I mean really the balls on Carlo to tell comie to shut up in the Don house. Sonny should of crack him.
shareYeah it takes a big man to abuse a woman...
These are the only words I have, I'm stuck with them, stuck in themshare
It'll never not be shocking how The Don sat back and allowed his daughter to be abused.
shareI don't believe the Don new that Connie was getting a beaten. Only Sonny new not even Michael at the time.
shareWell in the book he knew, Connie goes to her father about the abuse and he basically tells her to be a better wife.
Vito was old school and didn't believe in coming between a husband and wife, his view was that once Connie was married she belonged to her husband now.
Sorry but that's BS. So The Don may be old school and all but your telling me Connie went to him about Carlo giving her a black eye and a beaten and the Don just gonna sit back and do nothing about it. I just don't buy it. Sonny did the right thing by giving Carlo a beaten in the street. Than the Don ain't a real man. Because if my dauther was getting abused by any man old school or not that man is gonna have one big problem from me.
shareStraight from the book by Mario Puzo:
The first time he had marked her up, he'd been a little worried. She had gone right out to Long Beach to complain to her mother and father and to show her black eye....
She had found her parents coolly unsympathetic and curiously amused. Her mother had a little sympathy and had even asked her father to speak to Carlo Rizzi. But her father had refused, "she is my daughter," he had said, "but she belongs to her husband now, he knows his duties. Even the King of Italy didn't dare to meddle with the relationship between a husband and a wife. Go home and learn to behave so that he will not beat you."
Connie had said angrily to her father, "did you ever hit your wife?" She was his favorite and so could speak to him so impudentely. He had answered, "she never gave me a reason to beat her". And her mother had nodded and smiled.
Vito was from a totally different culture and generation, so was his wife. Its hard to understand with a modern mindset but yeah...they believed once married a woman belonged to her husband and he was at right to hit her if she displeased him.
You're taking it personally, they're talking about a character and how he reacted in a book.
"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it." Norman Maclean
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Mama knew.
You can sure bet she let it be known to Vito.
http://tinyurl.com/9-simple-easy-guacamole-recip
Apparently he hated what was going on but according to Sicilian tradition its forbidden for a Father to interfere in his childs marriage, Sonny did though but it proved to be his downfall which proved Vito's point that due to his uncontrollable temper and volatile, impulsive behaviour he would have made a bad Don.
shareI mean really the balls on Carlo to tell comie to shut up in the Don house. Sonny should of crack him.
Stevicus, good observation.
shareAn excellent post
shareMama Corleone told Connie that Vito never hit her because she gave him no reason to.
Ah, yes, reason must enter into a husband's decision to beat his wife.
Ah, yes, reason must enter into a husband's decision to beat his wife.
Yes, I am
Was the op?
"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne
I don't think it was the flavor of the era to beat his wife, there were scumbags in the past like there are today, it's part of the ugliest side of human nature.
It's true that the conception of gender roles and traditional family structures have evolved since the 1940's, we can even say that they even became taboo words, but still, I also believe we have a lot to learn from the older generations, if only from the way they took their vows of marriage seriously and when men knew how to behave like men.
Seems like in our individualistic world, it's all about satisfying your personal needs and desires or your ego, people divorce for peanuts now, and social networks make so easy to have relationships that even the notion of committment (with or without marriage) became obsolete. Not sure which age is crazier than the other...
Darth Vader is scary and I The Godfather
If that's true that the Don did nothing to help his daughter than he's just as guilty has Carlo if you ask me. That's your only daughter and youngest child and you do nothing. Shame on you Vito. And you would think he would do something after all he saw his own mother get killed when he was a little boy.
shareUnfortunately I'm familiar with this mindset. If the woman goes to her father's house he/his wife just sends her back and tells her to be obedient and behave.
shareI'm in total agreement with cabal24 on the differences in culture and time period.
For instance, a good portion of the American public were whipped up to frenzy about the ways women were being mistreated in Afghanistan, a culture extremely foreign, to the point of supporting an illegal invasion.
Honestly, I don't think Vito believed in hitting women generally, or with any reason at all. He simply told Connie that so that she would not expect her parents to meddle. Vito did not like carlo, he didn't even want Connie to marry him. But she was his favorite and he spoiled her so she got what she wanted, Carlo. And Vito, like someone else here mentioned, was painfully traditional. He didn't believe in interfering between a man and a woman. And he realized that as a Don, he cannot use his power to interfere between a man and his wife, even if that was his own beloeved daughter, Connie.
