The Family Corleone is a 2012 novel written by Ed Falco, which is a prequel to Mario Puzo’s
The Godfather, both the book and the movies, and I say movies because there are characters
in this book which pop up in the likes of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part 2
who were not in any of Mario Puzo’s book, like Frank Pentangeli.
This is the fifth and final book in the Godfather franchise, but as it’s a prequel, chronologically,
it’s the first.. Mario Puzo’s The Godfather is the original book, written back in the 60s,
and then he followed up The Godfather with The Sicilian, which is not completely related to
the Corleones and their story but does have characters who cross over. Decades later,
Mark Winegardner won a competition to write a Godfather sequel, actioned by the Puzo estate,
which he did called The Godfather Returns. That book has a sequel called The Godfather’s Revenge.
Aside from The Sicilian, I’ve read and reviewed all of these books on the channel,
so check out my reviews if you’re interested. There’s bits and pieces to love from all of them,
Puzo’s The Godfather was an outstanding piece of work,
but I wasn’t the biggest fan of Winegardner’s follow ups. I felt they were quite weak overall
and the characters just didn’t feel the same from the ones we know and love.
So this brings us here, to The Family Corleone. I was sceptical going into this one, partly because
the previous two Godfather books weren’t so great, but mainly because it was a prequel. I mean,
how many prequels, both books and films, have actually lived up to the hype? They’re instantly
on the back foot, for various reasons; we know how the characters will end up, if there’s characters
who are in the prequel but not the sequel it most likely means they’ll be dead before it finishes,
prequels tend to take place at far less interesting time periods with are less
interesting plots than the original, and as we know, not everything needs to be explained,
sometimes it’s best to just let our minds wonder and imagine how things came to be,
rather than show us in great detail and ruin the mystery.
With that being said, The Family Corleone has an aroma of legitimacy surrounding it, because
its based on an unproduced screenplay by Mario Puzo for a Godfather Part 4. Yup, even after the
painful reception of The Godfather Part 3, Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo were actively looking
to make a fourth film. Puzo’s death in 1999 stopped the plans for a fourth film, but it might
interest you to learn that a while ago Paramount Pictures acquired the rights to make more
Godfather movies, and they’ve expressed interest in continuing the saga. I’ve got a much more
detailed video on The Godfather 4 on the channel, which breaks down exactly what a fourth movie
would have been about, but to summarise, Andy Garcia’s Vincent Corleone from the 3rd film would
take the family into the new century, get involved in drugs, and send the Corleone family and himself
crashing out of existence when he’s taken out in a blaze of bullets. None of that is in The Family
Corleone, this is a full prequel, not sequel, but The Godfather 4, like the second movie,
was going to do a split chronological timeline thing, where the present day timeline would focus
on Vincent and the flashback timeline would focus on his father, Sonny, who also died in a torrent
of bullet fire. Sonny’s initiation into the family would be explored, coinciding with the rise of
Vito Corleone as the head of the most powerful New York family. I had a lot of thoughts on this,
as mentioned, check out my other video for more details, but I thought it sounded interesting,
you had the whole father son comparison in part 2 being done again here and with the
right script and cast it could work. It would be difficult, but I would have liked to see it.
Instead, we’ve gotten what is essentially a book version of
the flashback timeline of The Godfather Part 4.
So what exactly is The Family Corleone about?
Well, the official synopsis says: The Great Depression.
1933. New York’s crime families have prospered, but with the coming end of Prohibition, a battle
is looming…For Vito Corleonem nothing is more important than his family’s future and his eldest,
Sonny, is a cause for concern. Vito pushes Sonny to be a businessman. But at seventeen years old,
impatient, and reckless, Sonny has other ideas. He wants in on the real family business.
That’s a good blurb. Short, interesting and intriguing. Not like the Winegarner
books where if you read the back you’d have huge hunks of the books spoiled for you.
So yeah, Sonny is pretty much the main character, and we follow him doing low level crimes like
stick ups with his gang behind his father’s back. He doesn’t want the mechanics job his father got
for him, and has his eye on joining the family business. The book utilizes Sonny’s story and
development to tell other stories, and the far more expansive plot of the rise of Vito Corleone.
