Re: the fishing rod scene.

I don't see relaxation and a lack of suspicion at all, in Cazale's performance! I see desperate, suppressed fear, bordering on panic. Look at the way Fredo stammers and looks feeble.

I guess it's a great actor who can present multiple personalities to different watchers. (that's a conciliatory way of putting it!)

He also doesn't look convinced that Michael has "forgiven" him. I think he knew that Michael wasn't really forgiving him at all. Look at the histrionic way he clutches Michael's back - I see that as signifying his desperate wish that this was genuinely a reconciliation - but it is merely a desperate wish, not a belief.

I didn't mean that Fredo hung around Anthony for "protection" - only that he knew that as long as he hung around him, he was safe(ish). He was trying to hang on as long as he could.

Which is not to say that Anthony was a "hostage", at all! Fredo hung on to the family as long as he could; Anthony has become the only member who will really accept him, as a person.

The tragedy of Fredo's character is that he has always felt an outsider. He is a futile, ineffective sort of man, who will never amount to anything - yet he is also a Corleone, and desperately wants recognition.

When we see Fredo as a baby, we are reminded of Fredo's remark that his mother told him he was a gypsy. We know from this scene he is not a gypsy; but he does not. This emphasises how weak he is, he knows even less than the audience.
Don Vito weeps over his boy when he gets Pneumonia; but Fredo will not remember his father's grief. We understand from this scene Vito actually loved him; but Fredo never will. He doesn't remember his father, or his family, ever accepting him. All he remembers is "being stepped over".

When michael announces that he is joining the Marines, Fredo tries to congratulate him. Michael is an outsider - in a sense only Fredo will understand him. But before they can become close, Sonny grabs his hand and flings it aside. The Family itself prevents these two outsiders being close.

Incidentally Connie must have believed Michael and Fredo were reconciled. Despite Godfather III, I see Michael's killing of Fredo as alienating Connie - the last member of the family who wants to hang around him. I always saw her as not being able to forgive Michael afterwards. After all, look at her reaction when Carlo was killed, at the end of the first film.

That's what I see michael as thinking, when he is sitting in the garden alone. That absolutely no one from the Family is left. Connie will certainly never forgive him now. Tom Hagen is totally alienated; Kay is gone. Fredo is dead. All that is left is his precious power.