Baptism In The Godfather

A Baptism in Blood: Formalism in the Final Scene of The Godfather
The climactic baptism scene in The Godfather showcases the moral struggle the protagonist Michael Corleone faces throughout the film, cinematically opposing the two sides of his personality through formalism. The scene, in particular, uses the two different senses of the word ‘Godfather’ which the film has created to structure the two contents of this scene. The directly opposing but also weaving together the two events that respectively describe one meaning of the word each. The first is Michael Corleone’s status as an actual ‘Godfather,’ presiding over the baptism of an infant. The second meaning of the word is the one the film makes us familiar with—Corleone’s status as a murderous mob boss. This side of Corleone’s identity is showcased in the many executions he has carried out while he …show more content…
Cutting the two separate narratives into a single progression which jumps back and forth between the two events both weaves the two meanings of the word together and showcases the two extremes of Corleone’s personality and the depth of the character. According to the textbook Understanding Movies, “formalist movies have a high degree of manipulation, the re-forming of reality… It is precisely this distorted imagery that expressed the director’s vision of reality” (4). This is what we see in the baptism scene in Coppola’s The Godfather. The two narrative events— the baptism and the series of executions— are very obviously handled by the director, and set in an opulent structure easily distinguishable as such by its use of counterpoint and juxtaposition. For example, at the beginning of the scene, Michael