Many of us have been vexed trying to figure out how long Michael’s Sicilian exile lasted. The movies are no help because of sloppy writing and inconsistencies between GF and II. For example, in II, while Michael and Kay are dancing at Anthony’s party (late 1958), Kay reminds Michael that he’d told her (in GF) that the “Corleone Family will be completely legitimate in five years. That was seven years ago.” In that scene in GF, Michael told Kay he’d been back “for a year.” Doing the arithmetic for GF and II, it’d mean Michael returned to the US in 1950. Some people on the boards take it as gospel.

I’ve gone to the novel to construct a credible timeline. The novel has sloppy writing and timeline inconsistencies, but it’s consistent with a view that Michael’s exile lasted less than two years. I’ve used, relevant quotes, and the page numbers from the first edition of the paperback, in case you scholars want to check on it:

8/45: Connie and Carlo marry on the last Saturday of the month (p.14).
12/23(?)/45: Vito shot; Tom kidnapped by Sollozzo while doing “some Christmas shopping for his wife and children” (75-6).
12/24/45: “The day after the shooting of Don Corleone was a busy one for the Family” (111). Michael dines with Kay that night, goes to hospital, is slugged by McCluskey (120-27).
12/25/45: At the Mall the next day, Michael says he’ll kill Sol and Mac, tells Sonny to set up the meeting with Sol “two days from now” (132).
12/27/45: Michael kills Sol and Mac, leaves for Sicily (152-3).
12/28/45: The next day, the Five Families send an emissary to Corleones to give up the killer. When Sonny refuses, “the Five Families War of 1946 [sic] had begun” (153).
1/46: “After five months of marriage,” Carlo beats up Connie for the first time (238). Sonny beats Carlo in the street. The beating is witnessed by “a small-time bettor on the payroll of the Tattaglia Family” (247).
1/46: NYC detectives quiz Kay in New Hampshire “three weeks after the shooting” (231).
2/46: Sonny is concerned about Vito’s safety in the hospital. “By the middle of February, when the Don could be moved,” he goes home (250). Sonny goes to all-out war against the other families. “Over the next few months, it became obvious…that the Corleone Family had outmatched itself” (253).
7/46: “It was nearly seven months of leisurely rustic living before Michael felt real boredom” (329). He goes for a long walk with Calo and Fabrizzio, sees Apollonia, gets hit by the thunderbolt (333).
8/46: Michael’s courtship of Apollonia “went on for two weeks…the wedding was the usual peasant one” (342-3).
9/46: Sonny is assassinated: Bonasera, after “more than a year since he put himself in the Don’s debt” (at Connie’s wedding), gets a call from Hagen telling him to be at his funeral parlor in an hour. There he receives Sonny’s corpse (256-9).
9/46: Don Tommasino tells Michael “news that grieved him to tell: Sonny Corleone had been killed” (350). DT is worried about Michael’s safety: “Your wedding brought you into sight.” He arranges for Michael to be moved the next day. Apollonia is killed by a bomb in the car that would take them to the new location. Fabrizzio disappears (351-3).
9/46: After a week’s unconsciousness, Michael awakes. DT tells him “I’ve sent messages to your father, and he’s sent back instructions. It won’t be long now, you’ll be back in America” (353).
9 – 12/46: “But it was to be another month before Michael recovered from his injuries, and another two months after that before all the necessary papers and arrangements were ready. Then he was flown from Palermo to Rome and from Rome to New York” (354).
12/46: Michael returns to America.

Puzo sloppily inserted two timeline anomalies:

1/48: After “nearly two years of living like a spinster,” Kay visits NYC to shop and to look for a better job. She had called Mama Corleone every week for six months after Michael disappeared, then stopped (356). On an impulse, she calls Mama, who tells her Michael has been back for six months (357). That would put his return at 7/47.

9 – 10/46: Following Sonny’s assassination, Vito meets with the heads of the other families, bartering protection for drug trafficking for Michael’s safe return (276-94). “But it was to be nearly another year before Don Corleone could arrange for his son Michael to be smuggled back into the United States” (300). That puts his return at 9/47.

