Godfather (26 page)

“The studio's blandishments became more honeyed”: in addition to artistic control of the movie, Paramount offered Coppola $4 million to direct and coauthor the screenplay for the film.
³⁷
In short, they “made him an offer he couldn't refuse,” to cite a line from
The Godfather
that has become part of our language. Finally, Coppola took on the project, committing himself to making a third film that was worthy to stand beside the first two
Godfather
movies.
³⁸

Coppola would again be collaborating with Mario Puzo on the screenplay of
Godfather III
. As in the case of
Godfather II
, Puzo had already worked on a preliminary draft of the script before Coppola came on board. Mancuso had enlisted Talia Shire to present Puzo's screenplay to her brother early on. At the time, Coppola took one look at it and tossed it into the fireplace. He was favorably impressed by one element in the discarded script, however: Puzo had introduced Sonny Corleone's illegitimate son Vincent, who, in
The Godfather
, had been conceived at Connie's wedding reception during Sonny's sexual encounter with bridesmaid Lucy Mancini. Since Michael was now in his middle sixties—the same age as Don Vito in
The Godfather
—Vincent would replace Michael as the young male lead in the picture, the role that Michael himself had filled in the previous two
Godfather
films. Nevertheless, Michael would continue to be a pivotal character in the present film, for in Coppola's mind Michael is the tragic figure of the drama.

While casting about for story ideas, Coppola began to read press accounts of the Vatican Bank scandal, in which the Mafia figured, and he thought he could work that into the story line somehow. “I felt I had a fertile story context,” says Coppola, “one that wasn't just going to be about Venezuelan drug lords and machine guns.”
³⁹
He created the character of Archbishop Gliday—based on Bishop Marcinkus, an American bishop stationed in Rome who was implicated in some questionable Vatican financial transactions. (The real bishop happened to hail from Cicero, Illinois, Al Capone's old stamping grounds.) Archbishop Gliday is a highly fictionalized version of Bishop Marcinkus—for example, in the film Gliday is assassinated, while his real-life counterpart was relegated to forced retirement in Arizona by the Vatican after the Vatican Bank scandal broke. He was never officially charged with any financial improprieties.

“On
Godfather-III
, I worked more closely with Francis than on the other two scripts,” Puzo remarks in the documentary. They checked into the Peppermill Hotel Casino in Reno, where they batted out a preliminary outline of the scenario. Then they moved on to New York where they continued their collaboration. Like the two previous
Godfather
films, this one was slated to be a Christmas release. That meant that they had to produce the first draft of the script in a brisk six weeks so that shooting could begin in late 1989, with the premiere in December 1990.

Coppola enjoyed devising the screenplay without studio interference. “It's a lot easier to write a script of this sort when you have freedom from the studio, rather than having to write a custom job,” he explains. He and Puzo found themselves “involved in some extremely rich research into contemporary history,” e.g., the Vatican Bank scandal. Then they placed their existing characters into a fictionalized version of these events.
⁴⁰
They followed their customary procedure of writing separately and then revising each other's work. Coppola composed the first half, Puzo the second half, and then they “nailed them together.” The script went through twelve revisions between April and November of 1989. Later, when the press reported that Coppola engaged in “endless rewrites” during production, he replied that, given the short time he and Puzo had to write the original draft of the script, it was inevitable that he had to revise the screenplay further, even during shooting.

The final shooting script of the third film is set twenty years after the end of the second film, when Michael is at long last endeavoring to make all of the Corleone family's investments legitimate—something he promised Kay when he married her.

In order to ensure continuity between the third film of the trilogy and its predecessors, Coppola reassembled most of the members of his production crew. This team of regulars included cinematographer Gordon Willis, production designer Dean Tavoularis, composer Carmine Coppola, and film editor Walter Murch, who had previously been sound engineer for Coppola. Furthermore, some of the key actors were once more on deck, including Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, and Talia Shire. Working closely with each of his creative collaborators unquestionably enabled Coppola to place on all three films, not the stamp of the studio, but the unmistakable stamp of his own directorial style—which is one of the hallmarks of an auteur.