PS. I said 'generally' because although I think he or many men don't believe in harming women, they may harm a woman if that woman is intent on killing them or their loved ones.
It would seem to always be a bad idea to be abusive to your boss' daughter. Moreso when your boss is a murderous mafia kingpin one would think.
I understand the explanation, Vito doesn't believe in getting involved, but it never quite made sense to me. Men never hit women in my family and if they did, I'm pretty certain all my Italian relatives would have a response that would make Sonny's look mild.
Vito was just painfully traditional.
Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment. -Michael Corleone
It probably grieved him no end that he felt that he couldn't do anything about it, but then he also may have realised something that no-one else on this board seems to have. He could have had Carlo whacked at any time, but then what? Connie might have had the same reaction to him that she did to Michael at the end of the film, and maybe he couldn't bear the idea that his daughter could end up hating him. The book makes reference that she was his favourite, he might have spent hours trying to think of a solution that would leave Connie still loving him but Carlo out of the picture.......which would have been why his brain might not have been 100% on the Sollozzo / Tattaglia problem, which is why Sollozzo's men got to him outside his office, by the fruit stall......
shareVito lives in a strange world, one far, far removed from what I think a lot of people today could even conceive of. As some other posters have said, there's a lot to be admired about his codes of honor, but it's true to the character and the era that there would also be some repugnant beliefs built into his system. This is one of them.
It's interesting to me, as someone who grew up with both immigrant grandparents and first-generation grandparents, how different "old world" cultures approached different things. My maternal great-grandparents were Russian/Polish and my great-grandfather was involved in organized crime in the 1920s, overseeing a clandestine brewery. When he learned that his daughter/my grandmother was being beaten by her husband, his response was to tell his son-in-law that he'd either stop beating my grandmother, or my great grandfather would start beating him. The husband thought he was calling a bluff. It's now part of family lore how my great-grandfather threw my grandmother's first husband down two flights of stairs, followed by a suitcase. She married my grandfather about ten years later.
I think you're approaching it wrong, from my understanding it's more along the lines of Vito probably not wanting to undermine Carlo's authority as Connie's husband. If he (Vito) did anything to make Carlo fearful of angering Connie, in Vito's eyes he would be less of a man, and someone who's less of a man who's married to his daughter.
A lot of this old world thinking seeks to preserve the man's authority in the household. My view on this also comes from Mama Corleone being fine with her husband not having beaten her due to her obedience, rather than any principle (women with old world thinking ALSO don't want to undermine their husband's authority or the authority of their daughter's husbands because they ALSO see it as making the man less of a man). Vito could have had Carlo beaten or even threatened with beatings to make him docile around Connie, if in the novel she actually came to her father for support, this may be exactly what she wanted (not having Carlo killed, just intimidated into not being abusive).
It's all to preserve the authority of the male figure, a concept you would still see from men who think they have a right to beat their wives for not having dinner ready when they come back home from work.
That's also a very good point cybermastah.
Your first paragraph was also addressed in the book. Vito did not want to undermine Carlo or to be seen as an authority figure who can enter a man and his wife's home to 'interfere.' It would send a wrong message to others and set a precedent he didn't want to establish.
Connie should've cut the balls off and fed it to Sollozzo as meatballs in the restaurant scene.
shareI think this deleted scene adds to what was said about Vito's attitude, Carlo didn't even care about insulting Connie in presence of her father:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdUELdJ4jmU
Darth Vader is scary and I The Godfather
Depending how in the dark Connie was about her fathers business, I'm sure Vito could have made it look like a car crash. Carlo has been drinking, it was dark, he lost control of the vehicle etc.... But if Connie had even the slightest inkling that her father was behind it, she might never have forgiven him, and I feel this is also something he struggled with. I firmly believe that he wanted to carve Carlo into pieces and feed him to the dogs, but the repercussions in his personal would have been too great. After Sonny was killed, he likely knew Carlo was involved and had even greater reason to kill him, but he didn't want to make Barzini aware of how much he knew and risk Michael's position. He was a master at the long term plan, and he had every confidence that Michael would sort everybody out, including Carlo.
shareVito's attitude was old-school, women stay in the kitchen and male domestic violence to women was acceptable in that culture. His attitude would be she chose to marry Carlo and she will have to live with it.
All a bit misogynistic, but I am struck by how, even now, you can get men saying things online like "b**** had it coming" when for example Louis abruptly kills Melanie in Jackie Brown for mouthing off. Carlo was not really taking a chance in front of Vito, who does nothing and Carlo calculated that. It is Sonny's reaction he has to worry about.
"Chicken soup - with a *beep* straw."