Though not a disaster, it didn’t live up to box-office expectations either, grossing approximately $136.9 million worldwide against a $54 million budget—hardly the record-shattering blockbuster that the original was.
Much of
the pre-release bad press concentrated on the decision by director Francis Ford Coppola to cast daughter Sofia in the pivotal role of Michael
Corleone’s daughter Mary. This derision had an element of Schadenfreude,
in the way that many critics have of taking an award-winning filmmaker down a
peg after a string of successes.
More in a
minute on alternatives to Sofia Coppola. But there was another casting
choice—a refusal to bring back a key cast member from the earlier films—that had
just as critical an impact on the project.
Viewers
expecting to see Robert Duvall as consiglieri Tom Hagen were in
for a big letdown. The actor, nominated for Best Supporting Actor in the role
in The Godfather Part I, wanted more than the $1 million he was offered
for this second sequel, believing it wasn’t close to what Al Pacino ($5
million) and Diane Keaton ($1.5 million) would be receiving.
Coppola, facing
financing and scheduling restrictions by studio Paramount Pictures, couldn’t
accommodate the demand. But he incurred stiff creative consequences for rewriting
Hagen out of the script.
It wasn’t
just that Hagen’s straight-arrow son, Fr. Andrew Hagen (played by John Savage),
was only a shadow of his dad, given how little he figured in the final cut. It
wasn’t even that the bland WASP lawyer character invented to replace Hagen, B.J.
Harrison (played by George Hamilton), was likewise a pale reminder of Hagen.
No, it meant that Michael couldn’t turn to Hagen as his natural choice to run the foundation meant to launder the Corleone family’s blood-stained reputation, but instead would select Mary.
Moreover, the new movie would abruptly short-circuit
a running thread of the first two films without explanation: Hagen’s struggle
to balance his intense loyalty as an adopted member of the Corleones with his conscience.
Though
Duvall was sorely missed, it was by casting his daughter that Coppola turned
himself into the pinata for critics. In his defense, it was a decision made
under tremendous duress.
Julia Roberts was originally cast as Mary Corleone, but had to withdraw because of scheduling conflicts in finishing the film that would lift her to superstardom, Pretty Woman.
Her replacement, Winona Ryder, was a seasoned actress who could have
brought heat to the love scenes with illegitimate cousin Vincent
Mancini (Andy Garcia, in an explosive Oscar-nominated performance), and personified an independence strongly suggestive of her mother, the
family outsider Kay Adams-Corleone.
But what
was described in press reports as “nervous exhaustion” (i.e., working nonstop on
several films back to back) led to a prolonged medical absence for the actress.
Coppola
could have waited for Ryder to recover, or he could have gone with two other rising
young actresses, Laura San Giacomo (recently in Sex, Lies, and Videotape)
or Annabella Sciorra (Jungle Fever). But the director had decided that
Mary Corleone should be a teenager, and in looking around for a member of that
age group who saw someone close at hand: Sofia.
Sofia
Coppola was 19 years old at the time of production, with neither experience
nor interest to date in becoming an actress. Her mother Eleanor, a documentary
filmmaker who had observed and chronicled the excesses of her husband, feared
that this was another one of his mistakes.
With a
production deadline bearing down on him and a belief that she was closer to his
conception of Mary Corleone, Francis chose to go with her, perhaps believing he could elicit a fine performance from the neophyte. The decision was
reminiscent of John Huston’s in casting his similarly inexperienced teen daughter,
Anjelica Huston, in the 1969 movie A Walk With Love and Death.
But
Francis Ford Coppola was dealing not with a one-off art house historical drama as Huston was but a high-stakes movie franchise. Sofia became collateral damage.
The vacuums
caused by the absence of Duvall and Ryder led to frenzied rewrites, a
process that had begun a decade before Coppola and novelist-screenwriter Mario Puzo formally committed to the project. By the time it was over, 16 script
variations had been produced.
All this
rewriting resulted in problems with plot and characterization. The real-life
scandal that became intertwined with Michael Corleone’s effort at redemption—the
Vatican Bank—wasn’t introduced until 40 minutes into the film. And why did
Connie Corleone (played by Talia Shire) evolve from the wayward and outraged
sister of Michael in Parts I and II to one not only wholly supportive but exceeding
him in calculation and cunning in Part III?
Given all
of these issues, as well as Coppola’s acceptance of the project as a means of
extricating himself from his financial reverses of the prior decade, the wonder
is not merely that The Godfather Part III was made at all but that it
turned out as well as it did, with seven Oscar nominations including Best
Picture. (Inexplicably, Pacino wasn’t nominated for Best Actor.)
Pacino, Keaton
and Garcia turned in superb performances, the cinematography was excellent,
and, for all its imperfections, the Puzo-Coppola screenplay contained its share
of excellent lines (e.g., Michael’s oft-quoted, “Just when I thought I was out,
they pull me back in”).Coppola’s 2020 re-edit prompted a more positive reappraisal
of this conclusion to this indispensable crime family epic.
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