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The Godfather Part III is a crime drama film written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, and directed by Coppola. It completes the story of Michael Corleone, a Mafia kingpin who tries to legitimize his criminal empire. The movie also weaves into its plot a fictionalized account of real-life events – the 1978 death of Pope John Paul I and the Papal banking scandal of 1981-1982 – and links them with each other and with the affairs of Michael Corleone.
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Quotations
He'd better be careful. It's dangerous to be an honest man.
(refering to the pope)
I swear on the lives of my children, give me one last chance to redeem myself and I will sin no more.
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
Kay, I had a very different destiny planned for us.
Nephew, from this moment on, call yourself Vincent Corleone.
Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.
Encyclopedia
The Godfather Part III is a crime drama film written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, and directed by Coppola. It completes the story of Michael Corleone, a Mafia kingpin who tries to legitimize his criminal empire. The movie also weaves into its plot a fictionalized account of real-life events – the 1978 death of Pope John Paul I and the Papal banking scandal of 1981-1982 – and links them with each other and with the affairs of Michael Corleone. The film stars Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire and Andy García, and features Eli Wallach, Joe Mantegna, George Hamilton, Bridget Fonda, and Sofia Coppola.
Plot
The film begins in 1979. Michael Corleone is now 59 and feeling tremendous guilt for indulging in his ruthless ambition over the years, especially for ordering the murder of his brother Fredo almost two decades ago. Although his previous conquests have made him a very rich man, the thoughts of his children, their future, happiness, and his legacy are the only things keeping him going now. His adopted brother Tom Hagen is now dead (it is strongly implied that Tom's death was a natural one) and the Corleone compound at Lake Tahoe has been abandoned. Michael and Kay divorced in 1959, and Michael gave her custody of their children, Anthony and Mary. He has since returned to New York City, where he is using his wealth and power to restore his dignity and reputation.
The violent criminal element of the Corleone family has been largely abandoned, ostracized by Michael as well as the public, which no longer romanticizes the gangster lifestyle. In an attempt to break with the past, Michael creates a charity, the Vito Andolini Foundation, in memory of his father. At a ceremony in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, presided over by Archbishop Gilday, Michael is named a Commander of the Order of St. Sebastian.
At a lavish party following the ceremony, Michael and Kay have a somewhat uneasy reunion. Anthony tells his father that he is going to drop out of law school to pursue a career as an opera singer. Kay supports his choice, but Michael initially disagrees, wishing that his son would either finish law school or join the family business. Anthony steadfastly refuses, stating that while he loves his father, he will never be part of the family business (much like Michael's initial relationship with his own father). Michael eventually, though somewhat reluctantly, acquiesces to Anthony's wishes. Meanwhile, Vincent Mancini, Sonny Corleone’s illegitimate son, shows up at the party. He is embroiled in a feud with Joey Zasa, the Corleone family's mafioso muscle. What remains of the old Corleone criminal empire — once the most powerful Mafia family in the nation — is now under Zasa's stewardship. However, the Corleones' old neighborhood in Little Italy is in ruins, and has become a slum. In Michael's study, Vincent and Zasa tell him about their feud. The discussion grows violent, with Vincent accusing Zasa of mocking Michael behind his back. Michael makes it clear that he is not a "gangster" and that whatever bad blood exists between Vincent and Joey Zasa is none of his business, and must only be settled between them. He asks the two men to make peace with one another. They embrace, but Zasa insults Vincent by whispering "bastardo" in his ear. Enraged, Vincent bites off part of Zasa’s ear. Zasa is escorted out and Michael scolds Vincent for losing his temper, but is nevertheless impressed by Vincent's passionate loyalty to protect him. Michael agrees to take his nephew under his wing. The party concludes with a family picture where Michael asks Vincent to join the rest of the family.
That night, two men break into Vincent’s home, after Vincent has spent the night with a journalist (Bridget Fonda). Vincent kills one in order to frighten the other into revealing Zasa as the man who sent them, then kills him. Michael seeks to buy the Vatican's shares in Immobiliare, an international real estate holding company. He negotiates the transfer of $600,000,000 to the Vatican Bank with Archbishop Gilday, who has plunged the Holy See into tremendous debt through his poor management and corrupt dealings. While in the Vatican, Michael learns that several influential parties oppose the deal for many reasons, not the least of which is his extensive criminal history.
