Short of Blu-ray high definition, these standard-def DVDs are about as good as one could ask for.
No, I rather suspect that one can attribute the third film's lackluster reception more to the fact that audiences found it overly complicated and hard to follow, and that most of the Corleone family we had come to know (and dare I say love?) had been killed off or disappeared by this time. After all, there was no more Brando or De Niro or Duvall or Caan or Castellano. Only Pacino, Shire, and Keaton were still in evidence, looking older and more careworn than in the earlier pictures.
Nevertheless, the director's introduction of Andy Garcia as Sonny's high-spirited son (and Michael's protégé), Vincent, seems inspired; as are Eli Wallach as old Don Altobello, Joe Mantegna as gangster Joey Zasa, George Hamilton as new consigliere B.J. Harrison, and Raf Vallone as Cardinal Lamberto. What's more, the movie has a polished grandeur about it that is hard to deny, especially in the famous closing moments during Coppola's poetic intercuts between opera hall and murder plot.
In this final installment, which begins in 1979, thirty-four years after the first story began, Michael and Kay have divorced, and Michael has moved back to New York. As he looks back on his life, Michael sees that he has gained everything yet nothing, and he now seeks respectability and redemption. He tries to go legitimate by severing his ties with the old Mafia families, but, as he says, "Just when I thought I was out, they force me back in."
The viewer will see a number of similarities in "Part III" and "Part I," which I'm sure Coppola meant intentionally. They both open with big family celebrations; they both use New York and Sicilian locations; they both combine Mob business with corporate business; and they both end in operatic climaxes. Oh, and again watch for the cannoli.
Michael is maneuvering to take over a worldwide corporation that the Vatican controls, and basically he attempts to bribe the Church to do it. He donates $100,000,000 to a humanitarian program, for which the Church outwardly honors him and secretly agrees to go along with his plans to take over the reins of the company they own. But the old Mafia families want in on the deal with Michael. I've watched this film maybe a half a dozen times now, and, frankly, I still don't understand all the internal machinations that go on.
"The higher I go," says Michael, "the crookeder it becomes."
The Academy nominated "The Godfather, Part III" for seven Academy Awards, but it won none. The nominations were for Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Andy Garcia), Cinematography (Gordon Willis), Song (Carmine Coppola, music, and John Bettis, lyrics), Art Direction, and Film Editing.
Film value: 8/10
Video:
As I mentioned earlier, I found Paramount's first DVD release of these movies to look a bit soft, faded, and noisy. The studio has taken care of those concerns in these 1.85:1-ratio, anamorphic transfers, the first two movies fully restored and the third movie remastered. All of the burnished golden-browns and shadowy blacks I remember from the motion-picture theater are deeper and richer than ever, with cinematographer Gordon Willis's intentionally dark tone ever present. What's more, Paramount's restoration engineers have left in much of the films' original grain to provide a pleasantly lifelike texture. However, note that none of the three movies was ever particularly sharp in definition, and these standard-def reproductions pretty much leave that alone, too. So, the movies look far more opulent than before, while maintaining a certain degree of grain and softness.
Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio mixes for the three films continue as a varied batch, spanning, as the productions do, nearly a twenty-year period. All of them convey a reasonably wide dynamic range that renders dialogue, frequency response, and effects realistically. However, they differ considerably in their ability to convey rear-channel information, the third film sounding the more natural in this regard. By "The Godfather, Part II" the sound opens up a bit more than in "Part I," and Nino Rota's musical score, in particular sounds excellent by the final installment in the series, where the audio appears to have even wider, more dynamic, and more ambient qualities. The "however" in all this is that I continued to note some nasality, some shrillness, some hollowness, and some over-exuberance in selected passages. There is only so much modern technology can do to improve older sound mixes, particularly in the first two movies.
Extras:
You want extras? You've got 'em. Two additional discs full in this five-disc DVD set. Discs one, two and three contain the feature films, with audio commentaries by Francis Ford Coppola. These are the same commentaries the director recorded for the 2001 release of the films on DVD, so if you already have the earlier set, there's nothing new here. However, if you haven't heard them, they are among the best of their kind. In addition to the movies, the first three discs contain twenty-three, thirty, and twenty-five scene selections respectively; and English and French spoken languages; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.
Despite the labeling on the final two discs, disc four actually contains bonus materials newly made for the current release, and disc five contains archived bonus materials from the 2001 set. The first new item on disc four is "The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't," about thirty minutes with comments on the movie from lot of major filmmakers. Next up is "Godfather World," eleven minutes on the film's influence on modern culture. Then, there's "Emulsional Rescue Revealing The Godfather," nineteen minutes on Willis's dark cinematography. Following that is "…when the Shooting Stopped," fourteen minutes on the film's editing. Next, there is "The Godfather on the Red Carpet," four minutes of interviews with celebrities at the restoration première. Finally, we get four short films on "The Godfather": "The Godfather vs. The Godfather, Part II," "Cannoli," "Riffing on the Riffing," and "Clemenza," the four totaling about seven minutes. I enjoyed the trivia here, like why and how did Clemenza dies.
Disc five contains the material previously released for the 2001 set of DVDs. Here, you'll find "The Godfather: A Look Inside," "On Location," "Francis Coppola's Notebook," "The Music of The Godfather," "Coppola and Puzo on Screenwriting," "Gordon Willis on Cinematography," Storyboards from "The Godfather, Part II," Storyboards from "The Godfather, Part III," "The Godfather Behind the Scenes 1971," and "The Filmmakers: Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo, Gordon Willis, Dean Tavoularis, Nino Rota, Carmine Coppola." Things conclude with a whole slew of additional scenes, arranged chronologically; "Acclaim and Response," theatrical trailers, a family tree of characters you can click on, a photo gallery, and a rogue's gallery of villains.
The five DVDs come housed in four slim-line cases, the fourth case containing the two discs of extras. The four cases come further enclosed in an attractively embossed slipcover.
Parting Thoughts:
Celluloid outlaws and hoodlums have been with us since the earliest days of Edwin S. Porter and D.W. Griffith, but, ironically, it would be the U.S. Government that indirectly encouraged Hollywood's major excursions into the world of gangsters. As a consequence of lawmakers' ill-conceived legislation leading to Prohibition in the Twenties, Americans consumed more alcohol per capita than at any time before or since. Concurrently, to quench the country's thirst for illicit booze, there was an attendant rise in organized crime that would go largely unchecked for the next fifty years. Is it any wonder that Hollywood would document this phenomenon in movies of the thirties and make stars of such actors as Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Paul Muni, Humphrey Bogart, George Raft, and others?
I'm sure no one is proud of the dark side of America's past or present, nor have most serious filmmakers attempted to glorify or glamorize the subject matter. But that hasn't stopped the public from being fascinated by gangsterism all the same. Coppola followed a time-honored Hollywood tradition in making his Corleone family trilogy, adding a depth of character, background, and narration that had never been achieved so successfully in gangster films before, a depth that would only be approached by Martin Scorsese's hard-edged "Mean Streets," "Goodfellas," and "Casino" in the years that followed. "The Godfather" movies represent filmmaking at its best--from their superb characterizations and acting to their innovative direction and striking camera work. Paramount's new DVD presentations of the films are the best we could hope for, short of high-definition.
And let's not forget that Coppola not only gave us three fine films, two of them among the best ever made, but he afforded audiences unique views on popular song, opera, food, and family that are as positive and uplifting as anything in the history of cinema.
The Coppola Restoration of "The Godfather Collection" is an offer that's hard to refuse.
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