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The Godfather: Part III (1990) is often viewed not as the epic conclusion to director Francis Ford Coppola's "chronicles" of the Corleone Family, but as a major disappointment, an ending inferior to its beginning. Released sixteen years after its predecessors had assumed the status of "classics," the third film was inevitably measured against the quality of the earlier films.1 Godfather III was dismissed as a failure-"a discordant and unnecessary coda to a symphony of films that long ago reached an eloquent and satisfying crescendo" (Jardine par. 5).
Widely construed as a directorial "after-thought," the film is nonetheless perceived by some critics as an appropriate conclusion to the trilogy.2 If the film seems to lack the originality of the previous narratives, this is because Godfather 111 was not designed to be an act of innovation, but an act of commemoration, which stands apart from its predecessors as a kind of epilogue. Coppola personally did not want audiences to read the film as constituting a trilogy in which the last installment becomes a culmination of past achievements. In his DVD commentary on Part III, the director reveals that he originally intended to call the film The Death of Michael Corleone, but the Paramount executives refused to countenance anything other than The Godfather: Part HI (Coppola quoted in "Commentary by Francis Ford Coppola"). Coppola's preferred title is perhaps more commensurate to its quality as an epilogue.
From Conspiracy to Confession
Whereas Godfather II took up the action seven years after Part I ended in 1958, Godfather III opens after a much longer hiatus so that more than twenty years separate the final installment of the trilogy from the sequel. Meanwhile, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) has become an aging Mafia Don, whose attempts to legitimize the business of the Family and sever his links with the violent underworld of his younger days are met with hostility by his former associates. Don Altobello, an old friend of Michael's father Don Vito Corleone, tries to assassinate Michael, and several corrupt church bankers do their utmost to thwart his securing control over the Vatican-owned company "Immobiliare," the vehicle through which Michael hopes to redeem his Family's criminal legacy. Although Michael succeeds in destroying all his enemies in the same ruthless manner as...