I prefer the first timeline because it has the most consistency. But, all three timelines have Michael gone for less than two years. That’s credible. The Families could not have sustained a long, drawn-out war without either being bled to death or bankrupted. Michael could not have survived years in Sicily with a price on his head. And Sonny’s recklessness would have gotten him killed sooner rather than later.

Thank you, Turnbull, for this work.
However, I think the sloppy timeline is here:

To me it also feels a little inconsistent with the story. The paragraph almost reads as if Michael orders his return to the US. And it must have taken more than two months before the "arrangements were ready". Arrangement No.1: the deal between the 5 families. I think the meeting must have taken place later than September '46.
Arrangement No.2: Find a person to blame for the killing in the restaurant. It must have taken some months until the Felix Bocchicchio opportunity came along.

That's why Puzo's sloppy writing is so frustrating. And it's compounded by Puzo's jumping back and forth in the narrative. I'm not betting the farm on the first timeline I constructed. But I think all of the timelines support Michael's Sicilian exile lasting less than two years.

I see you don't mention that Puzo states, just shortly after Sonny's death and before Michael returned home, that is was "1948". That's one of he few times a factual time reference is made in the novel. It was also made clear that Sonny was killed in late summer. And since Michael was on a two year exile, I don't think he could have returned earlier than 1948.

But since Puzo made so much time inconsistencies it's just too confusing to make a detailed and correct timeline. I think it's therefore bests to stick to the most basic information, based both on the novel and the films to make it more consistent.

This is what I prefer:

Last saturday of August 1945 - The story begins.
Late December 1945 - Assassination attempt on Don Vito.
January/February 1946 - Sollozzo gets killed & Five Families War begins & Michael flees to Sicily.
Summer 1948 - Sonny gets killed & Vito sets up the meeting with all the dons to make peace & makes arrangements for Michael to return home, which takes another year.
Autumn 1949 - Michael returns home.
Autumn 1950 - Michael reunites with Kay, but was already back for a year.
1954 - Michael becomes acting boss of the Corleone family & makes the trip to Las Vegas to have the meeting with Moe Greene.
July 29 1955 - Vito dies from a heart attack and Michael becomes the official Don.
Early August 1955 - Vito's funeral.
Late August 1955 - Michael arranges the death of Barzini, Tattaglia, Stracci, Cuneo and Moe Greene & makes the move to Nevada.

Where does it say "1948," and "late summer"? Page numbers? I'd like to know if I missed something.

I have the e-book version of the novel and can look up every detail. I will citate the beginning of chapter 19 in which Sonny is killed.

"Perhaps it was the stalemate that made Sonny Corleone embark on the bloody course of attrition that ended in his own death. Perhaps it was his dark violent nature given full rein. In any case, that spring and summer he mounted senseless raids on enemy auxiliaries ..."

And 1948 can be found in chapter 22 which is about Lucy Mancini and Jules Segal.

But I think you're probably right now, as I just saw that the same chapter begins with that it's "one year after Sonny's death".

So this makes Sonny's death in 1947, and that means Michael returns home in 1948. This completely fits with his "two year exile".

Case solved!

But then again, this is the timeline of the novel. In the film Michael returns home in 1950, cause this is supposedly mentioned in the original script, or Coppola's own personal notes.

Proof for this can be found in the book "The Annotated Godfather - the complete screenplay" by Jenny M. Jones.

And in The Sicilian, Michael also returns home in 1950.

sort of a tangent, but technically......the "after 5 months of marriage" Carlo beats up Connie for the first time?


I remember a passage that details how he beat her up on their wedding night fir not wanting to give up the cash gifts that they received....blacked her eye up I think.

===========================================

Great thread and detective work, I was always confused about just how long Mike was in exile.

