through them. They were "straight from the shoulder people who knew how to bribe a policeman but didn't know how to make overtures to politicians," or some such. Dominating the garbage business in an upstate NY community is a real Mafia activity. But augmenting their income by hiring out hostages is not the stuff of a major Mafia force. How much face would they lose if part of their business was to have their members killed by other Mafia families?
Let me offer a real-life parallel:
Francesco Uale, aka Frankie Yale, was a reputed big-time Brooklyn racketeer who was Al Capone's mentor, and who sent the young Capone to Chicago to Johnny Torrio. But Capone and Torrio later hired Yale to whack Dion O'Banion for them. A real big-time racketeer doesn't hire himself out to do hits.

Here are some of those discussions from the past :

http://www.gangsterbb.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=004457;p=0



Don Cardi

I had the unmitigated pleasure of re reading the novel this past weekend. I had completely forgotten this family and their role in bringing Michael home. The book says they were not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but because of their honor they were the family to turn to when it became necessary to mediate disputes, and to be used when "hostages" were held during negotiations. I imagine if anyone offended the honor of this family all hell would rain down.

I do not think they were the "sixth" family in New York, however.
That said I am now convinced there were six families because throughout the book Puzo talks about the Corleones doing battle with the Five families.