A big time gangster, Giuseppe Mariposa, based on the real life Salvatore Maranzano,
is engaged in a mob war with a rival family, based on the real life Castellammarese war.
He’s also based on Maranzano’s rival, Joe Masseria. This is a little weird, because
the Maranzano is referenced in the original novel and yet Mariposa basically replaces him,
just so that discrepancies with Mariposa’s death are smoothed out. It’s not a big deal
though. I think they should have just kept the name as Salvatore Maranzano, and done what
they wanted with him dying, using their creative licence. It’s actually more weird that this guy,
who’s talked about a bit in the original book, all of a sudden has a different name.
Anyway, after taking out his rival in humiliating fashion, Mariposa sets his eye on swallowing the
entirety of New York, in particular Don Vito Corleone and his lucrative businesses. This kick
starts what is known as the olive oil wars, which is covered in full, with guys like Tessio and
Clemenza in their prime as Vito’s Capos, ending with the death of Mariposa and the partitioning
of New York into 5 separate families who meet on occasion to discuss business and peace,
and we more or less end the novel just a few years before the start of the first Godfather movie.
Major characters from The Godfather movies, like Emilio Brazini and Frank Pentangeli,
are in this book, with their development and pre Mario Puzo’s The Godfather
relationship to the likes of Vito Corleone very interesting elements of The Family Corleone.
Now, some viewers might be thinking, well hang on, what about Michael? The
Godfather trilogy is an exploration of Michael Corleone, from innocent American college boy,
to cold hearted ruthless mob boss, to broken and fragile old man. How can you have a Godfather
entry where he is not in the forefront. Well, that is something I mentioned in my video
when I was talking about The Godfather Part 4, that it is weird to deviate away from Michael,
however, he really isn’t necessary here. He’s just a kid, and him and Fredo are in the background
here and there, there are a few scenes with them in focus, a bit of foreshadowing to future events,
but really, there is more than enough story here with juicy characters that you don’t miss Michael.
In fact, at times you forget he exists. It’s just not his story, and it would be detrimental
to try and shoe, horn him into it, like maybe having him kidnapped by mobsters or something.
One of the primary characters in this novel, in fact, I think you could even make an
argument that he’s the main character, I’m sure he has just as much screen time as Sonny and
Vito, and it’s the vicious and legendary mob enforcer Luca Brasi. All we’ve really seen of
Brasi in The Godfather films is in the first film where he is introduced as some kind of scary,
creepy gangster, but then flubs a wedding congratulations and then gets killed like a mug.
He’s kind of like a Lurch character. It’s an anticlimatic end to the character, and the
all-hype no-delivery nature of his character arc is something I refer to as the Boba Fett syndrome.
But like Boba got his moment in The Mandalorian, so to does Luca with The Family Corleone.
To be fair, whilst The Godfather novel more or less follows the same beats,
they mention some of Luca’s terrifying deeds in the past, including one where he had a new born
baby thrown into a furnace. That one, plus others mentioned in The Godfather novel like him hacking
an assassin into pieces, are shown in full detail in this book. The Family Corleone is as much of a
Luca Brasi origin story as it is a Sonny Corleone – previously just one of the many interesting side
characters in The Godfather, in this novel we get to peek into his head, his methods,
his desires – we see his tragic relationship with his mother, his love-hate relationship
with his girlfriend who, if you remember, is actually the mother of the baby who Luca kills
in the original Godfather book. Luca is already feared by many, even by the great Mariposa,
with legends and myths that he’s walked away from point black bullet shots to the heart and such.
He isn’t affiliated with the Corleone family at the beginning of this book, so we actually get
to see how he became part of the family, we even see the very first meeting between Don Corleone
and him, and also a second brilliant meeting when Vito visits Luca in prison to recruit him.
Luca is a fascinating character in The Family Corleone, he’s really interesting
and is utilized to his fullest. There was always the danger of showing too much of him,
or making him too powerful, too intense that it all feels a bit unrealistic, but it works.
