The three films in director Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather saga is set in the world of the American Mafia throughout most of the twentieth century in order to explore the similarities between family and business interests as fundamental aspects of human behavior. Throughout the unfolding story the interests of the family and its criminal business gradually diverge and as the business concerns of the Corleones become ends in themselves, rather than the essential tools of family survival, the gap between these interests widens. In the end the Corleones discover that the gap can no longer be bridged.
The Godfather (1972) tells the story of the end of Don Vito Corleone's reign as head of the family in the late 1940s. The Godfather, Part II (1974) continues this story with his son Michael's transfer of the family business to Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas in the 1950s, and is intercut with the early years of Don Vito, from his childhood in Sicily to his rise to power in New York City. The Godfather, Part III (1990) presents the aging Michael and his struggle to legitimize the family's business while powerful forces, including his nephew Vincent Mancini, try to pull him back into crime. Throughout the three films there is a progressive geographic movement as the family moves farther and farther away from the roots of the activities that, initially, provided them with some measure of justification. As they move from Sicily to Manhattan to Long Island to Lake Tahoe they get farther away from both their physical and community roots and from the motive by which they justified their behavior--the protection of the family from other criminal forces and from uncaring government. In the final film all this is echoed in the move backward. Michael has gone from Lake Tahoe to New York and the family finally winds up in Sicily again where they find that, despite having become billionaires, they have not progressed at all beyond the level of the ...