Really big spoiler alert right off the bat. Fredo dies. Okay, so that might not seem like a big deal in a film in which there are fifteen other fatalities, but Fredo’s death is particularly shocking. Sure, he isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed; and as far as mobsters go in this film, he has got to be one of the mildest. And, yes, Michael did warn him toward the end of The Godfather not to ever go against the family again. But Fredo just wants to be his own man. He wants to be valued and not overlooked. He wants to matter. So, he (incompetently) takes up scheming and plotting—against Michael. Well, of course, it’s no surprise then that Fredo bites the bullet. Cross the Godfather and deal with his wrath—we’ve seen that a billion times in the first and second installments of this franchise. But Fredo is different because he’s a Corleone. Fredo is family.

“I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart.”

The Godfather, Part II opens with a portrayal of Michael in his position of power as the head of the Corleone family: one of the Family’s hitmen kisses Michael’s hand, indicating his submission to Michael’s rule as Godfather. But from this height of authority, the Corleone family under Michael’s leadership begins to struggle and then to sink. It seems to Michael that everything starts going wrong. For one, there’s an attempt on Michael’s life while he is in his bedroom at home, an act that endangers his pregnant wife Kay as well. Then comes the realization that someone very close to him must have been involved in planning the hit—there is a traitor in the midst. Next, the big deal Michael wants to close with Hyman Roth goes up in smoke as Michael realizes that Roth is out to get him and that Cuba (the site of the proposed deal) is about to explode into revolution—oh yeah, and he discovers the inside man is his older brother Fredo. When Michael’s own ordered hit on Roth fails and Cuba descends into chaos, the Godfather returns home to discover Kay has lost the baby and seems estranged from him. Then there is a Senate committee hearing that requires Michael to testify about his mob activities…it gets bad fast for the Corleones in this film.

Michael protects Kay during the attempt on his life.

As Michael becomes more cold and ruthless, The Godfather, Part II makes it clear that his “professional” struggles cannot be extricated from his personal ones. He separates from Kay and refuses to let her see their children, which is an awful scene; but the Godfather is most cruel with his misled and traitorous brother Fredo. Although he permits Fredo to return to the family compound on Lake Tahoe, Michael can never bring himself to forgive Fredo for his betrayal. He determines that Fredo can live as long as their mother is alive; but when Mama Corleone passes away, not even Connie Corleone’s pleas can save Fredo. Michael’s paranoia, pride, and need for vengeance trump his love for his own blood. His emphasis that the family comes before all ironically persuades him to take his brother’s life. The emptiness that results from this decision is magnified in a flashback that shows Fredo as the lone supporter of Michael’s choice to join the Marines after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. At the close of the film, the Godfather is alone—no worshiping cronies or fawning family. He is thinking, thinking. He is not relieved; he is not happy. His actions have sunk the family. His family’s war has cost him his family.

Michael, all alone with his thoughts and his sins.

For Me Then…

What I found most disturbing about Fredo’s death (and this movie in general) is that shortly before he dies, Fredo renews an old love for fishing. He shares this passion with Michael’s young son Anthony, revealing his secret to catching fish: reciting a Hail Mary as he casts his line. Fredo’s bonding with Anthony supplies a father figure to the boy whose real father Michael is preoccupied with money, power, and retribution. It also gives Fredo a pseudo-son, someone to whom he can pass along something he enjoys. Plus, the introduction of the Catholic prayers to a very dark part of an already morbid film adds a level of otherworldliness to the scenes of the two Corleones sitting on the end of the dock and later getting into a small boat.

The death of Fredo Corleone.

Fredo tells Anthony that he utters the prayers in order to catch fish; but if we think back to the first Godfather film, Vito tells Michael that he didn’t want to be a “fool dancing on a string” and that he intended for Michael to “hold the strings.” The first time I heard these lines I thought of puppets (and the film’s artwork reinforces this interpretation), but they could also connect with fishing. Fish are duped into grabbing the worm on the end of the string. Fredo might be the fish, for he isn’t capable of holding the strings like Michael is because Fredo prays, perhaps for forgiveness, as he casts. With Michael there is no forgiveness. Undeniably, Michael is still holding the strings at the close of The Godfather, Part II, but the cost to his “business,” to his family, to his soul is abundantly clear. Fredo dies in this film, but Michael dies in a way as well.