The Godfather follows Don Vito Corleone, head of the Corleone crime family. Vito is one of
the most powerful figures of the underworld. He has numerous connections to the legitimate world,
And Vito had good reason to be sceptical of the entire affair, as after his refusal he is
subject to an assassination attempt, his bulldog Luca is taken out, and while he is recovering the
Corleone family, now led temporarily by Vito’s son sonny, are pressured by the Turk to take his deal.
The Turk wants a meeting with a Corleone representative, and Michael Corleone,
as a relative outside, is nominated. At the meeting, where Sollozzo is backed up
by police captain McClusky, instead of negotiating, Michael of course shoots
both the Turk and the police captain, as planned. He then goes into hiding in Sicily,
away from the 5 family war which erupts as the result of the shooting of a police captain.
Now Michael spends several years out in Sicily,
and he is sought after by Corleone enemies, coming very close to being killed. Back home,
Vito manages to bring an uneasy end to the mob war, summoning the rest of
the Dons for a meeting where he manages to negotiate safe passage for his son’s return.
Michael returns to the US and begins working for his father. A line of
dialogue from Michael implies he’s been back for several years since we saw him,
so a great many number of events will have taken place off screen in between this time jump.
With that in mind, there a question that arises with Michael’s return from Sicily happening so
seamlessly – Wasn’t he still a wanted man for the killing of McClusky? Wouldn’t the
cops arrest him as soon as he arrived back into the country? It’s not as if he lived in hiding,
and the law weren’t aware of his return - in fact in the second film he’s a well-known businessman,
with the murder of Sollozzo and McClusky bought up in the hearings that Michael is subjected to,
where he denies committing the murders. In a scene in the first film, Tom Hagen even
refuses to take a letter from Kay addressed for Michael, as it could be then proved in a
court of law that he knows where Michael is. This suggests the cops were actively looking for him.
Well there are several possibilities, the easiest of which to conclude is that some
strings were pulled in the background by Vito, the right people were paid off,
and the charges against Michael quietly disappeared. How exactly did the charges go away,
well it doesn’t quite matter, but no doubt some shady stuff went down behind closed doors.
Of course, there wasn’t a lot of evidence to even link Michael with the murder in the first place.
Sure the Corleones knew he killed the captain and the rest of the families knew, but in that world
no-one would be squealing to the cops any time soon. It was an age before CCTV, the gun Michael
used had special tape which kept his fingerprints off, and no witnesses from the restaurant killings
came forward to testify. Even if they did, no doubt they would have quietly gone away.
So in terms of the law, Michael is actually more safer than one might imagine. His real threat for
killing McClusky comes from the other families, and him having involved himself with killing
meant he was very much part of the underworld, and his life was fair game for other mobsters.
Still though, even if Michael avoided a trip to the police station because of Don Corleone’s
connections, there is still an open double murder where Michael is the most likely suspect.
Interestingly, this is actually explained in the novel the film is based on,
and the explanation comes as a result of the Bocchicchio clan. The Bocchicchio
family are perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book not in the film,
and they are a clan I want to take a look at in another video, but to summarise,
the Bocchicchios were a mob clan who moved to the states from Sicily, developing a reputation
as mediators between rival mafia families. They took the Sicilian concept of vendetta
to extreme lengths, to such an extent they were considered fanatical even by mob standards. If
one of their own were wronged, the family would stop at nothing until they had their revenge.
It was impossible to buy them off or threaten them, and this powerful vengeful nature became
one of their greatest sources of income, as they began as hostage service to other crime families.
An example from the book is that when Michael meets with Sollozzo and McClusky,
Sollozzo hires a hostage and sends him to Clemenza’s people,
as a way of ensuring Michael’s safety. If something went wrong and Michael was killed,
the principles in the fraud, 2 shrewd businessmen, blamed Felix’s legal clumsiness for the plan going
wrong and pleaded guiltly, co-operating with the state and naming Felix as a ringleader of
the fraud and saying he used threats of violence to control their business. The two got suspended
sentences and Felix served 3. The Bocchicchios did not ask for any favors from the other mob
families or the Corleones, as they wanted to teach Felix a lesson about where loyalty should lie.
In any case, as the book tells us, Felix was eventually released,
went home and kissed his wife and three kids, and lived in peace for a year. But then,
without any attempt to conceal his guilt, in true Bocchicchio style he shot his lawyer
friend to death and searched out the two businessmen and calmly shot the two of them,
then going into a coffee shop while waiting for the police to arrest him.
The Bocchicchios were finally proud of their man, and they fought for him through the courts,
but it was certain that Felix would get the electric chair. One Bocchicchio bought the
case to Tom Hagen, who approached Vito with it, who curtly refused to help, as it was an
impossible task. But the next day, called Hagen into the office, had a meeting, and then summoned
the head of the Bocchicchio clan, coming up with a plan to guarantee the wife and children of Felix
a handsome pension should Felix confess to the murder of Virgil Sollozzo and captain McClusky.
There were many details that needed sorting – such as Felix having to learn the details
of the Sollozzo hit, a waiter who was at the restaurant during the killing having to be
persuaded to identify Felix as the murderer. But the long and short of it is that Felix confessed
to the murders, was executed, and now Michael was completely in the clear to return home.
So if you’ve ever wondered how Michael was able to return to
America despite being wanted for the murder of a police captain,
there you have it – though it’s never shown in the film, another man confessed to the double murder.
Do you think they should have included this in the movie, or do you think the
movie’s pacing would have suffered, and its fine as it is with there being a time
jump of around a year where the details of Michael’s return would have been sorted? Let
me know in the comments below, subscribe to the channel, and thanks for watching.