At the Long Beach Causeway toll plaza, Barzini's men trap Sonny and shoot him to death. During a meeting with the other crime family dons to establish peace, Vito realizes that Barzini masterminded Sonny's murder. After Michael returns from Sicily, he assumes Sonny's place as Vito's heir apparent.
Humiliated, Rizzi seeks revenge by secretly making a deal with the Corleones' chief rival, Emilio Barzini, to murder Sonny. Rizzi sets the plan in motion by having his mistress call his house, provoking a pregnant Connie into an argument in which he whips her with his belt.
It was set up by Carlo, Connie's husband. This was in retaliation for the beating Sonny gave to Carlo for beating up Connie. It was later revealed in the movie that Carlo was approached by Barzini, one of Don Corleone's rivals.
He betrayed Michael for passage to America and enough money to start a small pizza place in Upstate New York. The scenes that Coppola shot for the movie were somewhat different. In the book, Fabrizio was killed at the same time Michael was taking care of Barzini and Tattalia.
After Sonny's death, Don Corleone agrees to lend his political protection to the enterprise and forgive the other families for having his son killed. Although it initially appears that Don Philip Tattaglia is responsible for organizing the anti-Corleone alliance, Vito soon realizes that Barzini is the true mastermind.
At the Long Beach Causeway toll plaza, Barzini's men trap Sonny and shoot him to death. During a meeting with the other crime family dons to establish peace, Vito realizes that Barzini masterminded Sonny's murder. After Michael returns from Sicily, he assumes Sonny's place as Vito's heir apparent.
Luca Brasi is Don Vito Corleone's personal enforcer and the only man Vito himself fears. While slow-witted and brutish, Brasi is fiercely loyal with a reputation as a savage and remorseless killer.
He then flees to Sicily, where he falls in love with Simonetta Stefanelli's Apollonia. Tragically, she's later killed in a car bomb planted by Michael's bodyguard Fabrizio (Angelo Infanti), who betrayed him to his enemies. While Michael gets revenge on those who ordered the hit, Fabrizio is never seen again.
Michael has become a true Corleone (embracing both Italian culture and mob affiliation), and his marriage to Apollonia signifies Michael's official acceptance of this change and what it means for his future. When Michael marries Apollonia, he is wedding himself not just to her, but to Sicily and his father's values.
Kay did not know. In the Movie, Michael tracks Kay down after he has been back for several years. In the movie Kay does not know. In the book Kay does not know.
Connie (who was unaware of her husband's role in Sonny's murder), hysterical after Carlo's death, blames Michael, denouncing him in front of his wife, Kay. In the novel, Connie quickly recovers from Carlo's demise, apparently relieved to be rid of an abusive, philandering husband.
According to studio executive Robert Evans in his 1994 memoir The Kid Stays in the Picture, Caridi was director Francis Ford Coppola's first choice for the role of Sonny Corleone, but Evans insisted on James Caan because Caridi was too tall to play opposite Al Pacino.
Bruno later provided assistance to Sollozzo via police captain Mark McCluskey, who became Sollozzo's most trusted bodyguard and assisted a hit on Vito Corleone and tried to finish him off. His attempt failed and Sonny Corleone ordered Salvatore Tessio to kill Bruno.
A rat is another word for snitch or informant. These four rats betrayed the Corleone family: Salvatore “Sal” Tessio, Paulie Gatto, Fabrizio and Carlo Rizzi.
This is the real significance of The Godfather's final image: not that Kay is barred from the inner world of her husband's business, but that Michael has barred himself from the world outside. Michael, not Kay, is the one on the wrong side of the door; it's he who is shut in, not she who is shut out.
While in Havana negotiating with Roth, Michael discovers that Fredo is the family traitor behind the assassination attempt on him. After telling Michael that he has never met Ola, Fredo later carelessly tells Geary that he had been to a nightclub with Ola.
Toward the end of the film, Michael names Vincent as his successor, on condition that he break off his relationship with Mary. After her brother's debut concert, the assassin Mosca tries to kill Michael. One bullet grazes Michael's shoulder, but the other accidentally hits Mary in the chest, fatally wounding her.
Al Pacino said that Michael loved Kay from the beginning. Remember that Mario's character of Michael was a man who had dreams and I do not ever want to dismiss this important deep aspect of Michael.
However, when his father is nearly assassinated in late 1945, he is thrust back into the world he has avoided for so long. Reaffirming his loyalty at his father's bedside, Michael volunteers to kill both the men responsible: the drug kingpin Virgil Sollozzo and corrupt police captain Mark McCluskey.
In the novel she was at least 1 month pregnant and in the movie it was not clear. She is seen but there is no clear way to tell. In the first Godfather film, why did Michael threaten Apollonia's father with death when he refused to allow him to meet her, then after being threatened, smiled and agreed to it?
Apollonia, however, struck Michael like a “thunderbolt” (as one of the bodyguards said). Michael could not get Apollonia out of his mind once he saw/met her, and he pursued her non-stop from the first chance meeting until they married. It truly was “love at first sight”.
Vito warns Michael that Barzini will set Michael up to be killed under the guise of a meeting; Barzini will use one of the Corleone family's most trusted members as an intermediary. Shortly afterwards, on July 29, 1955, Vito dies of a heart attack in his garden while playing with his grandson, Michael's son Anthony.
It's explained quite clearly and logically in the book. Even as he recognized that Luca Brasi was one of his most important tools, Don Corleone viewed the man as inherently dangerous to handle “like dynamite, not truly subject to control” if I remember his thoughts correctly.
Why did Michael Corleone wait an entire year, maybe more, before he came to see Kay Corleone? Because Michael knew that Kay had read the papers and heard the rumors about Michael assassinating Sollozzo and McCluskey, and he feared that Kay would know they were true and want nothing to do with him.
