The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on December 18, 2020.

(M) ★★★

Director: Francis Ford Coppola.

Cast: Al Pacino, Andy Garcia, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Sofia Coppola, Eli Wallach, Joe Mantegna, George Hamilton, Bridget Fonda, Raf Vallone, Franc D'Ambrosio, Donal Donnelly, Richard Bright.

"You're right. That is a close shave."

Read my review of The Godfather here and The Godfather Part II here.

The Godfather Part III doesn't appear on many lists of the greatest films of all time. When it does, it's begrudgingly lumped in with its superior predecessors and listed as part of The Godfather Trilogy. 

The film has all the hallmarks of an after-thought, much like its inclusion on those lists. Indeed, Coppola admitted he only made the film because he was in so much financial trouble after his musical One From The Heart bombed hard, forcing him to go from auteur to jobbing director. He also admitted the story of the Corleone family was complete after parts I and II.

But Part III exists, and has been the much-maligned unnecessary threequel ever since. Now, re-edited for its 30th anniversary, the film has been re-titled as The Godfather Coda. It's a fitting name for this half-interesting epilogue, and the re-edit is a definite improvement from all reports (I have to admit I hadn't bothered to watch Part III until now). 

coda

noun

the concluding passage of a piece or movement, typically forming an addition to the basic structure

The story centres on the now-legitimate Corleone family trying to make a business deal with the Vatican, which would set Michael Corleone (Pacino) and his descendants up for life. But the old ways come knocking - "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in," laments Michael in the film's most quoted moment. Forced back into the fight once more, he takes his nephew Vincent (Garcia) under his wing and tries to find a peaceful outcome in order to protect his family.

Part III is not as bad as many make out and has its definite highlights. Key among those is Garcia, well worthy of an Oscar nom for his role as Vincent, the bastard son of Sonny Corleone (played by James Caan in the first two films). He brings swagger and confidence to bear, somehow invoking Sonny while also making Vincent feel like a new, modern character in this ageing world.

The script boasts some great lines and in its readjusted "Coda" format, it flows nicely. It's still somewhat messy, although reportedly much better than before. The theme of redemption is particularly interesting, and the film's view of Michael Corleone (Pacino) is intriguing. It's somewhat off-putting at first to see him smiling and joking. This is no longer the villain of Part II - this a man wrestling with his past, his conscience, his regrets, and his very soul. He is righting wrongs as best he can.

The scenes he shares with his ex-wife Kay (Keaton) are fantastic, as the two try to reconcile who they are as people, separate from the family business, only to realise that Michael can never leave the business. Equally compelling are Michael and Vincent's scenes - the newly magnanimous Michael sees Vincent as part of his redemption, and initially hopes to save Vincent's soul if he can't save his own.

The downsides are many though. Robert Duvall's absence due to a pay dispute leaves a hole in the family that Tommy Hagen would have filled perfectly, especially given the big personalities of the previous films are down to just Michael and Connie (Shire). 

Much has been made of Sofia Coppola's performance as Mary. To be fair, she tries her best with some dire lines and does a pretty good job in places, particularly when Vincent breaks her heart. But she's woefully miscast.

And as good as the script is in places, there's a slight weirdness to proceedings. There's the weird cousin-love thing, the helicopter shoot-out gets a little goofy, Michael's diabetic seizure feels weird, there's an overuse of jaw harp in the score, and lines like "even the new Pope is in danger!" die even in the mouth of Al Pacino.

By the way, "Can Michael Corleone save the new Pope?" is the tagline this film needed back in 1990.

Also it's evident Coppola has lost his mojo. Look at the long-table board meetings in parts I and II and how they're filmed in a similar style to each other - they have class and panache and tension. A similar meeting in Part III is flat and lifeless, with no rolling camera. The celebration scene at the start (with its weird sound mix) doesn't capture the liveliness and symbolism of the opening parties in parts I and II. There are flashes of the visual style and grace of the previous films, notably in the third act opera and its simultaneous killings, but the flair and daring isn't there.

The Godfather Coda is not worthless, nor is it wholly necessary. The re-edit certainly seems to be an improvement on its original form - indeed, it's theme of redemption now seems to somewhat carry over to Coppola himself. One of the thorns in his legacy appears to have been plucked, healing it enough to make The Godfather Series more worthy of a group listing among the greatest films of all time.

AFI #32: The Godfather Part II (1974)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on December 18, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas were closed and I had to review something, and I can't stop now until I finish.

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Francis Ford Coppola.

