local vendettas.
The first film opens with Don Vito (Marlon Brando) granting favors on the day of his daughter's wedding. This sequence is important because it establishes the link between the protection of the immediate family and of the broader community. The first speaker is an Italian immigrant undertaker who does not quite understand how this works. He offers to pay for the service he requests--vengeance on men who raped and disfigured his daughter but whom the courts had let go. Brando builds the character out of a combination of weariness, shrewd practicality, and great dignity and in this, and the following requests, it is established that the Corleone family (and the other "Five Families") dispense justice as well as pursing their businesses because immigrants could not get a fair break in America in the first half of the century. The truth of the matter, howev
...