There are lines that have passed through the years and this one is known to everyone: but it comes from a novel that many middle and high school students have read!
“I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”… This line from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather is remembered and has spanned the ages from 1972, the film’s release date, to today! But did you know that it was undoubtedly inspired by a classic of French literature?
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As a reminder, here is the exchange between “the Don” and Johnny Fontane, a sort of crooner whose career is supported by Cosa Nostra:
– Don Corleone: This Hollywood boss will give you what you want.
– Johnny Fontane: It’s too late, filming starts in a week!
– Don Corleone: I’m going to make him an offer he won’t be able to refuse.
Paramount Pictures Marlon Brando
However, upon careful reading of Father Goriota novel by Honoré de Balzac participating in his titanic work of La Comédie humaine written in 1835, we can read a similar sentence, said by Vautrin (former convict and manipulator) to Eugène de Rastignac (young naive Provincial who went to Paris for his studies ):
See if you can get up every morning with more willpower than you had the day before. In these conjectures, I am going to make you a proposition that no one would refuse.
In this extract, Vautrin seeks to convince Rastignac to marry Victorine Taillefer in order to monopolize his fortune after having his brother murdered in the form of a pretext duel.
Paramount Pictures
Al Pacino
Obviously, the starting situation is not the same, but it is difficult not to notice the similarity, to the point that it is very possible that Mario Puzo, screenwriter of The Godfather and author of the novel on which the film is based, has read Balzac’s novel, one of his most famous.
In any case, the coincidence is disturbing, especially since Vautrin is the king of trickery and in Balzac’s universe, ends up becoming a sort of ultimate crook, the backbone of the Comédie humaine, like Don Corleone is in the film The Godfather.