Cast: Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, John Cazale, Talia Shire, Lee Strasberg, Michael V. Gazzo, G. D. Spradlin, Richard Bright, Gastone Moschin, Tom Rosqui, Bruno Kirby, Frank Sivero, Francesca De Sapio, Morgana King.

"Kiss me like you mean it."

The Godfather Part II is the only sequel on the AFI 100 list. Others are worthy. The Empire Strikes Back is better than Star Wars, Toy Story 3 is better than Toy Story, and The Two Towers and Return Of The King are both better than Fellowship Of The Ring. But Star Wars, Toy Story and Fellowship were firsts - they were groundbreaking masterpieces that moved the goal posts for everyone that followed, which is why they're on this list, and their sequels aren't. Yet The Godfather Part II makes the cut, arguably because it set a template those other sequels would follow - dig deeper, hit harder, push further.

Like all good sequels, The Godfather Part II is a continuation of an already great story, reaping what was sown in the first film, but also ploughing new ground. Part I follows the downfall of a good man, who crosses lines he never intended to cross in order to honour his father and his family's business.

But Part II shows the cost of that man's actions, and while it demonstrates how far the apple has fallen from the tree, it also shows the inevitability of violence within the Corleone family. It's a fate Michael Corleone can't escape, and it consumes him in Part II. It's telling that Michael Corleone (an incandescent Pacino) is an anti-hero in the first film, yet is a downright villain in the second. The AFI even put him at #11 in their list of the greatest cinematic villains of all time thanks to his actions in The Godfather Part II.

This amazing video sums all this up and more:

As before, Michael is a man struggling to maintain control. In the first film, he's helping his family do this. In the sequel, he's a lone wolf, heading a pack that is fraying and straying. The schisms are many - he has feuds, minor and major, with his siblings Tommy (Duvall), Connie (Shire) and Fredo (Cazale), his wife Kay (Keaton), disgruntled capo Frank Pentangeli (Gazzo), and influential businessman Hyman Roth (Strasberg). Michael shows there is no line he won't cross to settle these feuds and ultimately expand his empire.

Part II's brilliance is the way it demonstrates the growing dark that engulfs Michael's soul largely through the juxtaposition between Michael and the backstory of his father Vito (a subdued yet powerful De Niro). Almost every crime Vito commits is for a justifiable reason - he turns to theft after unfairly losing his jobs, kills a ruthless Don who rules his neighbourhood with an iron fist, and eventually avenges the deaths of his family at the end of a knife. Meanwhile Michael's crimes are dire non-negotiables driven by paranoia that are harder to excuse. Similarly, compare the way father and son treat their wives. Michael's journey to the dark side is complete in Part II. 

Coppola, given full creative control following the huge success of Part I, delivers in spades. The macro view of the film across its hefty runtime (200 minutes) is perfect, and despite its immense size it moves at a good pace and balances its dual stories beautifully, aided in no small part by the editing team of Peter Zinner, Barry Malkin and Richard Marks under Coppolla's watchful eye.

But the micro view of the film is immaculate as well. The beautiful look, courtesy again of series cinematographer Gordon Willis, is stunning, with every shot a masterpiece - a darkness tingeing Michael's story, the sepia of the past in Vito's. As one study guide put it, "the cinematography of The Godfather Part II involves certainly one of the most amazing uses of photography and lighting in the movie history". 

The first Godfather had three Oscar wins from 10 nominations; Part II won six out of 11 nods. None of these nominations were for cinematography sadly (Collins would finally get nominated for Part III), but its wins were worthy. Part II won best film (beating another Coppola film The Conversation), best director, best dramatic score, best adapted screenplay, and best art direction (it's recreation of Little Italy circa 1917 is remarkable).

Rounding out the Oscar wins was De Niro, edging out co-stars Gazzo and Strasberg for the best supporting actor Academy Award. Fresh off Scorsese's Mean Streets, it's a commanding performance, almost entirely in Italian too, that's far more subtle than the later roles that would make him famous. He re-imagines Vito (a role which also earnt Marlon Brando an Oscar) as a quiet watcher and decisive doer. There is no bombast in his performance, with everything taking place behind an expression that gives away little.

Pacino failed to win the Oscar for best actor, just as he had lost in the best supporting category for The Godfather. Art Carney's win in '74 is rightly regarded as one of the Academy's biggest mistakes, sparking the wonderfully named "Carney Consequence". History has looked far more favourably on Pacino's turn in Part II, which is rightly regarded as one of the greatest performances of all time. 