Don Altobello, an elderly New York mafia chief and old friend of the Corleones (as well as Connie's godfather), tells Michael that his old New York partners of The Commission want in on the Immobiliare deal. A meeting is arranged at an Atlantic City hotel, and Michael appeases most of the mafia bosses with generous payoffs. Zasa, however, gets nothing. Furious, he declares that Michael is his enemy. Zasa storms out with Altobello close behind, attempting to calm Zasa down. Minutes later, a helicopter hovers outside the conference room and sprays the room with machine gun fire. Most of the other mob bosses are killed, but Michael, Vincent and Michael's bodyguard, Al Neri, escape. Back at his apartment in New York, Michael is told that those mob bosses who escaped the massacre quickly made deals with Zasa. As Michael considers how to respond to this hit, he suffers a diabetic stroke, and is hospitalized. Near-delirium, Michael cries out the name of his brother Fredo shortly before he is loaded on an ambulance to the hospital.
Though they are cousins, Vincent and Mary begin a romantic relationship. Unbeknownst to Michael, Vincent, with the urging of his aunt Connie and Neri, plots revenge against Joey Zasa. During a street fair, Vincent and his accomplices kill Zasa's bodyguards, and Vincent, disguised as a police officer, murders Zasa himself. Michael, still hospitalized, berates Vincent when he finds out. Michael also insists that Vincent end his relationship with Mary because Vincent’s involvement in the family puts Mary's life in jeopardy. Vincent agrees.
The family takes a vacation to Sicily in March 1980, in preparation for Anthony's operatic debut in Palermo. Michael tells Vincent to speak with Don Altobello and to make known to him his intentions of leaving the Corleone family. Altobello supports the idea of Vincent switching his allegiance, and introduces him to Don Licio Lucchesi, the man behind the plot to prevent Michael’s acquisition of Immobiliare. Michael visits Cardinal Lamberto to speak about the Immobiliare deal. Lamberto convinces Michael to make his first confession in nearly thirty years in which he tearfully admits to ordering Fredo's murder.
Touring Sicily with Kay, who has arrived for Anthony’s operatic debut, Michael asks for her forgiveness. As they both admit that they still love each other, Michael receives word that Don Tommasino, his Sicilian friend and ally of the Corleone Family for over half a century, has been assassinated, signaling that a new round of violence is about to begin. Cardinal Lamberto is elected Pope John Paul I, which means that the Immobiliare deal will likely be ratified, due to his intention to "clean up" the dealings of the Vatican. The new Pope's intentions come as a death knell to the plot against the ratification of the Immobiliare deal, prompting frantic attempts by the plotters to cover their own tracks. Vincent tells Michael what he has learned from Altobello: Lucchesi is behind the plot against the Immobiliare deal, and a master assassin known as Mosca da Montelepre (the man who killed Tommasino), has been hired by Altobello to kill Michael. Vincent wants to strike back, but Michael cautions him, saying that if he goes ahead with such a plan, there’ll be no going back. Vincent insists on revenge, and Michael relents. He makes Vincent the new don of the Corleone family, telling him to "call yourself a Corleone." In exchange, Vincent agrees to finally put an end to his relationship with Mary.
The family travels to Palermo to see Anthony perform the lead in Cavalleria Rusticana at the renowned Teatro Massimo. Meanwhile, Vincent makes plans to seek revenge against the Corleone family's enemies. Interspersed with scenes from Anthony’s performance are the brutal murders of the enemies of the Corleone family.
- Archbishop Gilday has the Pope's tea poisoned. The Pope soon drinks it and dies.
- Don Altobello eats a poisoned cannoli that his goddaughter Connie gives him. He soon dies a silent death as Connie painfully watches.
- Al Neri shoots Archbishop Gilday as he climbs a spiral staircase.
- Finally, Calo approaches Don Lucchesi and whispers into his ear "Power wears out those who do not have it" before stabbing Lucchesi in the throat with his own pair of glasses, killing him before he is killed himself by Lucchesi's bodyguard.
