The Godfather trilogy is full of incredible performances by actors who play Italian-American mobsters for the most part, but one superb performance for a role entirely outside the mob is often overlooked. Diane Keaton’s role as Kay Adams in the trilogy is pivotal to the development of Michael Corleone’s character, particularly in the two masterpieces of the trilogy, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II.
Kay is often in the background of the movies, a secondary sideshow while the real action takes place within the world of Cosa Nostra. Yet she is at the center of many key scenes which demonstrate the transformation of Al Pacino’s best cinematic character. Her appearance in these scenes is no coincidence. Kay’s the linchpin of Michael’s story, the yardstick by which we measure his growth as a character. Without Kay, Michael Corleone wouldn’t be visibly different from his brothers, or anyone else in the Corleone crime family. It’s his wife’s presence that illustrates what sets him apart.
Diane Keaton’s Kay Adams Is Our Window Into The World Of The Godfather
Kay’s Responses To The Actions Of The Corleone Family Mirror Our Own As An Audience
From the very first scenes of the saga, Kay Adams is our way into the world of the Corleone family. She is the reason we hear about what Luca Brasi did before the events of The Godfather, and what Vito Corleone, Michael’s father, really does for a living, because she asks him to explain these things to hear while they’re at his sister’s wedding.
What begins as a simple case of curiosity soon turns into a horrifying revelation in which the veil of innocence is suddenly and brutally lifted from Kay’s eyes by a single sentence of dialogue. At the very same moment, the veil is lifted from our eyes, as an audience, and we’re ready to enter the world of the Sicilian mafia.
The perspective of Kay as an outsider looking into this world, just as we are, is a recurring motif in the Godfather trilogy. Most notably, it’s emphasized in the final sH๏τ at the end of The Godfather, when one of Michael’s enforcers slowly closes the door of his office, the room where the movie began when it still belonged to Vito Corleone, leaving Kay alone outside and unable to see or hear what’s going on. This is the moment that rubber-stamps Michael Corleone’s position as the new Godfather of his crime family.
It’s the relative normality of Kay’s background that makes her such an important character to the Godfather trilogy as a whole, and Michael Corleone’s story in particular. Kay is perhaps the only major character that we can fully identify with, precisely because she belongs to a different world from the Corleones. When she’s rendered speechless by Michael’s story about Luca Brasi, we naturally empathize, and give more weight to the appalling crimes that Michael is describing. By being a normal person in relation to a family of mobsters, Kay Adams abnormalizes their actions.
Kay Is Central To Michael’s Story Throughout The Godfather And Its Sequel
Michael Corleone’s Scenes With His Wife Kay Are Fundamental To His Story
It’s not simply in brief asides that we glimpse the world of The Godfather through Kay’s eyes, though. The scenes between Michael and Kay are fundamental to his story throughout the trilogy, and she’s arguably The Godfather’s best non-mafia character. Diane Keaton’s role in the movies might often go unsung, yet it’s pivotal to the beginning, middle, and end of Michael Corleone’s story in The Godfather, the progression of his descent into paranoid, tyrannical isolation in The Godfather Part II, and the entirety of his story in The Godfather Part III.
Kay exposes his cruelty in explicit terms through the couple’s marriage-ending fight in the second Godfather movie.
Michael differentiates himself from the rest of his family at the start of The Godfather to her. Kay exposes his cruelty in explicit terms through the couple’s marriage-ending fight in the second Godfather movie. In Part III, Kay even manages to make Michael come to terms with his repressed guilt for the murder of his brother Fredo at the end of The Godfather Part II. Kay is the only real means we have at our disposal during the whole trilogy to remind us of the difference between what Michael Corleone was supposed to be and what he’s become.
The Godfather Illustrates Michael’s Transformation Through His Relationship With Kay
Kay Is The Yardstick We Measure Michael By, And The Unsung Hero Of The Trilogy
Indeed, Michael’s scenes with Kay in the Godfather trilogy serve as markers to signal the progress of his character transformation, from college boy and military veteran who wants nothing to do with his family’s crimes, to unscrupulous and merciless mafia don. When Michael finds Kay and proposes to her in the middle of The Godfather, he tells her, “I work for my father now,” as though he’s stating outright to us, the audience, the extent to which his mind is starting to change about the family business.
Meanwhile, the moment that Michael closes the door on Kay at the end of The Godfather Part II is a mirror image of the final sH๏τ of The Godfather. It represents the fact that Michael has completely closed himself off from the world outside the mafia. When Michael’s story turns towards a redemptive arc in The Godfather Part III, Kay serves as the vehicle for this arc. Diane Keaton’s character isn’t a secondary figure in the Godfather trilogy, but the apex on which Michael Corleone’s darkly transformative story turns.
The Godfather
- Created by
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Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola
- First Film
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The Godfather
- Latest Film
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The Godfather Part III
- Cast
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Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, John Cazale, Talia Shire, Andy Garcia, Sofia Coppola
Summary
The Godfather is one of the most iconic and influential film franchises in cinematic history. Based on Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel of the same name, the series chronicles the rise and fall of the powerful Corleone crime family. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the franchise consists of three films that explore the complex dynamics of organized crime, loyalty, and family. The films are celebrated for their outstanding performances, direction, and thematic depth, especially regarding power, betrayal, and morality within the Mafia world. The first two films, in particular, are widely regarded as some of the greatest films ever made.
