The Godfather Part III

Spoilers for all three Godfather films below:

Recently I expressed a strong love for Godfather Part II when I watched it at a Fathom Events screening.  The viewing caused me to have another look at its sequel.  Interestingly my first instinct after re-watching Part II was a curiosity as to why it was even made as Part II ties up the story.  The Corleone Family wins the war with Hyman Roth but largely at the expense of Michael Corleone’s family, and his soul, for committing fratricide.  The final shot of Michael all alone and looking empty is fitting.  Where could the story go from there?

After re-watching the film I put it on with director Francis Ford Coppola’s commentary and had it on in snippets in the background over the course of a couple of days while doing other things.  Coppola is fascinating when providing his insights.  Two of them really stuck out at me.

1)      Coppola now considers the series to be two films and an epilogue.

2)      He was deep in debt after a poor investment in a studio and made the film to get out of it.  As such he had less overall creative freedom than on Part II.

So is this to say that Godfather Part III exists only because Coppola had made some bad financial decisions may seem obvious although the truth is that Paramount had been trying to get another Godfather film off the ground for years and solicited several scripts.  The book “The Godfather Companion” details some of these potential stories.  Eventually Coppola did come on board and once he did quickly secured the essential participation of Al Pacino and Diane Keaton, though I expect they signed on more based on the potential of making a Godfather Part III with their original director than on any actual draft of the script for the film.

So having said this, does the film work?  Without question it is far weaker than the other two entries for reasons I will describe below.  I have vacillated between two and three stars for this film.  My scoring system is as such:

1 star: Not worth any time

2 stars: I cannot recommend it but it has some good elements

3 stars: Recommended with reservations, especially if you are interested in the topic or genre

4 stars: Highly recommended

5 stars: One of my favorite films and nearly flawless.

People who peruse the other entries in the blog will see a lot of four and five star films as I tend to like to write about films that move and inspire me.  Rarely do I like to spend a lot of time looking in depth at something that did not work and speaking poorly of someone else’s hard work or investment.  However by looking at one film’s successes (Godfather Part II) it is an interesting exercise to compare it to the relative failure of its successor.  I promise that one day I will come back and review the original Godfather.

Generally if a sequel or continuation of a story does not work it is because the previous work had a distinct voice that was replaced in a sequel by a less successful one.  An example from the times of the early two Godfather films would be the Dirty Harry series.  The first one is the only true classic because it had director Don Siegel’s tight hand.  The others have their moments but only a fraction of the power in part because other directors made them (including the best of them, Sudden Impact, which was directed by Eastwood himself).  Spielberg was not involved in the Jaws sequels.  Godfather Part III however involved the exact same creative team as the others with not only Coppola but writer Mario Puzo, who wrote the book.  No one knew these characters better than those two men but the creative wells were a little dry.   If Godfather Part III were truly an epilogue then it might have been more successful if it had been shorter instead of nearly three hours long.  The story is not involving enough to support an epic length film.

Pacino has an interesting challenge in this film.  20 years have passed since Part II but Michael, who has been suffering from diabetes, seems to have aged nearly twice that amount.  The guilt of killing his brother Fredo and the loss of his wife have taken their toll.  The different haircut and much deeper voice make Michael look like almost a completely different person and but Pacino still convinces us that it is  the same man.  Michael is still deliberate though is also often direct.  He has almost none of Pacino’s natural charm (nor Vito Corleone’s) and seems defeated despite his incredible wealth.  Michael’s charity donations and involvement in what turns out to be a corrupt Vatican deal seems to be a way to buy his soul back as well as the respect of his family.  The deference people had for him out of fear does not fulfill him at all.  In the end though Michael was as wily as his father, he has earned no true affection from people other than his kids and sister.

Pacino has many wonderful moments in the film.  Michael quietly takes Kay’s scolding early on when she refuses to even be civil.  One senses that he has told himself the same things many times.  He looks pained to his core when Anthony plays the song that reminds him of Apollonia, his young bride who was killed in an attempt to murder him.  Michael appears stricken but not vulnerable in the confession scene.  Coppola interestingly shoots it from around the corner as if to partially shield the audience from Michael’s shame.  One of his most dramatic moments is the cry of utter desperation when Mary is killed.  All his crimes had been in part to protect his family but in the end his violent business cost him the life (and love) of the person who loved him the most.  The tragedy is punctuated as the film advances perhaps another 10 to 20 years as Michael dies unceremoniously in Don Tomassino’s villa, utterly alone.  In the audience we are left to imagine the events but it seems clear to me that even though Kay had reached a tentative peace with Michael in Part III, the death of Mary probably ended that permanently.  Kay looks at Michael with what appears to be fury.  Michael probably would have been too ashamed to even try to approach Kay after that and likely shut himself off completely.

Diane Keaton as Kay goes from a contentment from a new life, to anger at having to see Michael again to an appreciation when Michael promises to keep Anthony out of the family business, to forgiveness (though notably not a romantic reconciliation) and then back to a sense of loss as her daughter dies, the worst price she could have possibly paid for ever having married Michael.

