Abstract

Towards the end of Analyze This , during a shoot-out, the psychotherapistplayed by Billy Crystal falls in front of the mobster played by Robert de Niro andtakes a bullet in his shoulder. De Niro thanks him for taking the bullet, but Crystalprotests that he just tripped up. De Niro replies, ‘No Doc, you tripped on yourunconscious!’ In this observation, the mobster not only provides the key to thisfilm, he also opens up a way of understanding something essential about TheGodfather . One of the central and, for me, unexplained problems in TheGodfather is the motivation for Michael Corleone’s transformation from modelcitizen and war-hero into the ruthless Don who takes his father’s place at thehead of one of New York’s mafia families. In this paper, I will use Analyze This –and Freud – to explain this transformation as a form of ‘tripping over theunconscious’. My suggestion is that Analyze This, in its self-consciously popFreudian fashion, actually gives us the basis for a more serious Freudianinterpretation of Michael’s transformation. If we approach Coppola’s film as atragedy in which the ostensible rise to power of Michael is, in effect, hisdownfall, then we are faced with the question of how to understand the natureof the forces that bring him to that end. Against the idea that Michael is simply destined to take over his father’s position, I will give an account of the underlying psychological forces that bring him to that culmination