There’s a carefully parsed opulence to Coppola’s direction of “Part III” the film’s tautly controlled turbulence guides the eye to salient details, its clarified lines of dramatic tension calmly burst into images of an explosive yet nearly static intensity. The real story of the reissue and restoration of “Part III” is, rather, why the film was received so poorly in 1990 and why, now, with negligible adjustments, its time has come. Yet over all, these edits are inconsequential both for the plot or the affect of “The Godfather: Part III,” and it’s hard to imagine why a viewer who disliked the film in its original version would be moved to enthusiasm by the new one, or why anyone who admired the original would be disappointed by the recut. The one emotionally and dramatically significant re-edit is to the movie’s very ending-we’ll get to that. #Name the godfather font proThe main changes to the film are seen at the beginning, where Coppola has eliminated the sumptuous papal knighting of Michael and replaced it with an in-chambers discussion between Michael and Archbishop Gilday (Donal Donnelly), which sets the quid pro quo of his “contribution.” In the middle of the film, Coppola has eliminated a brief scene between Michael and the aged Don Altobello (Eli Wallach). In the new version, the story is identical so, for that matter, are its emphases. New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows. Meanwhile, Michael’s promised Vatican enterprise is threatened by the Vatican’s internal political chicanery-which turns out to be equally dominated by the Mafia-and the two webs of criminal conflict get tangled up in a colossal and horrific maelstrom of violence. (He’s the illegitimate son of Michael’s late brother Sonny.) Vincent’s conflict with a local Mafia capo, Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna), leads to a Mob war that threatens the Corleones, forcing Michael to retake bloody control of the crime family. His son, Anthony (Franc D’Ambrosio), defies him to become an opera singer his daughter, Mary (Sofia Coppola), who runs his entirely legitimate family foundation, falls in love with the hotheaded gangster Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia), her first cousin. In “Part III,” Michael, having divested himself of his criminal enterprises, makes a six-hundred-million-dollar “contribution” to cover up the Vatican Bank’s losses in exchange for a promise to head the Vatican’s vastly lucrative international real-estate business. He did so last year with “Apocalypse Now” and has now done so again, to greater effect, with “The Godfather: Part III.” It’s back, in his new cut (available digitally and on Blu-ray) under the heavy-duty new title “Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.” The re-edited version is a puckish paradox: it is only slightly different from the original-yet, now, this movie, which was widely derided at the time of its release, in 1990, is being acclaimed by a (mainly) new generation of critics, even if not quite as the masterwork that some of us knew it to be from the start.Īs a reminder, “The Godfather: Part II” ended with Michael (Al Pacino) supreme, guilt-ridden, and alone atop the Corleone empire of crime, which he resolves to leave and go straight. #Name the godfather font movieThere’s a Serbian proverb that an idled priest would baptize goats Francis Ford Coppola, whose formidable artistry has unfortunately not been channelled toward making a new movie for quite a while, is instead turning back to tinker with his earlier work. Photograph from Allstar Picture Library / Alamy Andy Garcia and Sofia Coppola in a scene from “The Godfather: Part III,” originally released in 1990.
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