A beautiful, elegant look back at The Godfather and The Godfather Part II

Rating: 10/10 (18 February 2008)

The reason for which The Godfather Part III has such a nasty reputation and is underrated is not that it is inferior, not even that it is too different from the other too, it I that it came out too late. Since it took so long to make it, people had created their own expectations for a third Godfather. If it had taken so long to make The Godfather Part II, it probably would have met with as little success.
I do not know if The Godfather Part III is the best of the trilogy- I think they are all three to different to compare them- but it is certainly the one that leaves me most satisfied. It is an elegant, nostalgic, operatic, Shakespearian epilogue to The Godfather. It possesses an irresistible, inexpressible, and personal charm.
One of the things I like best about The Godfather Part III is that it is an old man's film in every sense. It has the calm, relaxed feel of many films made by aging people- Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, Lean's A Passage to India, Renoir's Le Caporal Epingle. It is a meditation on the passage of times. Michael, Connie, and Kay have all changed but there remains a distant feel of how they were the last time we saw them. There are also these little moments that remind of us of "the old days" (Vincent's way of saying "I'll take care of it" like his grandfather Vito in the second Godfather, how Joey Zasa faintly reminds us of Don Michael in the first two film). It is a look back at the first two films through the eyes of an old Michael.