Mario Puzo's The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (12A.)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. 1990
Starring Al Pacino, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton, Andy Garcia, Sofia Coppola, Raf Vallone, Eli Wallach, George Hamilton, Bridget Fonda, Richard Bright and Joe Mantegna. In Cinemas December 5th and 6th. Out on Blu-ray and download Dec 8th. 158 mins.
Ignore the misleading and cumbersome mouthful. This is The Godfather Part III: Rejigged. That title doesn't work on any level: it gives away the ending and this re-edited version is Coppola's doing not Puzo's. (I'm sure he would've pitched in if he hadn't been dead for over twenty years.) Most of all, doesn't describing it as a Coda further diminish an instalment that has already been widely denigrated? I've always rather liked Godfather III and was very excited about the idea of Coppola going back to recut and restructure a film that was made in a rush and perhaps without all due care and attention. Sadly, this version does little to change its flaws and looks even more of a disappointment than it did when it came out thirty years ago.
Along with running his vineyard, rejigging his old films is what Coppola does these days. Before this there's been a Final Cut of Apocalypse Now and a re-edited version of The Cotton Club, which it would be very nice if someone were to release over here. For this, he has changed the beginning and the ending, repositioned some scenes and changed some music cues. Granted it must've been well over a decade since I last saw it but the changes seemed negligible, don't rectify any faults and may even be detrimental.
It opens now with Michael making a deal with the devil, which in this case is The Vatican. It then moves on into a long party sequence that still drags and immediately establishes the tone for this being a shadow of the previous two films. I've always considered the final half-hour of III – where various acts of retribution are dealt out while the Corleone family watch Michael's son Tony perform as the lead at the Palermo Opera House - to be among the finest sequences in the whole trilogy, audaciously upping the ante on the settling-all-family-business montage that wrapped up Part I. I have to say I was a little alarmed to hear that this was to be recut but it looks to me to be more or less intact and as I remember it.
What he has changed, inexplicably, is the very final scene where Michael dies alone on a terrace in Sicily. Now, let's go back to the mouthful of a title this version is lumbered with. In a filmed introduction, Coppola explains that The Godfather Coda: the Death of Michael Corleone was the original title that Paramount rejected. So Michael dying was very important to him and Puzo, but when it first came out many people objected to the scene because it felt tacked on and wasn't worthy of such a major character. Maybe, but I rather liked the idea of him being spent of life, a body slumping down unnoticed in his chair, finally giving up on a life that had effectively ended years earlier. So how does Coppola address this? Well, slightly surprisingly, by not having Michael Corleone die. You still see him in the garden but not slumping down lifelessly in the chair. How the hell does that help?
What's good and bad in Godfather III remains the same the same in this version as it's been for the last thirty years. Personally, I like the way they tie the plot up with the true story of the Banco Ambrosiano scandal and God's banker Roberto Calvi, who was found hanging from Blackfriars bridge in a supposed Masonic ritual murder. It seems a bit tacky and opportunistic but it's taking the saga full circle, back to its root in Puzo's original novel, a bonkbuster page-turner.
Another major plus is Pacino's mighty central performance. The Pacino of 1990 doesn't have the quiet, coiled intensity of the early 70s' Pacino that originated the role but it's not hard to see how that Michael could have aged into this cheerful old ham.
Most of the new faces acquit themselves pretty well without ever dissuading you from the notion that in one of the earlier films they'd have been someone more interesting. I would extend that to Sofia Coppola as Michael's daughter. The gleeful kicking she received on its release was ugly. It was a mistake casting his daughter in such a coveted role, even if it was as a last-second replacement when Winona Ryder pulled out, but the role requires awkward, gauche adolescence and she definitely provides that. Arguably, she is more convincing in the role than a seasoned screen actress would have been: they'd have played the role, Sofia just is it.
And why does she get singled out when Eli Wallach, as Altobelli, churns out enough mince for a thousand Bologneses? If this version improves anything it's his performance by cutting his excruciating blessed are the peacemakers line.
Back in 1990, it suffered from coming out at the same time as Goodfellas which pulled the rug from beneath its vision of the mafia as a ruthless, blood-soaked but honourable and family orientated business. Now though it's clear that Scorsese's scumsters was just glorifying the mafia in a different way. Today we embrace gangsters of all ethnicities and creeds but nobody has quite supplanted the Corleones in our affections. Objectively, Godfather III isn't close to the standard of the first two films, but it is still enjoyable because we are so pathetically wrapped up in the Corleone tale and this vision of honour and family duty. On-screen, Michael fails in his quest for redemption but he was looking in the wrong place: the audience will forgive the family anything.
