Some more Godfather analysis of Michael and Kay on my mind tonight because why not?! 🤗🙏🏻
I'll always laugh at the whole "Michael married Kay because he was short on time/desperate / Michael only used Kay to give birth to his heirs" because all of this actually happened 💀💀:
Michael could have remarried any time after his divorce from Kay and had more children/a second son.
Michael wore his wedding ring for another 10+ years.
Michael was still trying to win Kay, apologize to her, get close to her in TGF3.
Michael moved onto Kay barely a year after Apollonia's death.
Michael referred to Kay as "his wife" even after she remarried.
Wouldn't finding another Sicilian woman (which would be very easy to do from family connections alone), arranging a marriage and spending a short time getting to know her and her family be a lot more worthwhile to someone like Michael Corleone than having to "give up" and return to Kay immediately to start a family and to start solidifying the Corleone family if she's so "whiny", "naggy" and "doesn't understand Michael" forever? 🥴
I think one of the most intriguing and phenomenal things about The Godfather (I and II) is it's ability to have the audience end up sympathizing with the villain in so many different ways. Michael is a murderer, a criminal, a liar, and a selfish manipulator. The things he did and does continues to show he only cares about himself and not the consequences of any of his actions. Yet people cheer him on, want him to succeed as a powerful mafia don, agree with him killing his brother and hitting his wife. 😶
Kay knew who Michael really was deep down and all this "nagging" and being "nosy" from her was her trying to see if the man she married didn't become a complete sociopath and continue to divide the family, get people hurt/killed and tear himself apart in the process. Kay was the only one looking out for Michael. She didn't want him to continue the lifestyle that would ultimately destroy him as a man and his family.
The script drafts emphasize even more on what was the most important to Michael, and it was Kay, but he got carried away pursuing revenge for the shooting that almost killed them both and trying to legitimize the business to keep the promise he had made to her, turning into a cold-blooded monster, that his wife dreaded, in the process.
Should have been kept in, maybe people would stop talking shit, he would have never killed Kay for the abortion like they all would have wanted him to do.
Also, I didn’t notice this before until someone pointed that out as I’m not well versed in music of the time and I hardly ever pay attention to lyrics (I tend to pay more attention to music itself and treat lyrics as additional notes), but music also tells us a lot about Michael’s feelings. In the book Kay is described as Michael’s dream girl, and in the first movie we see Michael taking Kay’s hand while listening to “I Have But One Heart”. Then we have the ending scene of the second movie with Michael sitting alone in his garden and still wearing his wedding band while we can hear “Love Said Goodbye”. And finally, we have the third movie:
Then he basically courts Kay, he tells her he loves her, dreams about her and their children, about how he lost them, and as someone pointed out, moments later Michael is informed of Don Tommasino’s murder and starts planning revenge, Kay overhears that and walks away. While sitting with Don Tommasino’s body Michael says he could have lived longer and he (Michael) could have been closer to his DREAM which was Kay. In the draft he says to Kay (I don’t remember him actually saying that in the actual movie): I want you to love me.
And people still babbling about Apollonia because he recalls her in the movie and dies in Sicily. They’re convinced he’s faking it with Kay just to get closer to his children (as if they weren’t adults at the time). The book is clear Michael loved only Kay, the drafts, the scripts as well, Coppola said he really loved her and so did Pacino, but they keep denying that because they mistake lust for love and because they hate Kay. Granted, his love wasn’t pure, he was toxic, but he did love her.