Andy Garcia as Vincent is the jolt of electricity that the film needs.  Vincent is Sonny’s illegitimate son with his lover Lucy from the first film.  He has a lot of Sonny’s impulsiveness and yet also .learns to calculate his actions more like Michael as the film goes on.  Obviously Vincent was made up for this film as he was never mentioned previously (and not at all in the book which focused a little on Lucy after Sonny’s death and she was not pregnant and actually in an affair with Johnny Fontaine).  I think this works to his advantage as the Corleone family probably would not have spoken of Vincent previously.  It is a little unbelievable that Vincent could go from an outsider to the new Don in the space of a few short months but Coppola is apparently trying to mirror Michael’s journey from the first film.  Initially Michael brings Vincent into his confidence after his son Anthony, with Kay’s backing, tells Michael that he wants to pursue a music career and not be part of the Corleone family business. 

This leads to the weakest link of Godfather Part III, the casting and use of Mary Corleone.  Clearly the idea of Mary Corleone is she is the innocent person who both falls in love with a gangster like her father (who she loves dearly) and dies at a young age due to her association with both.  The film needs to build up a strong bond between Mary and Michael with Mary being the child who loves her father unconditionally.  Mary is also supposed to be the Juliet in the forbidden love story but this fails for several reasons.

For one, although Garcia does his best, there is no spark between Mary and Vincent.  Secondly,  Francis Ford Coppola made a huge mistake casting his daughter in such a key role as she did not have the experience to take it on.  Although Winona Ryder had been cast, she left the production due to exhaustion immediately prior to beginning to film her role.  Coppola, who had already started production, may have selected Sofia thinking he could coach her through the performance and save production time as opposed to dividing his attention on a casting search.  There is a lot of acting talent in the Coppola family, with his sister Talia Shire and nephew Nicholas Cage but time has proven that Sofia’s strengths are directing.  Although Sofia might have been fine for a lesser role, and admittedly she does have a certain graceful presence as Mary, Coppola would have done well to find a more developed actress to be able to share the screen with Garcia and Pacino. 

The main reason I have to route against the relationship is that Mary and Vincent are first cousins which makes their coupling incestuous.  Michael’s obligatory point about this is quickly brushed away by Mary and the film never brings it up again.  Coppola seems to think Mary and Vincent is a great romantic tragedy but by making Vincent Mary’s cousin he deflates his own premise.  If Vincent had not been a relative then the audience could have gotten behind it.

Robert Duvall’s absence is also sorely felt as Tom Hagen would have been one of the true close connections Michael had with his past.  Duvall refused to return over salary demands and his replacement, an attorney named B J Harrison, is just a functional character with no notable relationship to Michael.  Talia Shire’s Connie seems to have been reinvented as a hardened Lady Macbeth character, protecting Michael’s legacy.  Although it is interesting to see it is not at all consistent with the character from the first two films.

Eli Wallach plays Don Altobello, who is this film’s Hyman Roth (the old Corleone friend turned enemy).  The Corleones are so ruthless it is hard to come up with and develop worthy mob adversaries.  Wallach pulls it off as well as possible with his unique charm which has a cold layer underneath.  Why Altobello is foolish enough to eat a cannoli given to him by Connie at a point when he must suspect that Michael is on to him is unclear to me. 

The last notable cast member is Joe Mantegna who plays the memorably named Joey Zasa, a small time hood running some of Michael’s interests in New York.  Mantegna is more than qualified for this part and carries himself like a don worthy of some respect but always craving for more.

Coppola reunited a lot of the same behind the scenes crew as well, like cinematographer Gordon Willis, editor, Walter Murch, and his father Carmine Coppola, provided the music.  The result is that these people ensure the film has the same feel and tone as the others.

Interestingly Coppola sets the entire second half of the film in Sicily and even brings Kay there which brings the story full circle since Vito Corleone’s story started there.  I get the sense that Michael never left and just went back to Don Tommasino’s villa to wait out the rest of his life.

The intricacies of the plot, of Michael buying a controlling interest in a Vatican company which turns out to be corrupt is a little difficult to follow.  I think the overriding point is that even though Michael keeps trying to make his family legitimate he attracts a form of organized crime wherever he goes. 

Coppola does deliver the goods on a few sequences.  The helicopter attack on the mobsters in the locked room is overwhelmingly scary.  The climactic opera scene in takes the structure of the original film in which during a big family event several murders are carried out.  In this case though, they are a combination of murders ordered by Vincent and an older assassin named Mosca hired by Don Altobello, who is trying to get to Michael.

The scene on the steps outside the opera house should be a powerful denouement to the series.  Instead it comes across as a mixed bag.  Vincent, although he is the new don, acts more like a head of security during the opera.  The moment in which Mary tries to confront Michael about forbidding her relationship with Vincent should underscore the tragedy since Mary dies while upset with him.  Instead it feels flat due to Sofia Coppola’s monotone line deliveries.  Also I do not understand why Mosca, who has been established as an expert and discreet killer would try to shoot Michael in the open with a loud pistol in a setting in which it would be difficult to get away.  Vincent shoots him almost immediately.  Even though Mosca missed his chance earlier it seems more likely he would bide his time and find another opportunity.

Godfather Part III is not necessary viewing but if you liked the story of Michael Corleone it does let you see him at a later stage of life.  It is by no means an offer you can’t refuse.  If Coppola had had a little more time with the script and with his casting director he could have fixed some of the glaring weaknesses.  Coppola made up for it with his next film, the far more entertaining Bram Stoker’s Dracula in which he did finally get to work with Winona Ryder ***.