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. 1990
Starring Al Pacino, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton, Andy Garcia, Sofia Coppola, Raf Vallone, Eli Wallach, George Hamilton, Bridget Fonda, Richard Bright and Joe Mantegna. In Cinemas December 5th and 6th. Out on Blu-ray and download Dec 8th. 158 mins.
Ignore the misleading and cumbersome mouthful. This is The Godfather Part III: Rejigged. That title doesn't work on any level: it gives away the ending and this re-edited version is Coppola's doing not Puzo's. (I'm sure he would've pitched in if he hadn't been dead for over twenty years.) Most of all, doesn't describing it as a Coda further diminish an instalment that has already been widely denigrated? I've always rather liked Godfather III and was very excited about the idea of Coppola going back to recut and restructure a film that was made in a rush and perhaps without all due care and attention. Sadly, this version does little to change its flaws and looks even more of a disappointment than it did when it came out thirty years ago.
Along with running his vineyard, rejigging his old films is what Coppola does these days. Before this there's been a Final Cut of Apocalypse Now and a re-edited version of The Cotton Club, which it would be very nice if someone were to release over here. For this, he has changed the beginning and the ending, repositioned some scenes and changed some music cues. Granted it must've been well over a decade since I last saw it but the changes seemed negligible, don't rectify any faults and may even be detrimental.
It opens now with Michael making a deal with the devil, which in this case is The Vatican. It then moves on into a long party sequence that still drags and immediately establishes the tone for this being a shadow of the previous two films. I've always considered the final half-hour of III – where various acts of retribution are dealt out while the Corleone family watch Michael's son Tony perform as the lead at the Palermo Opera House - to be among the finest sequences in the whole trilogy, audaciously upping the ante on the settling-all-family-business montage that wrapped up Part I. I have to say I was a little alarmed to hear that this was to be recut but it looks to me to be more or less intact and as I remember it.
What he has changed, inexplicably, is the very final scene where Michael dies alone on a terrace in Sicily. Now, let's go back to the mouthful of a title this version is lumbered with. In a filmed introduction, Coppola explains that The Godfather Coda: the Death of Michael Corleone was the original title that Paramount rejected. So Michael dying was very important to him and Puzo, but when it first came out many people objected to the scene because it felt tacked on and wasn't worthy of such a major character. Maybe, but I rather liked the idea of him being spent of life, a body slumping down unnoticed in his chair, finally giving up on a life that had effectively ended years earlier. So how does Coppola address this? Well, slightly surprisingly, by not having Michael Corleone die. You still see him in the garden but not slumping down lifelessly in the chair. How the hell does that help?
What's good and bad in Godfather III remains the same the same in this version as it's been for the last thirty years. Personally, I like the way they tie the plot up with the true story of the Banco Ambrosiano scandal and God's banker Roberto Calvi, who was found hanging from Blackfriars bridge in a supposed Masonic ritual murder. It seems a bit tacky and opportunistic but it's taking the saga full circle, back to its root in Puzo's original novel, a bonkbuster page-turner.
Another major plus is Pacino's mighty central performance. The Pacino of 1990 doesn't have the quiet, coiled intensity of the early 70s' Pacino that originated the role but it's not hard to see how that Michael could have aged into this cheerful old ham.
Most of the new faces acquit themselves pretty well without ever dissuading you from the notion that in one of the earlier films they'd have been someone more interesting. I would extend that to Sofia Coppola as Michael's daughter. The gleeful kicking she received on its release was ugly. It was a mistake casting his daughter in such a coveted role, even if it was as a last-second replacement when Winona Ryder pulled out, but the role requires awkward, gauche adolescence and she definitely provides that. Arguably, she is more convincing in the role than a seasoned screen actress would have been: they'd have played the role, Sofia just is it.
And why does she get singled out when Eli Wallach, as Altobelli, churns out enough mince for a thousand Bologneses? If this version improves anything it's his performance by cutting his excruciating blessed are the peacemakers line.
Back in 1990, it suffered from coming out at the same time as Goodfellas which pulled the rug from beneath its vision of the mafia as a ruthless, blood-soaked but honourable and family orientated business. Now though it's clear that Scorsese's scumsters was just glorifying the mafia in a different way. Today we embrace gangsters of all ethnicities and creeds but nobody has quite supplanted the Corleones in our affections. Objectively, Godfather III isn't close to the standard of the first two films, but it is still enjoyable because we are so pathetically wrapped up in the Corleone tale and this vision of honour and family duty. On-screen, Michael fails in his quest for redemption but he was looking in the wrong place: the audience will forgive the family anything.
