“What are they getting excited about? It’s just another gangsta picture,” said Marlon Brando.
The greatest actor in America, yes. But it’s not always as shrewd off-screen as it used to be. “The Godfather,” which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary on Thursday, is not a gangster image. It’s a family photo – where the family happens to be a gangster.
As proof of this, take a look at the film’s most famous lines.
“Leave the gun, take the cannoli.” This, it so happens, is from the only “Godfather” scene filmed in New Jersey – Liberty State Park in Jersey City.
It may hold the entirety of the film, author Mark Seal, with “Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of the Godfather” (Simon and Schuster), said author Mark Seal, further proof that The Godfather is anything but a crime flick.
It’s more about the gun, but it’s more about the cannoli,” Sell said. “It’s about the family. That’s what makes the ‘Godfather’ always — and oddly lovable. You end up becoming part of that family.”
No other gang image, none of the classics of James Cagney or Edward J. Robinson, comes close to The Godfather. People have watched it 30, 40, 50 times. A newly restored, high-res version was released by Paramount in February, and on Thursday, it’s showing in theaters across the country, including several locations in New Jersey (see list at end of story).
And when people don’t watch it, they quote it.
“This is a very quotable movie,” said Stirling Farrence, a critic and educator who wrote an entire article explaining the scene, “Leave the gun, take the cannoli: the hitter as the family man.”
“I will make him an offer he cannot refuse.” “Luca Brassi sleeps with fish.” “What did I ever do to make you treat me with such disrespect?” “I hope your first child is a male child.” The sheer number of famous quotes says something about the film’s cultural staying power.
But “Leave the gun, take the cannoli,” a half-impromptu throwing line, became for The Godfather what “to be or not to be” for Hamlet. Quote from quotations.
“It’s interesting that this is the line that sticks in people’s minds,” Farance said. “It really takes away a lot from what happens in this movie.”
six words
What this line sums up – in six words – is the complete cognitive dissonance that The Godfather revolves around. Home life and death side by side.
It comes, you remember, at the climax of the long sequence that results in the beating of Pauli (John Martino), a mob who made the unforgivable mistake of betraying the family.
Clemenza (Richard S. Castellano), the killer, is – like all mafia accomplices Don Corleone (Brando) – a family man.
He appeared as he left the driveway of his beautiful suburban home. “What time will you be home tonight?” Ask his wife, and send him a kiss. “I don’t know, maybe it’s too late,” he says. “Don’t forget the cannoli,” she reminds him. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” huh, while Pauly—the lamb to slaughter—supports the car out of the driveway. “Watch out for the kids when you back off,” Clemenza says.
An ordinary husband, from an ordinary neighborhood, goes out on an ordinary mission. The extended version of this sequence, which can be seen in the 1977 TV adaptation of “The Godfather Saga,” actually shows Clemenza going to Luna’s restaurant in Little Italy to pick up a cannoli for his wife.
Move to Jersey
The episode peaked on what was supposed to be Long Beach, Nassau County (according to Pozzo’s book) but was actually filmed on what is now Freedom Way, Liberty State Park, Jersey City.
The park, which opened in 1976, didn’t exist when the scene was filmed – just a back road next to the fragmite, the perennial reeds of the Jersey Meadowlands. In the perfect ironic finishing touch, the Statue of Liberty can be seen in the background.
“The statue has its back on these guys,” Sell said. “I thought that was touching. The spirit of America, it turned its back.”
Clemenza’s car is seen driving along this bleak road. “Hey, stop the car, right? I have to drop in,” he says.
Every fan of The Godfather knows what will happen next. Clemenza comes out to the weeds. From afar, his lieutenant Rocco Lampone (Tom Rossky) is seen in the car putting the muzzle of the rifle to Paulie’s head. Boom boom boom.
Clemenza returns and utters, emotionlessly, the classic line. “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.”
font please
The calligraphy is not in Puzo’s book. In the original shooting script, it seems, it was simply “Leave the gun.” The point is, the Corleone family leaves the body, car, and murder weapon in plain sight, as a warning to their enemies.
It was the late actor Richard Castellano (who was a resident of North Bergen) who, apparently, added a little bit about the cannoli.
