SCENES FROM THE GODFATHER

Inside the office, Senator Geary turns sinister and corrupt. He speaks toughly, bluntly and "more frankly" about his real feelings for the Corleones in Nevada, insults Michael and his family personally, and tries to extort money from the cooly confident chieftain:

Geary: The Corleone family has done very well here in Nevada. You own, or you control, two major hotels in Vegas, one in Reno. The licenses were grandfathered in so there was no problem with the Gaming Commission. Now, my sources tell me that you plan to make a move against the Tropigala. They tell me that within a week you're gonna move Klingman out. That's quite an expansion. However, it will leave you with one little technical problem. Ahh! - the license will still be in Klingman's name...Well, let's cut out the bulls--t. I don't want to spend any more time here than I have to. You can have the license - the price is $250,000, plus a monthly payment of five percent of the gross. Of all four hotels, Mr. Corleone.
Michael: Now the price for the license is less than $20,000, am I right?
Geary: That's right.
Michael: Now why would I ever consider paying more than that?
Geary: Because I intend to squeeze you. I don't like your kind of people. I don't like to see you come out to this clean country in oily hair and dressed up in those silk suits, and try to pass yourselves off as decent Americans. I'll do business with you but the fact is that I despise your masquerade, the dishonest way you pose yourself. Yourself and your whole f--king family.
Michael: Senator, we're both part of the same hypocrisy. But never think it applies to my family.

Calmly, Michael rejects the "little games" of the Senator, refusing to pay even the $20,000 legal fee for the gaming license of the casino he will take over from Klingman: "My offer is this - nothing. Not even the fee for the gaming license, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally."

Frankie Pentangeli (Michael V. Gazzo), a greyish-haired man in his sixties - one of the old-time gangsters who used to work for Vito Corleone and operates on the East Coast, catches sight of thirty-nine year old Fredo Corleone (John Cazale), Michael's older brother. Pentangeli is an uncouth, uneducated Italian unaccustomed to the modern, de-Italianized style of Michael's West Coast party, or having to wait in the lobby to see the godfather:

Pentangeli: Hey, what's with the food around here?...A kid comes up to me in a white jacket, gives me a Ritz cracker, and uh, chopped liver, he says, 'Canapes.' I said, uh, 'can of peas, my ass, that's a Ritz cracker and chopped liver!' (In Italian to button man Willi Cicci (Joe Spinell): 'We got a barbecue here, so where's the sausage?') Bring out the peppers and sausage!
Fredo: Oh, seeing you reminds me of New York - the old days, huh?
Pentangeli: Hey, Fredo, you remember uh, Willi Cicci? He was with old man Clemenza in Brooklyn. Yeah, look, here... (He and Cicci are wearing black crepe armbands to mourn the death of Clemenza)
Fredo: We were all upset about that, Frankie. Heart attack, huh?
Cicci: No, no. That was no heart attack.
Pentangeli: (upset) That's, that's, that's what I'm here to see your brother Mike about. But what's with him?
Fredo: What do you mean?
Pentangeli: I mean what do I gotta do? Do I have to get a letter of introduction to get a 'sitdown'?
Fredo: You can't get in to see Mike?
Pentangeli: He's got me waiting in the lobby.

A second, darkly-lit meeting is conducted in Michael's boathouse office with Sicilian Johnny Ola (Dominic Chianese) and his men - they have just arrived by boat launch. Ola presents Michael "an orange from Miami" - the contact represents ailing Jewish crime czar Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg) from Florida who is the real financial, wily mastermind of the Nevada casino (the Tropicana), where Michael wishes to amass his own influence. [Roth's character is reportedly based upon crime syndicate treasurer Meyer Lansky.] An advantageous alliance between Roth and Michael would assure the smooth takeover of a third casino for Michael in Las Vegas (and grease other efforts to expand casinos into pre-revolutionary Cuba):

The casino you're interested in - the registered owners are Jacob Lawrence, Allan Barclay, both Beverly Hills attorneys. The real owners are the old Lakeville Road group from Cleveland, and our friend in Miami. Meyer Klingman runs the store; he owns a piece of it too; he does all right. But I've been instructed to tell you that if you move Klingman out, our friend in Miami will go along....Hyman Roth always makes money for his partners. One by one, our old friends are gone. Death - natural or not - prison, deported. Hyman Roth is the only one left, because he always made money for his partners.

While waiting for his meeting with Michael, Frankie Pentangeli is disgusted that "out of thirty professional musicians" on the bandstand, "there isn't one Italian in the group here." They play "Pop Goes to Weasel" instead of a tarantella when he tries to direct them.