The one major cast member from the first two films who did not return this time around was Robert Duvall. He found the salary he was offered to be unacceptable and was likewise dissatisfied with the size of his part. The actor felt that Tom Hagen simply did not play the vital role in
Godfather III
that he did in the previous two films. “Not having Duvall in
Godfather III
,” Coppola notes in his DVD commentary, “was a profound loss to me and to this movie.”

Duvall was replaced by George Hamilton, in the role of B. J. Harrison, an unctuous corporate attorney. But Harrison, Michael's slick WASP lawyer, is not a member of the family, as was Tom, Don Vito's adopted son. So Harrison would not be Michael's confidante and ally in the manner that Tom had been. Coppola passed that function on to Connie, making her the first female member of the Corleone clan to have a say in family decisions.

Another new member of the cast besides Hamilton was Andy Garcia as Vincent Mancini, Sonny's bastard son. Garcia says that Coppola gave him valuable advice on how to play the part. “He said that Vinnie had the temper of Sonny, the smarts and ruthlessness of young Vito, the kind of calculation and coolness of Michael, and the warmth of Fredo.” During filming he and Coppola adopted a sort of shorthand. Coppola would say, “This is a Sonny scene; this is a young-Vito scene; this one is a Michael scene; this one is a Fredo scene.”
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In short, Garcia became a repository for different aspects of the Italian family's complete male personas. “Vinnie is an outsider,” says Garcia, and Michael Corleone takes him in. “The closer he comes to Michael, the more Vinnie becomes like him.” Indeed, Garcia comes across in the movie like the young Al Pacino of
The Godfather
—very intense, very serious, and somewhat dangerous.

“The thing that is different about
Godfather III
,” Coppola recalls in the documentary, “is that Michael is different.” The third film begins twenty years after the close of the second film. Michael is getting ready for death, and he wants to rehabilitate himself. “So I wanted him to be a man who was older and concerned with redemption,” Coppola continued. “Michael Corleone realized that he had paid very dearly for being a cold-blooded murderer, and was a man now who wanted to make peace with God.” In brief, Michael is aware that his final reckoning is drawing near.

Coppola saw
Godfather III
as the epilogue of the story because Michael is asking, “what have I done with my life, what have I done with my family?”
⁴²
“The screenplay deals with the themes of redemption and reconciliation close to Coppola's heart.”
⁴³
Godfather III
depicts Michael as “a Mafia boss yearning to achieve respectability and craving forgiveness from the Church for his manifold sins.” To the dismay of other Mafiosi, Michael is determined to sell off his casinos and other Mafia-related enterprises and to assume the role of a respectable international financier.

The movie's opening sequence accordingly depicts Michael, dressed in a medieval cape, receiving a papal honor: he is named a Knight of the
Order of St. Sebastian, in return for a handsome donation from the “Vito Corleone Foundation.” The solemnity of the elaborate ritual is effectively undercut by the cynical implication that a gangster like Michael Corleone can buy himself “such a majestic honor.”
⁴⁴
What's more, Michael's apparent generosity to the church is not as altruistic as it might at first appear: “Michael intends, not so much to relinquish his ill-gotten gains, but rather to launder them.”
⁴⁵
Michael therefore becomes implicated in a crafty scheme to launder the Corleone funds by filtering large sums of cash through the Vatican Bank in exchange for saving the Vatican Bank from bankruptcy.

Furthermore, Michael's partnership with the Vatican enables him to purchase a controlling interest in Immobilare, a shadowy European conglomerate that is a real estate-holding corporation of the Vatican. Actually, Immobilare is a consortium of investors and politicians who are as corrupt as any of the lower-class Mafiosi whom Michael consorted with in New York City or Las Vegas. By getting the Corleone family entangled with these upper-class European crooks, Michael remarks wryly, “We're back with the Borgias!” He realizes that he has once more been drawn into conniving with unsavory characters in some dirty business deals, just when he had hopes of going completely legitimate. He moans, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” The hypocrisy of this group of financial conspirators is underscored by the fact that they regularly begin their deliberations with a prayer.