The cliched Pacino "explosion" is born here - he goes from calm to killer in seconds. But it's used sparingly and is more measured than it would be in Pacino's latter years, and it sits alongside moments when he doesn't explode but could, which makes it more potent when he does. The scene where he discovers Fredo's betrayal is a masterclass, but so is every other second that Michael dominates the screen. It's a performance of quiet menace punctuated by brutal ferocity and dying embers of humanity, capped off by a growing realisation that Michael is, by film's end, almost entirely alone despite all his "success". 

But everywhere you look is a great performance - Keaton, Shire, Duvall, Strasberg, Gazzo, Cazale, Spradlin; it's an embarrassment of riches. And that's probably the key word here: "riches". The Godfather Part II is about the lust for riches and their corrupting power, but the film itself is also a treasure trove in every way you want a film to be; from its text and subtext to its visual and actorly displays. 

I would humbly submit that Part I is superior, but only by a matter of inches. But the argument over which is better is irrelevant when both films together represent one of the greatest one-two punches in cinematic history.

AFI #31: The Maltese Falcon (1941)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on November 27, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas were closed and I had to review something, and I can't stop now until I finish.

(PG) ★★★★

Director: John Huston.

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Lee Patrick, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook Jr., Barton MacLane, Ward Bond, Jerome Cowan, Gladys George.

"I'm tellin' ya, it's chocolate. With a nougat centre."

When I wrote my first crime novel, my far-more-experienced co-writer sent me a list of tips and tricks to help me find my feet in this new world of murder and mayhem. The list included this incredible piece of advice:

"Use oblique dialogue. Try to generate conflict at all times in your writing. Attempt the following experiment at home or work: spend the day refusing to answer your family and colleagues’ questions directly. Did you generate conflict? I bet you did. Apply that principle to your writing and your characters will respond likewise."

Please don't try that at home or work.

Perhaps the greatest example of this infuriating principle is The Maltese Falcon, the novel by Dashiell Hammett and adapted here by John Huston. Part of the intrigue that drags you through the film is that the characters rarely speak the truth, and when they do, it's impossible to be sure if they really are. The story is a mess of low morals fuelled by greed, and only a similarly low-moral detective will be able to unpick the fact from the fiction. 

And thus, film noir was born. 

Mind you, as discussed in my review of Double Indemnity, the origins of film noir are harder to pin down than a snitch in a crowded speakeasy. But it's universally agreed that The Maltese Falcon played a significant part in defining the genre. 

There had been film detectives before - Hammett's novel had already been adapted for the screen twice previously. But Sam Spade, as portrayed by Bogart under the watchful eye of first-time director Huston, was cut from a different cloth. He is what would become the quintessential noir private eye - a real hat-and-trenchcoat detective who keeps a bottle by the bed, is constantly rolling cigarettes, and isn't afraid to clock someone or tell the cops to take a hike.

The Maltese Falcon hasn't aged as well as other noirs, such as Double Indemnity or Sunset Boulevard, but both those films owe Huston's debut a debt. His film does a lot to help set the beats, tone and formula for film noir. Huston's script lifts Hammett's dialogue straight from the page to achieve this, but he's also not afraid to let the film mess around in the Hayes Code-approved muck of morality.  

As Barry Norman put it in his 100 Best Films Of The Century, The Maltese Falcon "is in many ways a significant movie, but if it were that alone it would by now be merely a footnote in books of cinematic history". 

"That it has avoided such a fate is due to the fact that it's also marvellous entertainment, beautifully played and most skilfully crafted," wrote Norman.

It certainly is entertaining, moving at a ferocious clip out of the blocks. Within the first 17 minutes, we get two murders, an affair and the first of many double crosses. After that, it twists and turns through about 20 more double crosses as everyone lies their pants off in an effort to get hold of the titular MacGuffin.

One of the film's great strength is its script. Huston had 10 co-written screenplays under his belt before The Maltese Falcon, but this was his first solo outing behind both the typewriter and the camera. Kim Newman, writing for 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, noted that Citizen Kane came out the same year, but that The Maltese Falcon announced "the arrival not of an enfant terrible but of a consummate professional". 

Indeed, as a film noir, visually the film is "sparing in its use of symbolic shadows", as Newman put it, and it adheres to the afore-mentioned obliqueness of Hammett's dialogue, but it's writing is impressively sharp. Just look at how we're introduced to Spade through his relationship with short-lived detective agency partner Archer (Cowan). We learn Spade has no problem sleeping with Archer's wife and struggles to eulogise him, yet feels it's his absolute duty to defend Archer's honour and solve the mystery of his death. Everything we need to know about Spade is shown through the lens of this relationship - that's some great writing.

