The Gangster Genre, Shakespearean Tragedy, and the Godfather Trilogy
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"UNEASY LIES THE HEAD THAT WEARS THE CROWN": THE GANGSTER GENRE, SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY, AND THE GODFATHER TRILOGY MARK PETER CARPENTER A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Ans Graduate Programme in Film and Video York University North York, Ontario Bibliothèque nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, nie Wellington OttawaON K1AON4 OttawaON KIAON4 Canada Canada Yow fi& Votre reCmw Our nIf, Narre reférBIK8 The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence ailowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fhm it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown": Shakespearean Currents in the Godfather Trilogy by Xark Peter Carpenter a thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of York University in partial fulfillment of the requiremen!~for the degree of Haster of Fine Arts Permission has been granted to the LISRARY OF YORK UNIVERSITY to !end or seIl copies of this thesis. to the NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA to microfilm this thesis and to lend or seIl copies of the film, and to UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS to publish an abstract of this thesis. The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the thesis nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's written permission. Abstract Robert Warshow's 1948 essay, "The Gangster as Tragic Hero," is regarded as one of the seminal texts in film genre theory; it has also been criticized for its impressionism - its sociological ernphasis at the expense of any analysis of film texts. Yet the article's astonishing suggestiveness is still richly apparent sorne fifty years after its writing. Warshow's perception of the rise-fall narrative of the gangster as a challenge to the prevailing culture of optirnism in American movies still reverberates in the Blockbuster Era of today. Yet the gangster movie as Warshow understood it, while still visible in contemporary cinema, has undergone permutations which Warshow could never have considered. One of the key such transformations of what I have chosen to cal1 the Classical Gangster narrative is the story of rise and fall that stretches across the length and breadth of the Godfather trilogy. In the Godfather films' unofficial adaptation of the Shakespearean plays often cited as their forbears, the Henrv IV plays and Kina Lear, we see an extended tragic narrative that is at once an epic magnification of the Warshow conception and a reconfiguration of it. The films in question, with their outlaw society depicted as an ernbattled monarchy, simultaneously transform and uphold the Warshow schema. The intent of this thesis is to demonstrate the validity of Warshow's reading of the gangster film through a process of expansion, The first, brief chapter is an exegesis of the Warshow text, with supporthg texts drawn in to underscore (and sometimes challenge) his key points, and with the famous Depression-era v triurnvirate of films comprising Scarface, Little Caesar, and Public Enemy utilized as filmic sources to corroborate his analysis. The next three chapters will deal at length with the Godfather trilogy, and their links to Henrv IV: Parts 1-11 and Kina Lear. The extended cornparison and contrast will take into consideration the thematic- ideological links between the films and the plays, with an eye constantly trained on the trilogy's relationship to the Classical Gangster narrative as defined by Warshow. The analysis will also touch on areas not approached in the Warshow essay: the question of form will be explored, with a special ernphasis on the sense of tragedy as manifested in the desisn of the three films; what a Godfather aesthetic is, and how the two sequels revise the mode1 established by the first film. The ultimate goal of the thesis is to demonstrate the degree to which the Godfather films transform the Warshow conception while finally demonstrating its endurance over time. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Evan Carneron, for his invaluable assistance and encouragement, and especially for persistently steering me in the direction of my original thesis when the work threatened to balloon out of control. I would like also to thank Derek Cohen, whose book kf Violence played a crucial part in the development of my thinking on the Shakespeare texts, the Henry plays in particular; and Barry Grant, for his advice, and for his words on genre. Thanks and appreciation as well to Doug Davidson and David Leyton-Brown, for serving valiantly on my cornmittee. Finally, the warmest regards to rny parents, who harboured me for many months while I toiled on these words. Table of Contents TitlePage i ................................................... .. Copyright Page ............................................... ir Certificate Page .............................................. iii Abstract .................................................. iv-v Acknowledgernents ........................................... vi Table of Contents ............................................ vii Chapter One Warshow's Gangster Genre ...................................... 1 Chapter Two TheGodfather ...............................-...............19 Chapter Three The Godfather Part II .......................................... 82 Chapter Four The Godfather Part Ill ......................................... 148 Conclusion ................................................193 Bibliography Books ....................................................197 Articles ...............................................-...l99 Chapter One Warshow's Gangster Genre The following is a discussion of the gangster genre as definad by Robert Warshow in his 1948 article "The Gangster as Tragic Hero." In my analysis, I hope to fiIl in soma of the blanks in his conception. relating his thesis specifically to the film texts to which he alludes. with special ernphasis upon his perception of the gangster as a tragic figure. From there, I hope to push Warshow's theory simultaneously backwards in tirne (towards Shakespearean tragedy), and forwards to the definitive gangster saga of the contemporary cinema. the Godfather trilogy, the aim being to tease out Warshow's conception in the course of a close textual analysis of the and their Shakespearean forbears. This analysis will therefore hew closely to the emphasis on the genre as "author" that marks most genre film criticism going back to Warshow. The final purpose of this thesis is to establish in detail the links between the Corleone saga and a long tradition of drarnatic discourse going back through the films' gangster precursors to the ambiguous figure of the hero of classical tragedy, specifically as incarnated in the Shakespeare texts under discussion. What I hope finally to demonstrate is the truth of Warshow's reading of the gangster as a tragic hero for our time - a figure who is, as Warshow puts it, "what we want to be and what we are afraid we may become." (Warshow, p. 131) Warshow begins by delineating his views on the potential role of tragedy within contemporary mass culture. He starts his essay with the following words: "America, as a social and political organization, is committed to a cheerful view of 2 Iife." (Warshow, p. 127) He sees mass culture as committed to reinforcing the optimistic status quo. To quote further: At a time when the normal condition of the citizen is a state of anxiety, euphoria spreads over our culture like the broad smile of an idiot. In terms of attitudes towards Iife, there is very little difference between a 'happy' rnovie like Good News, which ignores death and suffering, and a 'sad' rnovie like A Tree Grows In Brooklvn, which uses death and suffering as incidents in the service of a higher optimism. (Warshow, p. 128) Pop culture essentially strives, for hirn, to maintain public morale. What he terms a "current of opposition" still exists, however, and tries to release the anxieties this optimisrn attempts to erase or suppress, anxieties he conceptualites as nascent fears of failure in society at large. Warshow finds the primary expression of this current, as it exists within art, in what he regards as "disguised" or "attenuatedn forms: jazz, the "crazy comedy" nihilism of the Marx Brothers, and "in the continually reasserted strain of hopelessness that often seems to be the real meaning of the soap opera." (Warshow, p. 129)' Why are these forms modes of disguisel 8ecause, for him, the major means of subversion within modern rnass culture emerges from the sense of tragedy incarnated most clearly and completely in the gangster film. Tragedy, as he sees it, is a luxury peculiar to aristocratic societies in which the value of each and every individual citizen is not given