The Godfather follows Don Vito Corleone, the head of the most powerful of the 5 New York
crime families, as he leads his family and looks to protect his dynasty from dangers, such as
rival mob families and assassination attempts. An attempt made on Don Corleone’s life begins a
slow transition of power from father to son, and by the end of the film Vito is dead and Michael
Corleone is the new head of the family. The second films continues taking a look
at Michael’s reign, and his transition into a cold-blooded clinical boss, lacking the warmth
of his father and the sense of importance of family that he had. The film also charts the rise
of Vito Corleone, from his days as an orphaned immigrant child to a respected and feared member
of the community. Instrumental to Vito’s rise are his two loyal friends, Salvatore Tessio and Peter
Clemenza. It is Clemenza who actually initially draws Vito into a life of crime, when he asks
Vito to hide a set of guns in his home and as a favour, he and Vito steal a rug for Vito’s wife,
and so starts the beginning of a beautiful friendship, which climaxes with Clemenza and
Tessio becoming subordinates of Vito after Vito proves his worth by ending the tyranny of local
charlatan mob boss Don Fanucci, by firing a bullet into Fanucci’s mouth and essentially
taking over the neighbourhood, but as a help to the people, not a virus like Fanucci was.
Vito earns the respect, love and fear of those around him, including his two friends. His street
muscle, political connections, influence and power grows as his empire, built on gambling,
bootlegging and corruption thrives. Even still he is known as a generous man who
lives by a strict moral code of loyalty to his friends and, above all, family.
By the time the first films starts he is now the most powerful man in the underworld,
and it’s a testament to the loyalty and respect he commands that the two friends he started out with,
Tessio and Clemenza, are still by his side after all these years as Vito’s caporegimes,
the duo also having become much more powerful over the years, largely in part
thanks to Vito’s intelligence and shepherding. A caporegime, or capo, commonly known as a captain
in English, often refers to a high-ranking member of a crime family who heads a crew of
soldiers made up of made men, made men being gangsters who have been formally inducted as
full members of a crime family. Capos report directly to the head of a family, and often
after the death of the family’s head, a capo steps up to replace him. Other positions of significance
include the underboss, the second-in-command, often a street boss more directly involved in
the rackets the family are involved in, and a consigliere, the advisory position to the boss.
At the lowest level of syndicates, you have associates of the family, then made soldiers,
then capos, then the underboss, and finally the boss himself. The lack of interaction
between the men at the bottom and the men at the top means that bosses are often insulated
from law enforcement as they have very little interaction with the guys actually committing
crimes. Buffers. The family has a lot of buffers. Now this does bring up an interesting question. Of
course, as they report to the boss, capos have to be trusted men, but why does Vito, after all these
years in charge of his family, still only have the same two capos under his as he did when he started
out in a life of crime? Why does he only have two capos, when he’s supposed to be the most powerful
gangster in New York, maybe the whole of the US? In real life families, and even depictions in
fictional media such as the TV series The Sopranos, show us that mob families
typically have numerous captains, maybe as little as 4 to 6, or as much as 10,
depending on the size and power of the family. And yet the Corleone’s only have 2? What gives.
Well, it could simply be one of the elements of The Godfather that isn’t realistic. I wouldn’t
go so far as to call it an error, but Mario Puzo’s novel has a few things here and there
that make you think “Hmm, that’s probably not how it would quite be in real life”, like the
German-Irish Tom Hagen being given a role as a consigliere, although to be fair that is shown
to be a controversial decision and Vito has his reasons for doing so, like making his affairs seem
more legitimate with having a qualified lawyer by his side. But there just are some things,
like Tony Soprano visiting a therapist, an act punishable by death in the mob, which you just
have to swallow in order to enjoy the piece of entertainment. The Godfather isn’t a documentary.
Still though, it is worth mentioning that Vito doesn’t exactly have 2 capos – if you include
his son Sonny Corleone, who technically is the underboss, we can say that Vito has 3.
