My overriding memory of the film as a young’un was the ridicule with which everyone tore into her performance. Throughout the trilogy, in what is ostensibly a man’s world, the female characters throughout the first two instalments are woefully underwritten, but Kaye is given the sort of acknowledgement here that was missing before.Of course, too much of a good thing leads us to the casting problems.Īh, Sofia. This film becomes somewhat detached when it shifts from the US to Italy, but this is also where we’re treated to our meatiest scenes between Kaye (Diane Keaton) and Michael. He can legitimise his business, but his past and his soul are off limits. Joey has a score to settle with Vincent (Andy Garcia), who is Sonny’s bastard son, which highlights no matter how much wealth Michael has managed to pull together over the years in the name of ‘business’, he cannot forget his ties to the street and the cloth from whence he came. ![]() The character of Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna), an unscrupulous local racket man and the day-to-day runner of the old Corleone family business, acts as a link between Michael’s old life and his new one. He’s more cut out for the gangster life than he thinks, but he wants to take a different route, seeking to ‘legitimise’ the family business. The scene in The Godfather where Michael essentially rescues his father Vito in hospital after police collusion with a rival family sees him planned to be assassinated is very telling he realises his hands are not shaking, while the baker Enzo’s are uncontrollable, best seen when he reaches for a cigarette shortly after a threatening car passes by. It’s chosen him through a mixture of consequence and circumstance. ![]() ![]() The fundamental theme throughout the trilogy is that Michael is saddled with a life he didn’t ask for, nor had any real overwhelming desire to pursue. Already, the unimaginable wealth that Michael has accumulated in the intervening years between the second and third chapters places this film on a different footing than its predecessors the sort of financial stratosphere not normally associated with gangster films. The film opens, as each of the trilogy does, with a celebration of sorts, shortly after Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) receives a papal award for donating $100m to the Catholic Church to carry out charitable work in Sicily. Inspired by actual events – the untimely suddenness of John Paul I’s death, the scandals at the Vatican Bank and the body of a Vatican banker found hanging from a London bridge – these are all artfully intertwined with the family’s story. The plot, concocted by director Francis Ford Coppola and author Mario Puzo, is a screenplay inspired by newspaper and magazine headlines, which moves the Corleone family into the inner circles of corruption inside the Vatican. The film I refer to is of course The Godfather Part III, and the question I ask is this: is it really as bad as most make out? During a two-month period in which we have seen a new Pope elected, a Scottish cardinal disgraced, and the Archbishop of Canterbury enthroned, what better time to return to a film that uses political intrigue inside the corridors of power at the Vatican as its driving point.
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