The film's only major let-downs also come through the script sadly. The love/lust friction between Spade and proto-femme fatale O'Shaughnessy (Astor) is utterly unconvincing, partly because of the mass lie fest, yet by film's end we're supposed to believe it was the real deal. Similarly, the "everyone's lying" motif grinds occasionally as it spirals into absurdity. Spade's first chat with the villainous Gutman (Greenstreet) is utterly ridiculous, with both characters playing an infuriating game of verbal chess with each other that tests the audience's limits. It's both the boon and bane of the film.

But more often than not, the fast-talkin' double-talkin' sings in the mouths of its cast. Bogart's performance is a star-maker. He's the right mix of wit and menace, of callous and caring, of careful and carefree, creating an intelligent tough guy with borderline morals that has echoed down through the ages, to James Bond, Han Solo, Dirty Harry and more. Barry Norman called him "the prototypical antihero, a cynical romantic as tough, mercenary and ruthless as any of the crooks who oppose him".

Astor is marvellous as a woman trying to act tough yet fragile at the same time, but it's the duo of Greenstreet and Lorre that steal the show. Greenstreet, in his screen debut, earnt a worthy Oscar nomination, doling out mountains of exposition as if it was chocolate ice-cream. Lorre, who had already given one of the greatest film performances in the history of cinema in Fritz Lang's M, demonstrated his ability, as Huston put it, to be "doing two things at the same time, thinking one thing and saying something else". Relegated to "memorable sideman" despite his incredible abilities, Lorre's career was effectively saved from B-movie hell by Huston.

It's rude to read over someone's shoulder.

(Sidenote: the casting in The Maltese Falcon inadvertently created a "stock company" out of Bogart, Lorre, and Greenstreet, who added Claude Rains to their troupe for Casablanca and Passage To Marseilles. Lorre and Greenstreet paired 10 times in total, Lorre and Bogart five times.)

Huston's sharp script (from excellent source material), his workmanlike direction (with some artful long takes and noir flourishes), and a top-notch cast of mostly B-graders set The Maltese Falcon above anything vaguely similar from the time, while helping create something new in the process. As "a cornerstone of film noir" (Newman), "the first of the great private-eye films" (William Bayer), and "one of the most influential noirs" (Rotten Tomatoes consensus), its place in history is assured. But it happens to be a cracking good murder-mystery at the same time. 

AFI #30: Apocalypse Now (1979)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on November 27, 2020, and on ABC Radio Central Victoria on December 7.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas were closed and I had to review something and now I can't stop until I finish.

(R) ★★★★★

Director: Frances Ford Coppola.

Cast: Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Marlon Brando, Frederic Forrest, Sam Bottoms, Larry Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, G. D. Spradlin, Jerry Ziesmer, Harrison Ford.

"I took this much drugs."

The first time I saw Apocalypse Now, I was 18 and had just started a writing course. Screenwriting lessons only ran for two hours, so our teacher, unable to fit Apocalypse Now into the allotted time frame, instead screened Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, perhaps hoping it would inspire us to go out and hire the film from a video shop on our own time. Either that, or he was trying to scare us off making movies.

You should totally watch Hearts Of Darkness by the way. It's one of the greatest docos of all time.

The next day, one of my classmates and I skipped class, rented a copy of Apocalypse Now on VHS (I'm really showing my age here), and once we were back at my mate's place, we drew the curtains and pressed "play".

Two and a half hours later, we were too afraid to open the curtains. The world had changed. It suddenly seemed more savage, more dangerous, and more insane. Eventually, I walked home in a wary haze, grappling with what I'd seen. The horror....

Since that day Apocalypse Now has been burnt into my memory. But re-watching it for this project presented me with a conundrum I hadn't had first time around: which version should I watch - the 1979 original, 2001's Redux, or 2019's Final Cut? Hell, I could even watch the five-hour-long first assembly if I really wanted to.

(In case you're wondering, here's a full break-down of the differences between the original and Redux, and between Redux and Final Cut.)

I went with the original, partly to see if it could have the same impact, all these years later, but also because nothing I've read has convinced me the re-cuts improve on an already-perfect film (maybe I'll get around to them one day). 

