Even one of those old Godparents have slept with the fishes.
“What is it with men and The Godfather?”, asks Meg Ryan in Screentime “You have mail” (1999).
“Come on! Hello? Godfather is the I Ching. Godfather is the sum of all wisdom. Godfather has the answer to all questions, “responds Tom Hanks.
As long as it is said. There are well over forty years since the premiere of the first part of Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic masterpiece where he created a kind of classic, shakespeareansk royal drama of the conflicts in the sociopathic American Mafia. And still the film of all films where every scene and rejoinder can be quoted and retold as if they were key episodes in a holy book.
And therefore all we believers little extra touches, every time something happens with everything that was associated with the first two films. (The threes are Shiite Godparents and haram for us orthodox).
As Monday night when it became known that Abe Vigoda was dead at age 94. Vigoda, who played the wise Kapo Salvatore Tessio in the first Godfather movie. Which backed the wrong horse when the old Godfather (Marlon Brando) died, and conspired with the Crafty Barzini to take rat on the new Godfather (Al Pacino).
Tessio, who when he realized that the game was out and he was surrounded by Don Michaels killers, looking consigliere Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) straight in the eye and ask, with just a hint of desperation in his eyes, but without trembling voice:
“Tom. Can you get me off the hook. For old times’ sake? “.
But it could not Tom, because his loyalties would always trump humanity, and Sal Tessio was led away to a fate we could only imagine.
There were so many such moments, from so many great actors in these first two films. Supporting roles, as we hardly saw again. Al Lettieri who played the treacherous Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo. Lenny Montana who played the brutally frightening Luca Brasi. Alex Rocco who played the temperamental Moe Green.
They are dead, most of them now. Or “sleeping with the fishes,” which we learned that the it was called in those circles. One of the few of the old guard character actors who are left, are Dominic Chianese who played Johnny Ola in The Godfather II, and got a new spring as Corrado “Junior” Soprano, Tony’s uncle, in The Sopranos.
And every time it happens, we gather in the cult to a kind of digital likvake, and share moments and lines.
What do we say about Abe “Tessio» Vigoda?
We say that Tessio was always the smartest. And that it was his path.
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