“This line establishes what was a subtext of the movie and puts it literally in the script,” Farance said.
subtext? This is a movie about family. Crime and murder – all to keep the family together.
local contact:Did you know that these famous movies, shows and people have a connection with Ukraine?
tell everyone:Gianni Russo, “Godfather” actor and mob partner, drops it all on tape
Where is he going?:We’ve marked Tony Soprano’s way home in New Jersey. Here’s what’s wrong
It’s the way the killing, the horror, the bloodletting, against the warm home scenes—murder and hearth, so to speak—that made The Godfather so unsettling, so unlike any previous gangster movie (The Sopranos really took that theme and ran with it). Putting guns and cannoli within six words of each other nailed.
“He was the essence of it all,” Seal wrote in his book. “The wife, the children, the fathers, the mothers, the kitchens, the families, the food, the food always, the extremes that men had to go to put food on the table.”
In the end, that’s what makes The Godfather and its 1974 sequel, The Godfather Part II, so tragic. The Godfather films story about Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) committing horrific crimes to save his family.
keep it real
But the “Godfather” movies aren’t just about family. They are about to Italian family.
This has been a source of ongoing controversy among some Italian-American viewers, who complain that Italian families are too Not Like that (most of them are not, of course).
But just as many have embraced The Godfather as a warm and quintessential image of the Italian family circle. “Uncle Floyd” Vivino, a comedian pianist from Paterson, used to announce that he would play “Italian National Anthem” before launching on the theme of “The Godfather.”
This is another thing about the “Cannoli” line. It is culturally specific. It’s not, “Leave the gun, take the candy.” Cannoli – a crunchy tube pastry with a sweet ricotta filling – was a childhood favorite of director Francis Ford Coppola. That’s why he left the line.
Throughout the film, Coppola, screenwriter Pozzo, and their Italian crew pretty much went out of their way to make sure the film hit all the right cultural notes.
For the long, memorable wedding scene that opens the movie, Coppola made sure the venue was full of kids. He said that children would not be left behind on such an occasion. “Kids at an Italian wedding run the place,” he said. Elsewhere, when the text included “frying” some sausage from Clemenza, Puzo insisted that it be changed to “fry”. “Gangsters don’t brown, gangsters eat,” he said.
For their pain, the “Godfather” team earned the absolute compliment: praise from the gangsters themselves.
“I left the movie dumbfounded, I mean I walked off stage,” Mafia Salvatore Sammy the Bull Gravano said, as quoted in the screenplay for “The Godfather Suspended” edited by Jenny M. Jones.
“Maybe it was a fantasy,” he said, “but for me, then, this was our life.” “Not just gangsters and murder and all that [expletive]But that wedding in the beginning, the music and the dancing, we were the Italian people! “
The devil is in the details
Of course, no movie can correct everything. The Godfather lost some credibility (and another opportunity to use a location in Jersey) when a scene that was supposed to be set on the George Washington Bridge was filmed instead apparently clearly in Queensboro. “Going to Jersey?” Michael says, anxious – as it may be. It connects Queensboro Long Island City to Manhattan.
But Garden State fans can console themselves with the moving truck in the final scene. It’s from John J. Bartek Trucking in Wharton – it continues to be a source of pride for the people of Morris County. Above all, the cannoli scene, with a North Jersey backdrop, and this endlessly quoted line.
Speaking of which, a final puzzle. Is it “Leave the gun, take the cannoli”? or ‘Leave the gun, take canolis”? People quote it both ways.
Technically, “cannolo” is the singular, and “cannoli” is the plural. There is no such thing as “cannolis”. But Clemenza’s house – impressive because in so many ways – it may not be unwieldy for the language. so it is could Be the “canolis”. As a throwing line, it’s a bit difficult to understand.
But Seal, author of Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli, is pretty sure there are no “s.”
Sure enough to portray it that way – in the title of his book about the greatest gangster epic of all time. i beg your pardon. Family saga.
“I think it’s cannoli,” he said. “If you listen, it’s hard to tell. But I think that’s it.”
The movie “The Godfather: 50 Years” is shown in cinemas at the following locations:
- Montclair
- Cherry Hill
- East Hanover
- Hawthorne
- Rockaway
- West Orange
- Clifton
- Edison
- Hillsborough
- Skillman
- Westwood
- Cranford
- Elizabeth
- linden
- Toms River
- East Brunswick
- freehold
- Newark
- Voorhees
Jim Beckerman is an entertainment and culture reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to his insightful reports on how you spend your free time, please sign up or activate your digital account today.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @Jimbeckerman1