We even see why he’s such a lumbering, stuttering character in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather,
with The Family Corleone’s take similar to what happened in the original book, except here after
Luca kills the mother and baby he takes some pills to kill himself but fails, and it results in him
getting some kind of brain damage, and he goes a bit Frankenstein which is why he talks the
way he does in the film. It’s made clear that he’s still the same killing machine underneath,
only now it’s masked in a layer of, well, a kind of stroke victim. Some might not like the way they
depicted Luca Brasi in the novel, but I thought it worked, and it was definitely a character
they had ample room to explore with, because we hardly knew anything about him previously.
Some things were a little different though. Overall, the consistency between this book
and the other Godfather works is there, the Maranzano thing being an exception,
but there are some things that are quite clearly different. For example, the original
Godfather book says that Brasi chopped up one of Al Capone’s hitmen in front of the other,
and the second man was so scared he swallowed his gag and died. That’s an awesome image,
imagine the fear that must have been going though the man to do such a thing. But here, sure, Luca
chops up the first man, but the second is supposed to be sent back to Chicago to deliver a message,
but then Luca changes his mind and then instead beheads the second man
with a machete or an axe or something. So a clear retcon in the story there.
But do you now what, I really didn’t mind those instances where this happened. Because for me,
it’s like The Godfather gives you the legendary version of the events, the things that might have
been whispered among the mob soldiers, stories that were passed around “did you hear that one
of the assassins choked on his own gag?” But then The Family Corleone shows us what
actually happened, so both different stories do work and can co-exist in the same canon.
I have to say, I really enjoyed this book. I had a great time with it,
much moreso than Winegardner’s works. It works as a prequel to the events of The Godfather,
it puts so much into context – the relationship between Vito and Barzini, Vito’s method of rising
and why he commanded such respect, Luca Brasi’s position as the unorthodox wildcard, Tom Hagen’s
relationship with the Corleone family, how Frank Pentangeli jined the famil – there’s so much that
is added to the richness of The Godfather that I see the films in a new light with this book. It’s
a great companion piece to Mario Puzo’s novel, and at the same time tells its own story satisfactory.
The prose and style is similar to Puzo, and Falco managed to capture the sense of the Italian
American family life. There’s one scene early on at the dinner table, and it’s just everyone
eating and talking, but it felt real, it felt like it the kind of scenes we saw in Coppola’s films.
I was thinking to myself, there’s no killing or violence in this scene,
just a family having a meal, and yet this is so enjoyable.
The new characters are interesting, the characters who were background characters in the films are
expanded upon in great fashion, and those who we love and cherish like Vito, Michael, Sonny, Tom
and everyone else act in such a way that they’re not exactly like they were originally – obviously,
as this is set years earlier – but they feel like the same characters. They feel like these
characters are going to organically grow and develop into the ones we saw in the films and
Puzo’s original book. Falco has demonstrated a great understanding of the characters. You can
picture them, moving around and talking to each other, you can see them committing the actions
they commit. This was one of my biggest complaints about Mark Winegardner’s books,
that the characters feel so different the only thing connecting them to the
original ones is the names. But here it works. Here it actually feels like a real prequel,
and as mentioned in my other video I wasn’t too sold on a prequel story centred around
Sonny but after reading this book I can definitely see it working in the late 90s.
I like the way the author wrote the characters in mind with the actors who
played them in the movies, like Pentangeli being described as having a gravelly voice.
A lot of lines on Tessio made me laugh, because the author kept making a point
about how monotonous he is. It was almost like he was taking shots at Tessio – every oter page
it was “he said this as if at a funeral.” “he said this in his usual mournful way.” It cracked me up.
Ultimately if you want to come down to it, like I mentioned in my review of The Godfather Returns,
these books are fan fiction. So you can take it or leave it. Was a lot of
the story here how I imagined the likes of the rise of Luca, Vito, Sonny etc would be?
No. Can I buy it, can I see it working into a film? For sure.