All in the Mafia family

Abstract

Eric Hobsbawm, in his classic Primitive Rebels, says of the Sicilian Mafia, "In lawless communities power is rarely scattered among an anarchy of competing units, but clusters around local strong-points" and "Its typical form is patronage." The myth-opera-fable of the movie The Godfather (an infinitely superior pop art version of its clumsy novelistic predecessor) is little more than a gloss upon Hobsbawm's thesis 9 What makes Tbe Godfather of special interest however is neither the relevance of that thesis to America nor the esthetic quality of the movie, but rather the virtually unanimous, almost mindless acclaim it has received from both credulous audiences and flaccid critics. As with Patton two years ago, the picture seems to appeal to almost every segment of our fractured society. Why such accolades for what is only after all another (though well done) American gangster movie? Do we feel ourselves to be members of a lawless community, a pre-modern or a pre-industrial primitive Ardrey-like society? To fend off the anarchy of competing units, do we seek local strong-points? An analysis of both the picture and the book (which differ in several crucial respects) may provide some of the answers to these intriguing questions. The Godfather is an epic novel recited in flat, narrative prose and is