Good catch! Yes, Carlo did get hold of the wedding purse by beating up Connie on their wedding night. Swine!
And, nice work, too, Sonny. The Jules/Lucy chapter makes yet another timeline--all of them in the same novel! It's as if Puzo kept forgetting what he was writing. Case in point: on p.300, after the Don's convention, "it would be nearly another year" before Vito could bring Michael home. Then he backtracks to Michael's Sicilian sojorn, and on p. 353, when Michael awakes from his coma or concussion, Don T. tells him his father is already making arrangements to bring him home, and in three months he is home.

Here's another timeline. Michael murders Sollozzo in early '46, right? Kay had "lived like a spinster for almost two years [after Michael left]." So, that means she calls the Corleone house (p.356) in early '48. Mama Corleone tells her that Michael has been back 6 months. So, that means Michael returned to the States in '47 - maybe as early as September, even August. That fits in with SB's timelie above.

Okay. Now we can be fairly certain of the novel timeline which leads me to ask this question (and not for the first time): What sense does it make to supppose that Michael and Vito would wait as long as 8 years to seek revenge? I'll never buy that timeline.

It's simple, as long as Vito lived, they couldn't seek revenge due to his word he gave to the other Dons that he would not start a new vendetta. As a man of principles, Vito couldn't break his word.

And I just stick with Michael returning to the states in '48, since it's said multiple times in the novel that he was gone for two years. It's said at least three times, more than the 6 months back which is said only ones by Mama Corleone. And in the movie, Michael was back for a year when he reunites with Kay.

But another thing that bothers me is that Kay says in Part II that Michael promised her that the Corleones would be legitimate in 5 years, which was then already 7 years ago. This means Michael reunited with Kay in '51, not '50 since it was 1958 when she said that. And since it was clearly autumn when they reunited, it must have been late 1951, which means Anthony must have been born in 1952, not 1951 as the DVD and Blu-Ray says. But then he must have been only 6 in 1958 when he got his first communion. Won't a child get his first communion at the age of 7?

This is getting too complicated... Fuck it.. Kay and Carmella just made mistakes, that's it, lol.

Well, that's why I said at the outset that we can't rely on the films. In addition to the sloppy writing in the novel, we have the discontinuities between GF and II. I'm guessing that the reason FFC and Puzo set Anthony's party in late 1958 was so that they could create the magnificent Havana sequence, including Batista abdicating. So, they created the Michael/Kay "seven years ago" dialog to accommodate 1958. If they followed the novel's scenarios, it would have been "11 years ago," or "12 years ago."

Or 10 years ago, or 9 years ago, or 8 years ago.

My point in all this discussion about timelines is, once again, that it makes no sense for Michael to have waited 5, 6, 7, or more years to avenge whatever it is that he considered he was avenging or to, simply, assume control of the entire NY underworld. Anyone of us can think of any number of variables that could accrue to the passage of that much time including Michael's death or serious illness or injury. Also, consider this. What if Vito had lived to 70, or 80, or 90? Would Michael eventually eschew his quest for revenge or would he just say "to hell with it, I'm going after them anyway?" Of course, during the interim, Barzini, Tattaglia, Cuneo, and Stracchi all could have bitten the dust.

It was taking a chance to wait but the Family was weak at that time that Michael returned. It took a while to openly (and secretly) rebuild things , get money coming in again and get Michael plugged into all of his father's political power. Vito and Michael also wanted to ensure that their enemies underestimated Mike as a not too bright kid just content to take over the business.

The Don's death let everyone drop their masks and worked for the storyline but if I recall corectly there's a part in the book where Michael and Vito are discussing things and Michael says everything's ready and that he found Fabrizzio. The Don asks him about the other thing (referring to Carlo) and Michael responds he's ready for that too and that even if the Don stepped in to prevent it that Michael would do things on his own.

And Michael didn't took over the family right after he returned from Sicily. He first had to learn from Vito how to do business, how to think and how to behave. Years went by before he was ready to become the new don. And when that time had come, he could engage his plans.

