Hey you two, calm down here!! We're talking about a movie for God's sake. No need to get hostile or mad.

And Dona, for what it's worth, I happen to think that there is nothing wrong with a woman wanting to know what her husband is doing outside the home, how he is making his living, etc. But again, we are talking in the now. This movie is set in an era where it was not common for a woman to question a man, ESPECIALLY a man from an old fashioned Italian upbringing.

Now of course Kay was brought up in the American tradition by parents who were also probably born in America. And that is exactly one of the subplots of the GF movie, how she, being a wasp with modern American roots, was not afraid to question Michael on these matters. Think about it or watch closely next time, Kay is probably the one person that Michael cannot look straight in the eye and lie to.

We are shown how much Michael is like his father, and as much as he is the son who is most like his father, he is also different in several ways. Different in the sense that while he is trying to carry on his father's traditions, he really can't, because he himself had a different childhood than his father, and he himself has a different kind of wife than his father. Remember Michael originally despised his father's business, wanting no part of it. And I am sure that deep down inside it bothered him that he was now living the life that he once promised himself that he would never be a part of. This is one of the reasons that he tells Kay that he will legitimize the family in 5 years. First to try and convince her that he would not carry on in his father's ways, and secondly, and more importantly, to try and convince himself that he was not going to continue living the life of a Mafia hood. He told himself, and Kay, that eventually he would be a legitimate businessman. Haaaaa!

But it was really Kay who pressured him about his way of life. And in the context of what Michael and the Corleone's really were, Kay was not the right wife for Michael. Now had Appolonia lived, and had been with Michael through all that he had to do to try bring the family back to respectability and power, I don't think that she would have EVER questioned Michael about his business. I don't think that she would have ever pressured him the way that Kay did. She would have been like Mama Corleone. The perfect Sicilian wife for a gangster. Mama and Appolonia were from the same culture, Kay was not.

So don't take it personal when someone calls Kay a bitchy wife. Truth be told, in the context of the era that the movie took place in, and the background that Michael came from, she was a nagging bitchy wife.

She married Michael fully knowing what he and his family were all about. She knew what she was getting into. She chose to live that life. But she could not change, adjust or adapt to it.

Kay fooled herself into thinking that she could change Michael. Make him do things differently than his family did. But she could not. And Michael fooled himslef into thinking that he would eventually make Kay the perfect sicilan, obedient wife. But he could not.

And becuase they were really only fooling themselves, Kay became the bitchy nagging wife, and Michael became the cold and uncaring husband.


Don Cardi