The third conference in the boathouse is between Connie, Merle and Michael. She has come to ask her brother for support for their marriage, and for money for their trip to Europe ("passage on the Queen"), but Michael resists giving approval to his hedonistic-loving, profligate sister. He severely lectures her for abandoning her children:

Michael: So what do you come to me for? Why don't you go to a travel agent?
Merle: We're getting married first.
Michael: (To Connie) The ink on your divorce isn't dry yet, and you're getting married? You see your children on weekends? You know your oldest boy Victor was picked up in Reno for some petty theft you don't even know about.
Connie: Michael!
Michael: You fly around the world with men who don't care for you, and use you like a whore.
Connie: You're not my father!
Michael: Then what do you come to me for?
Connie: Because I need money.

Speaking softly with her, he proposes to his spoiled sister that rather than marry Merle, she should stay with the family and live on the estate with her kids: "You won't be deprived of anything. You can have everything you want....Connie, if you don't listen to me, and marry this man, you disappoint me."

The elaborate party continues into the evening - the Corleone family is seated for dinner in a party tent. Everyone in the family is there with Mama Corleone - Michael, Kay (Diane Keaton) - Michael's wife, Tom Hagen, Connie and Merle, Fredo and his drunken, flirtatiously-uncontrollable, slatternly, non-Italian wife Deanna (Mariana Hill), and Frankie Pentangeli. When Mama raises her glass for a toast to "Famiglia! Cent' Anni! [a hundred years]", Connie spitefully adds: "It means we should all live happily for a hundred years. The family. It would be true if my father were alive..." After dinner, Fredo's wife has to be dragged off the dance floor for flirting with another man - a deliberate attempt to intimidate her husband:

Deanna: Oh I know what's the matter with you. You're just jealous 'cause he's a real man.
Fredo: I swear to God, Deanna, I'm gonna belt you right in the teeth.
Deanna: You couldn't belt your mamma. You know somethin'? These Dagos are crazy when it comes to their wives...Never marry a Wop. They treat their wives like s--t!

A fourth meeting in the boathouse finally allows Frankie Pentangeli to meet with Michael. They discuss Pentangeli's operation in his New York (Bronx) territories, where he "welshed" on a previous promise by Clemenza (one of Vito's trusted men) to give "three territories in the Bronx" to the Rosato brothers before he died [of a 'heart-attack' induced by the Rosato brothers]:

Michael: Clemenza promised the Rosato brothers three territories in the Bronx after he died. You took over and you didn't give it to them.
Frankie: I welshed?
Michael: You welshed.
Frankie: Yeah, Clemenza promised him ougats. Muscodon. Clemenza promised them nothing. He hated those son-of-a-bitches more than I do.
Michael: Frankie, they feel cheated.

Pentangeli complains that Michael is passing judgment on him "high up in the Sierra Mountains" while drinking "champagne cocktails," and that his competition in New York, the Rosato brothers, are encroaching on his territory without any help from Michael to contain them. Michael won't "touch" the brothers or interfere in the affairs of the East Coast because the Rosatos answer to Hyman Roth in Miami - his new business associate. He refuses to let Pentangeli 'disturb' his important and delicate business dealings with Roth:

Michael: Tua famiglia. Your family's still called Corleone. And you'll run it like a Corleone.
Frankie: My family doesn't eat here, doesn't eat in Las Vegas...and doesn't eat in Miami...with Hyman Roth!
Michael: Frankie...You're a good old man. And I like you. And you were loyal to my father for years.
Frankie: The Rosato brothers. They're takin' hostages. And, Mike, they spit right in my face all because they're backed up by that Jew in Miami.
Michael: I know. That's why I don't want 'em touched...I want you to be fair with them.
Frankie: You want me to be fair with em? How can you be fair to animals? Tom, for Christsakes! Listen, they recruit spicks, they recruit niggers. They do violence in their grandmother's neighborhoods! And I tell ya, everything with them is whores, whores! Junk! Dope! And they leave the gambling to last. I wanta run my Family without you on my back, and I want those Rosato brothers dead.
Michael: No....
Frankie: (sneering) Then you give your loyalty to a Jew before your own blood.
Michael: Tcch! Come on, Frankie. You know my father did business with Hyman Roth. He respected him.
Frankie: (warning) Your father did business with Hyman Roth. Your father respected Hyman Roth. But your father never trusted Hyman Roth, or his Sicilian messenger boy Johnny Ola.

While Kay and Michael dance outdoors, Michael asks his wife about their expected baby, and then apologizes about the "bad timing" of having so many old-style gangster meetings with the underworld. She is reminded of his previous, hollow promises:

It made me think of what you once told me - in five years, the Corleone family will be completely legitimate. That was seven years ago.