Mosca, the assassin hired by Altobello to kill Michael, descends upon the opera house during Anthony's performance, killing three of Vincent’s men, but the opera ends before he has the chance to kill Michael. The assassin retreats to the opera house facade’s staircase, and tries to shoot Michael there. At the same moment, Mary is confronting her father about the forced break-up with Vincent. Two shots suddenly ring out. The first hits Michael in the shoulder. The second hits Mary directly in the chest, and she dies calling out to her father. A vengeful Vincent kills the assassin with a single shot. As Michael weeps and cradles Mary's bloody body in his arms, Kay screams in agony.
The scene dissolves to a short montage of Michael's memories, the first being a dance with Mary, the second being a dance with his first wife, Apollonia, and the last being a dance with Kay-symbolizing the women he has lost. The film ends in an unspecified year (later stated in a timeline included in The Godfather DVD box set as 1997), showing an aged Michael, seated alone in the front yard of his Sicilian villa. He slowly puts on a pair of sunglasses, drops an orange from his hand, slumps over in his chair, collapses to the ground, and dies, the only ones with him now are 2 dogs going over to see their fallen owner.
Cast
Casting and the script
According to an article in Premiere magazine, Coppola and Puzo requested six months to complete a first draft of the script with a release date of Easter 1991. Paramount agreed to give them six weeks for the script and, lacking a holiday movie, a release date of Christmas Day 1990.
Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, and Talia Shire reprised their roles from the first two films. According to Coppola's audio commentary on the film in The Godfather DVD Collection, Robert Duvall refused to take part unless he was paid a salary comparable to Pacino. On an episode of Inside the Actor's Studio, he said he understood that Pacino was the star but the difference between their salaries was so great it was insulting. When Duvall dropped out, Coppola rewrote the screenplay to portray Tom Hagen as having died before the story begins. Coppola created the character "B.J. Harrison", played by George Hamilton, to replace the Hagen character in the story. The director further states that, to him, the movie feels incomplete "without [Robert] Duvall's participation." According to Coppola, had Duvall agreed to take part in the film, the Hagen character would have been heavily involved in running the Corleone charities.
Coppola felt that the first two films had told the complete Corleone saga. It was only his perilous financial status, after the failure of a big-budget movie, that compelled him to take up Paramount's long-standing offer to make a third installment.
The first draft of a script had been written by Dean Riesner in 1979. This script centered around Michael Corleone's son, Tony, a naval officer working for the CIA, and the Corleone family's involvement with a plot to assassinate a Central American dictator.Almost none of the elements of this early script carried over to the final film, however one scene from the film--the one in which two men break into the home of Vincent (Tony in the original)--exists in the Riesner draft and is nearly unchanged.
Coppola says that he felt The Godfather saga was essentially Michael's story, one about how "a good man becomes evil," as the writer/director puts it on the same commentary track referenced above. Coppola says he felt that Michael had not really "paid for his sins" committed in the second film, and wanted this final chapter to demonstrate that. In keeping with this theme, Coppola completely re-wrote the script; he also wanted to name the movie, "The Death of Michael Corleone," but Paramount refused.
Julia Roberts was originally cast as Mary, but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. Madonna wanted to play the role, but Coppola felt she was too old for the part. Rebecca Schaeffer was set to audition for the role the day she died. Sofia Coppola, the director's daughter, was given the role of Michael Corleone's daughter when Winona Ryder dropped out of the film at the last minute (supposedly due to illness, though other reports state that she was committed to Edward Scissorhands). Her much-criticized performance resulted in her father being accused of nepotism, a charge Coppola bitterly refutes in the commentary track, asserting, in his opinion, that critics, "beginning with an article in Vanity Fair," were "using [my] daughter to attack me," something he finds ironic in light of the film's denouement when the Mary character pays the ultimate price for her father's sins.