It still isn’t much though. Perhaps it shows how high the standards of Don Corleone are, when
it comes to trust and values, that in all the years he has been at the top,
there is no-one who he trusts enough to take on a position as a 4th capo. All of the men
in his immediate vicinity – Clemenza, Tessio, Sonny, Tom, Fredo and later Michael - are either
families members or close friends who came up with Vito from the bottom as show in the second film,
and that includes his previous consigliere Genco. Fredo hardly has the capabilities,
and there are no other characters that have such a close relationship with Vito, so rather than
ask why Vito only had 2 capos, perhaps we should ask who could actually become one under Vito?
There is actually something interesting The Godfather novel does with Vito’s capos, and
that is that Vito keeps the two separate from each other at different ends of the city, not giving
them the opportunity to meet with each other in secret so that there is no chance of the duo
conspiring against him. Even with his two friends, Vito was still careful. And Tessio and his regime
is so far removed from Vito’s that the general consensus in the underworld is that Tessio runs
a completely different family. Many are actually unaware of how close the link between Vito and
Tessio actually are, that Tessio is a capo working directly under Vito, and not a head of his own
family with vague links to the Corleones. This isn’t really addressed in the movies,
as Tessio is with the rest of the family during the meeting with the Turk. The only reference I
can see is possibly when Sonny phones Tessio and introduces himself as “Santino Corleone”, implying
the two don’t talk much, and Tessio enquiring why Sonny doesn’t use Clemenza’s men instead of
his. The reason he asks, is possibly because he wants to maintain the illusion that his family
is separate from the Corleones, following Vito’s mantra of allowing your friends to overestimate
you, and your enemies to underestimate you. There’s two points I’m making with this – the
first is that Tessi and Clemenza’s crews are so powerful that they are pretty much their own crime
families, so to ask why Vito only has 2 capos misses the point as to the fact that Tessio and
Clemenza, as capos, are more powerful than bosses of other families. Don Vito, in essence, is a
boss of bosses, which funnily enough is a real term used to describe extraordinarily powerful
crime bosses. Instead of having several capos who run small regimes, he has just 2 regimes,
but they are both very large comparably. Though he might have only 2 capos, those capos will have
numerous soldiers working under them. This chart from the senate hearings in the second film should
give you an idea of just how large the Corleone family is in spite of there only being 3 living
capos listed on the board. When you consider Sonny in the first film saying they have a
hundred buttonmen looking for Sollozzo, it gives you an idea of the Corleones’ strength – more
than a hundred members in a single family! An example of the size of the Corleones can
be found in the novel after Vito’s shooting, with Clemenza’s regimes’ tasks that need to
be carried out straight after. His crew has to take over security on the mall from Tessio’s,
he has to improve the security, he has to take up defensive moves in the Bronx to prepare for war,
and he had to take out the family’s traitor in a public fashion. In another family,
you might have a different crew carry out each of these tasks, but Clemenza’s
regime is so big his crew does everything. The second point is that if Tessio is ostensibly
considered a separate family, maybe there are others? There aren’t according to the book and
film, in case you’re wondering, but who’s to say Vito doesn’t have another family out there working
directly under him, ready to fight at a moment’s notice. Who knows how much secret power he had,
how far his influence stretched? After all, a deleted scene in the first film shows that Michael
and Vito had Rocco Lampone building a secret regime, secret from even Corleone family members.
So if that’s one secret family out there, and with Vito being as shrewd, calculating and careful as
he is, no doubt he has contingencies in place and hidden power in places that are not apparent.
So ultimately, look at Don Corleone and thinking of him as a man with just 2 captains is really not
doing him and his family justice. And that doesn’t include specialists like Luca Brasi, bodyguards,
personal drivers and enforcers. Its also worth mentioning, from a narrative point of view,
it’s a lot easier for a film and book to give you two characters’ names to remember, rather than 10.
The story is more powerful with 2 capos, one of whom became a traitor and the other who remained
loyal, and these two men being close to Vito and each almost have of the strength of the Corleone
family, rather than just 2 of 10 or so capos. So what are your thoughts? Let me know in the
comments below, subscribe to the channel and thanks for watching.