Olivant's absolutely right: there is no way the Five Families war could have lasted more than two years (nor Michael survive in Sicily for more than two years); and that, as a practical matter, Michael could have afforded to wait until 1955 to whack the other Dons without the Corleones being completely marginalized. But, as Lilo said, it worked for the plotline of the film. That's one of the reasons why the films aren't a reliable source for at least a rough timeline.

But it is very common that Italian mafia members can wait years, even decades before seeking their revenge. That's because of the honor they have in their society. A mafioso never forgets. So imo it is quite plausible that Michael took his revenge years later.

But I understand you're point, you're right about that it may not be realistic if a mob war takes so many years. That would probably ruin their business. The real life Castellammarese War also lasted about two years.

So I think the Five Families War in the Godfather lasted from December 1945 till August 1947, when Sonny was killed.

Btw, didn't someone at the board mentioned the cars at the scene in which Kay and Mike reunited where from 1948?

I did. Michael's limo was a '47 Cadillac. While they were walking, they passed a '47 Ford "Woody" station wagon. Obviously, not every car in America is the current year's model. But, the presence of two '47 cars in that scene could be consistent with Michael's having been back in America "for a year"--i.e., returned in '46.
Sonny: FYI, it was American car manufacturers' practice to introduce new cars in the fall of the previous calendar year. So, the '47 Cadillac and Ford probably first appeared in showrooms in mid- or late-October, 1946.

Okay, but although the cars where from '47, doesn't mean nobody was driving them anymore in '48. I don't think people, even wealthier ones, feel the need to buy a new one every year.

My point is, Mike couldn't have returned earlier than 1948, due to Puzo states it's that year before Mike returned. And the novel is for the most part chronologic. So according to the novel these are the facts:

* Very shortly after Mike kills Sollozzo the five families war of 1946 begins, which implies Mike flees to Sicily in 1946.
* Mike was on a two-year exile.
* It was 1948 in a chapter before Mike returns.

And accoding to the movie script Mike returned in 1950, but that isn't consistent with the novel.

But then again, we are ofcourse all free to believe in our own findings. So I respect you're oppinion.

...and there are so many to choose from, thanks to Puzo's sloppy writing.

In the interest of keeping this merry-go-round going:

The novel states that after the Dons' meeting "But it was to be nearly another year before Don Corleone could arrange for his son Michael to be smuggled back ..." Even if the Dons' meeting tooking place in the summer of '46, Michael would have been back in the States by mid-47. No where does it state '48.

In the film, Michael tells Kay he's been back "A year. Longer than that I think." So, (as the novel states) if Kay had been living like a spinster for almost 2 years, then Michael came back in '47. Thus he had plenty of time (3 years as the novel states) to learn the family business prior to the Dons' massacre in '50. Stiil, the novel states that Michael's exile had deprived Michael of 2 years of valauble training. The beat goes on.

On the contrary, it is no where stated the meeting of the dons took place in the summer of 1946 nor that Mike returned in 1947. And why should Puzo mention multiple times that Michael was gone for two years, if he returned in mid 1947, while he flees to Sicily in 1946. That doesn't make sense.

I found yet another detail in the first sentence of chapter 17.

"The war of 1947 between the Corleone Family and the Five Families combined against them proved to be expensive for both sides."

This confirms Sonny's death in 1947 as he is killed in chapter 19.

And the other confirmation can be found in the first sentence in chapter 22.

"Lucy Mancini, a year after Sonny's death, still missed him terribly, grieved for him more fiercely than any lover in any romance."

Later on in the same chapter it is mentioned that it's 1948.

And as chapter 19 implies that Sonny was killed in the summer it's therefore most likely he died in the summer of 1947.

Shortly after, the meeting of the dons takes place in chapter 20 and the first sentence of chapter 21 implies that Michael returned in 1948.

"But it was to be nearly another year before Don Corleone could arrange for his son Michael to be smuggled back into the United States."

So Michael probably returned in the spring of 1948. But then again, it could also be 1947 as TB's notes point out.