As an infant, Sofia Coppola had played Michael Corleone's infant nephew in The Godfather, during the climactic baptism/murder montage at the end of that film. (Sofia Coppola also appeared in The Godfather, Part II, as a small immigrant child in the scene where the 9-year-old Vito Corleone arrives by steamer at Ellis Island.) Sofia also played a child who is killed in a drive-by shooting in her father's 1984 film The Cotton Club. The character of Michael's sister Connie is played by Francis Ford Coppola's sister, Talia Shire (making her both Mary and Sofia's aunt). Other Coppola relatives with cameos in the film included his mother, father (who wrote and conducted much of the music in the film), uncle and granddaughter, Gia. Michele Russo, who plays the son of the assassin Mosca, is also a distant Coppola relative, from the same town as Francis Ford Coppola's great-grandmother. In addition, Coppola cast Catherine Scorsese, mother of Martin Scorsese, for a bit part.
Reception
Despite receiving generally positive reviews (the movie holds a 65 percent "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes), the film is widely considered to be the weakest of the three Godfather films. Common criticisms include Sofia Coppola's acting, the plot being too outlandish and convoluted, as well as the storyline being too based on continuity, rather than just a "stand alone" story. In his review for the film, Roger Ebert stated that it's "not even possible to understand this film without knowing the first two." However, Ebert did give The Godfather: Part III a very positive review, giving the film three and a half stars, which is a higher rating than what he gave The Godfather: Part II (three stars). Not only did he praise the film, he also defended the casting of Sofia Coppola, whom he felt wasn’t miscast. Stating: “There is no way to predict what kind of performance he (Francis Ford Coppola) might have obtained from Winona Ryder, the experienced and talented young actress, who was originally set to play this role. But I think Sofia Coppola brings a quality of her own to Mary Corleone. A certain up-front vulnerability and simplicity that I think are appropriate and right for the role.” Ebert's colleague, Gene Siskel, gave the film four stars and placed it on his list of the 10 best films of 1990. Both critics did admit, however, that the ending was the weakest part of the film, citing Al Pacino's makeup as very poor. Leonard Maltin gave the film three stars and stated that it was “masterfully told,” but he did refer to the casting of Sofia Coppola as an “almost-fatal flaw.”
Awards
The Godfather Part III was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Andy Garcia), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Music, Song (for Carmine Coppola and John Bettis for "Promise Me You'll Remember") and Best Picture. Sofia Coppola won a Golden Raspberry for worst supporting actress. It is the only film in the trilogy not to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, as well as the only film in the trilogy not selected for preservation by the National Film Registry for cultural significance.
Historical background
Parts of the film are very loosely based on real historical events concerning the ending of the Papacy of Paul VI, and the very short Papacy of John Paul I in 1978, and the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in 1982. Like the character Cardinal Lamberto, who becomes John Paul I, the historical John Paul I, Albino Luciani, reigned for only a very short time before being found dead in his bed.
Journalist David Yallop argues that Luciani was planning a reform of Vatican finances and that he died by poisoning; these claims are reflected in the film. Yallop also names as a suspect Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who was the head of the Vatican bank, like the character Archbishop Gilday in the film. However, while Marcinkus was noted for his muscular physique and Chicago origins, Gilday is a mild Irishman. The character has also drawn comparisons to Cardinal Giuseppe Caprio, as he was in charge of the Vatican finances during the approximate period of which the movie was based.
The character of Frederick Keinszig, the Swiss banker who is murdered and left hanging under a bridge, mirrors the fate (and physical appearance) of Roberto Calvi, the Italian head of the Banco Ambrosiano who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 (it was unclear, although widely accepted that the deaths were performed in the Masonic-style, whether it was a case of suicide or, as the Italian idiom has it, "being suicided." Courts in Italy have recently ruled the latter.) The name "Kleinszig" is taken from Manuela Kleinszig, the girl friend of Flavio Carbone who was indicted as one of Roberto Calvi's murderers in 2005.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for the movie, The Godfather Part III (soundtrack), received a Golden Globe nomination for best score. Also, the film's love theme "Promise Me You'll Remember", sung by Harry Connick, Jr., received an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination for best song.
Bibliography
- Rupert Cornwell, God's Banker: The Life and Death of Roberto Calvi, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1984.
- David Yallop, In God's Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I, Corgi, 1987
- Director's Commentary track on The Godfather Part III DVD by Francis Ford Coppola; included in the The Godfather DVD Collection
External links
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