I believe in America.” That is the opening line of perhaps the greatest movie ever made,
The Godfather
. The words are spoken by the undertaker Bonasera to Don Vito Corleone on the wedding day of the latter’s daughter. And so begins Francis Ford Coppola’s epic movie cycle in which commitment to American values of family and freedom turns dialectically into its opposite, culminating in
Godfather II
in abortion, fratricide, and the destruction of family.