“Originally we were going to begin the film with the sly Archbishop Gliday (Donnal Donnelly) coming to Michael, pleading that he bail the Vatican Bank out of its financial difficulties,” Coppola states in his commentary. But Walter Murch, who had moved from sound specialist on
The Godfather
and
Godfather II
to one of the principal film editors on this film, “thought it better to stress the family side of the picture before we got into the business side of the movie. So we decided to begin with the ceremony in which Michael is honored by the Vatican for his charitable gifts to the Church.” Therefore, the third film opens with an elaborate family celebration that recalls the wedding at the beginning of
The Godfather
and the First Communion at the beginning of
Godfather II
.

The reception for Michael serves as a family reunion, once more introducing Kay, who has married a second time; Connie, who is divorced again; and Michael's grown children Anthony (Franc D'Ambrosio) and Mary (Sofia Coppola, the director's daughter). Michael wants to revive his ties with his ex-wife and children in order to win back their trust. So it is obvious that family values continue to influence Michael's behavior in the last years of his life. Even in a world ruled by the Mafia's deadly code, family
ties are still respected. Given the recurring emphasis on family in the trilogy, it is pellucidly clear that the concept of family is an important influence on the cinema of Francis Coppola.

Commenting on the DVD about the Vatican's willingness to make an unholy alliance with a Mafia chieftain like Michael Corleone, Coppola points out that history has shown the Vatican to be not only a spiritual community of the faithful but also a secular institution. “I respectfully submit that everything I put into the movie about the Vatican as a business organization being venal and mercenary because of its involvement in financial improprieties is true.”

“At one point,” he goes on, Immobilare, a Vatican-held company, “owned a controlling interest in Paramount Pictures. While I was making
Godfather I
, I sometimes went up in the elevator to visit Charlie Bludhorn in the Gulf and Western building in New York with some mysterious men who played a role in the enormous Vatican Bank scandal later on.” One of the shady individuals whom Coppola refers to is very likely Michele Sindona, a notorious Sicilian financier with Mafia ties, who was associated with both the Vatican Bank and Immobilare. In 1972, through Sindona's machinations, Immobilare purchased a substantial interest in Paramount Pictures, thereby providing the studio with much-needed capital.

Suffice it to say that there is no little irony in the fact that
The Godfather
was financed by Paramount Pictures with at least some funds made available through the auspices of the infamous Mafia-connected financier Michele Sindona. As a matter of fact, Sindona had “deplored Paramount's decision to make
The Godfather
, which he felt betrayed the inner workings of the Mafia,” according to Bernard Dick, who has provided the best account in English of Sindona's involvement with Paramount, Immobilare, and the Vatican Bank.
⁴⁶

As the 1970s wore on, however, Sindona's financial empire, erected on financial irregularities and fraud, began to crumble, precipitating the Vatican Bank scandal. Since Sindona was involved with both Immobilare and the Vatican Bank, Immobilare stocks plummeted and the Vatican Bank lost about $30 million. In 1986, when Sindona's links to the Mafia surfaced, he was extradited to Italy, where he was convicted of fraud and other crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment. Two days after the verdict, he unwittingly drank coffee laced with cyanide in his jail cell. He was apparently poisoned by the Sicilian Mafia to prevent him from divulging any information about their underworld activities. Cyanide poisoning is a common method employed by the Mafia to silence convicts who know too much.

Bludhorn told Coppola about the Vatican Bank's covert negotiations
with Immobilare, which he had learned about through his dealings with Sindona in the early 1970s. Coppola accordingly incorporated this material in a fictionalized form into
Godfather III
. In sum, the package deals negotiated with the Vatican in the movie recall the Sindona affair. In the closing credits, Coppola dedicated
Godfather III
to Bludhorn because he “inspired” the film.