The motif of doors

While watching The Godfather, it was noticed that the motifs of doors and camera angles were played with together to create different levels of inclusion of the audience. Some angles like the low one through the doorframe and where the man went outside of camera view are still a mystery to me because I have only seen about a quarter of the movie. Another thing that was noticed is that the good things that happen in the movie happen outside. An example of this is the wedding and we know it is more than a coincidence because it occurs more than once with Kay and Michael Christmas shopping. To contrast this, all the bad things happen indoors like the killing of Luca Brazzi and Mr. Waltz waking up with the horse in his bed. Something intriguing that could be further analyzed is that the scene where Sonny was having sex with Lucy, they were leaning against a doorway and this could be interpreted as being still a good thing, but because they were almost outside of the door, it was almost a bad decision. This was a short scene and because it was random and did not make the plot move forward, it was put in for a reason. 

The Godfather glorifies crime (please read)

 The Godfather’s main motif in the movie and its reoccurring event is crime although in the eyes of the audience, or at least in mine, it does not appear to be as wrong as it should be. We are raised to identify crimes like threatening, killing and manipulating in violent manners as wrong but The Godfather makes us think that maybe in some cases, it is not necessarily a bad thing. But why do tend to let the violent events slide while watching this movie and why do we even find them cool? This is because Vito Corleone is the one manipulating the crimes and he makes it seem as if he’s doing it out revenge or friendship. We see that he cares so much about his ‘friends’ that he is willing to do anything for them and in our society, that loyalty makes the violent and potentially wrong part understandable. Additionally, Vito Corleone is not the one doing the crimes and instead, he hires people to do the dirty work so we do not portray him as being an evil man. He is the main character and because we think of the movie in a similar way as we think of the main character, the movie does not appear to be a movie full of crime.

- Katherine