By trying too hard to be the perfect “Godfather”, Michael loses sight of the importance of family and cannot balance it with business.

The cut between these two scenes suggests that Michael is slowly losing his family in his attempts to maintain his father’s legacy. Vito never places business over family, but Michael does so consistently. The reunion scene in Italy, as the relatives eat, drink, hug and kiss, highlights a crucial difference in values for Vito and Michael. Cheerful music plays over the entire montage, in contrast to the silent background that amplifies Michael’s violence in the previous scene. The scene in Sicily shows a joyful, loving reunion between Vito, his children, and the family he left behind in Italy. However, we never see him showing genuine love or affection toward his children Tom does much of the care-taking in his place. Michael refuses to let Kay take his children during this interaction. Since there are a lot of parallels between the characters in the movie and TV show, recasting The Godfather with characters from The Office would make for an entertaining but not all that different movie. When Michael responds violently, he proves his inability to draw a line between business and family, something that Vito always prioritized as “The Godfather”. The characters in The Office are arguably even more sociopathic than those in the 1972 classic at times.

Kay expresses the fact that her abortion was an act of defiance she refuses to bring any more children into Michael’s violent world. Michael’s aggressive anger toward his wife in this first scene is starkly contrasted with Vito’s tenderness toward his family in the scene that follows. The film then cuts to Sicily, where Vito returns home to his family for the first time in 20 years. In this sequence, Michael strikes Kay when she tells him about her abortion.

Two parallel scenes of family disintegration and reunion draw out this difference between Michael and Vito. The repeated cut between Vito’s past and Michael’s present forces the viewer to think about where these two characters differ in their respective roles as “The Godfather.” Where Vito values family over everything, Michael struggles to maintain that loving relationship with his wife and children. These flashbacks are interspersed among present time, where Michael attempts to carry on the Corleone legacy by moving the family business into a modern, Americanized sphere. In flashbacks, we watch a young Vito rise from nothing to eventual family-man mafia boss. The film alternates between the past and the present, comparing the lives of Vito Corleone and his son Michael. The Godfather, Part II is interested above all else in the cut.

The godfather 1 and 2 characters