Because Apocalypse Now is perfect. The film is indelibly linked to its famously troubled production, which you can learn about here, here, here and here, but setting that aside, it's an astounding piece of work. That it was made under such duress only makes it all the more remarkable.

The film holds a dirty mirror up to the Vietnam War, which had finished less than a year before Coppola and his crew began arriving in the Philippines to start filming. But what the mirror reflects back is a surreal distortion that, perversely, makes it one of the most realistic war films of all time. The absurdity and insanity of war - not just Vietnam, but all wars - is painted in acid-soaked splatters of sudden violence, of creeping madness, of primitive ridiculousness. And in a metaphorical and lyrical sense it's the absolute truth, despite none of it ever actually happening.

Taking Joseph Conrad's novella Heart Of Darkness and transplanting its up-river journey from late 19th-century Congo to 1970s 'Nam is a stroke of genius courtesy of screenwriter John Milius. His script went through many variations on its way to the screen, and it's hard to be sure what went into the jungle on paper and what was conjured there, but the story and dialogue are surprisingly sharp for such a beleaguered project. Coppola dithered on what the ending should be, but found something with a depth and power that matched everything that had preceded it.

So much of Apocalypse Now is memorable, including that ending, but the stuff around the most iconic moments is just as amazing. The use of The Doors' The End and Wagner's Ride Of The Valkyries is classic, but the score itself (done by Coppola and his father Carmine) is wonderful - an unnerving, retro-futurist soundscape full of fat ominous synths, chopper oscillations, and the occasional haunting flute. Duvall's Kilgore has some of cinema's most memorable lines - "I love the smell napalm in the morning", "Charlie don't surf" - but the way he says "some day, this war's gonna end" with dangling ambiguity is supremely under-rated. And the introduction to Sheen's Willard, where a for-real drunk Sheen for-real cuts his hand by punching a mirror is cool, but the rest of his performance as a bewildered just-passing-through protagonist is gold.

What makes the film so effective is that it ruminates on war and insanity and never separates the two. It uses its absurdities to demonstrate the insanity of war, and it uses war to demonstrate the insanity of humans. The film's success thrives on these linked notions and never stops showing us how crazy everything and everyone is. From waterskiing to The Rolling Stones behind a patrol boat to surfing during a battle, from holding a church service against a backdrop of explosions and a flying cow to hosting a Playboy bunny cabaret show in a warzone, from setting your comrades boat on fire to wandering through a shootout with a puppy while you've got a headful of acid; it's all fucking crazy, man. And yet somehow, it never feels like a bridge too far, logic-wise.

Willard is crazy. Kurtz is crazy. Kilgore is crazy. Dennis Hopper was crazy and so's his character. Just about everyone encountered along the way is crazy, just in varying degrees. And the performances match that. Sheen is subdued for the most part, but carries a powder keg beneath the surface, and for a glimmering, wondering moment, we see him contemplate becoming Kurtz, and it's a masterful piece of acting and editing. Brando plays Kurtz like a shadowy saint awaiting judgement. Duvall is brilliant as military might and the American way personified. The boat crew - Forrest, Hall, Bottoms and Fishburne - all add colour and depth to the journey. Deaths still hit hard, as does the strain and stress. Everyone acquits themselves beautifully.

The real hero is, of course, Coppola. Apocalypse Now capped off an amazing four-film run that included the first two Godfathers and The Conversation, and he would never make anything in the same league again. It's as if he burnt himself out, pouring everything he had into those four films, culminating in this film's brain-breaking 238-day shoot. 

But his skills here are impossible to ignore. Matching The Door's The End to shots of helicopters and a burning jungle, then layering that image with Willard, and a ceiling fan, spinning like a chopper blade, as Willard intones his broken-man monologue... it's masterful stuff. It's high art. And it's only the beginning.

Along with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, Coppola summons a nightmare in the jungle. It encompasses bravura battle sequences (that are still impressive to this day), out-of-nowhere bloody violence, hallucinogenic trippiness, and then a finale that is confronting (you don't easily forget that poor water buffalo) and narratively satisfying. The shot of Willard rising up out of the swamp is one of the greatest shots of all time, but it appears among two and a half hours of amazing shots.

Apocalypse Now's brilliance lies in its ability to use the fantastical to represent reality in a way only cinema can do. By winding a myth-like script through a modern setting, it pulls apart the truth and hypocrisy of war, scratching at the insanity underneath to create something hallucinatory yet true. Masterfully shot and meticulously edited, it is a mammoth of a movie with nary a hair out of place.