Okay, so Sonny moves Vito to the mall in February. Do we suppose that that February is about 3 months after Vito is shot or is it 14 months (February 1947) after Vito is shot? I choose 3 months. Otherwise, we are to also suppose that Vito lay in bed for over a year until forced to rise from it after Sonny's death. That seems implausible. So, 3 months later is February, 1946. Or, are we to further suppose that all of 1946 went by and some large portion of 1947 ("The war of 1947 ...") before Sonny was murdered and Vito rose from his sick bed? That also seems implausible ("They lost a lot of dough the last few months ..." is Tom's comment to Sonny about the other families and his receiving the cold shoulder on negotiations to end the war).

Sonny was murdered in 1946 and the Don's meeting took place soon thereafter. By summer. Thus, Michael returned in 1947 giving him plenty of time to learn the family business and plan his revenge. I've always maitained that it is near preposterous to suppose that Vito and Michael waited seven years (until 1955) to avenge the family.

You're right, that also made me wonder. It isn't really plausible that Vito lay in hospital for more than a year. First of all, it wasn't safe for Vito to be there as his rivals tried to murder him. Secondly, I don't think a recovery would take so long, altough I'm not a doctor. But for me, certain time references like "1947" and "1948" are undisputed facts and difficult to ignore. It is as Puzo wrote different storylines altogether, each with different timelines. That makes it so confusing. Like TB said, there are so many to choose from, so it's just which one you prefer to believe.

Despite Puzo's sloppy writing, I reiterate: it makes absolutely no sense for Vito and Mike to have waited 7 years to exact revenge. As I have posted previously, any number of variables could intervene in the interim: Vito's death; Mike's death or disability; Mike's betrayal or usurption by Corleone encumbents; Mike's imprisonment; the death of one or more of the five family dons; the death, disability, or imprisonment of Corleone encumbents; the enactment of laws.

I agree, Oli. But I think that, to Puzo's mind, waiting was just more dramatic. He was caught up in that old nonsensical proverb that "Revenge is a dish best served cold."

Obviously, we don't agree .

"Revenge is a dish best served cold" (but not frozen).

I decided to revisit this thread with another observation:

It's true that not everybody in America drives a new or newer car. When I first got interested in cars in the late '50's in NYC, there were plenty of early '50's and late '40's cars on the road. BUT, careful directors like to use the most current cars for the period to lend authenticity to their scenes. For example, when Michael's in Florida with Roth in late '58, he's driving a '58 Ford Custom 500--exactly what "Mr. Avis" would have rented to him. Johnny Ola is driving a '58 Chrysler New Yorker. Michael's driver in Havana has a '57 Mercury Montclair.

Even more authentically: at Connie's wedding, you see a great variety of late '30's and early '40's cars because it would be credible for guests to drive a variety of cars. Also, no cars were built in the US during the war years.

One interesting exception: Carlo is garrotted in a '51 Plymouth Cranbrook in 1955, even though most of the other cars in that scene are '55's. Why would Clemenza take Carlo for his last ride in such a cheapo? Because, for drama and authenticity, Carlo kicks out the windshield--and the windshield is made of "safety glass" that doesn't shatter on impact. All US cars had to have safety glass since the '20's. My guess is that they used that old Plymouth because they bought it at a junkyard, and just dumped it afterward--replacing the safety glass would have cost more than the car was worth in '72.

By contrast: early in "Goodfellas," young Henry Hill, working for Tuddy, smashes in the rear windows of cars parked in lots, pours gasoline in the cars and sets them on fire. Notice that the glass shatters. That's because it's "movie glass," made out of spun sugar. Probably they rented the cars from an agency that supplies vintage models for movie sets, removed the safety glass rear windows, substituted movie glass, and put the original glass back after they shot the scene.

Sonny was driving a 1941 car when he was killed at the tolbooth. But I now agree to you're timeline for the most part. I think it's meticulously researched.

Still, I strongly believe Michael returned to America in 1947 and probably didn't speak to Kay for yet another year. ("I've been back for a year now, probably more".)