The Godfather Part III

In 1979, Michael Corleone is approaching 60. Wracked with guilt over his ruthless rise to power, especially for having ordered his brother Fredo Corleone's murder, he donates millions to charitable causes. Michael and Kay are divorced; their children, Anthony and Mary, live with Kay. At the reception following a papal order induction ceremony in St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in Michael's honor, Anthony tells his father that he is leaving law school to become an opera singer. Kay supports his decision, but Michael wants Anthony to complete his law degree first; nevertheless, Michael agrees to let Anthony go his own way. Michael and Kay have an uneasy reunion when Kay reveals that she and Anthony know the truth about Fredo's death. Vincent Mancini, the illegitimate son of Michael's long-dead brother Sonny Corleone, arrives at the reception. Michael's sister, Connie Corleone, arranges for Vincent to settle a dispute with his rival, Joey Zasa, but Zasa calls Vincent a bastard, and Vincent bites Zasa's ear. Michael, troubled by Vincent's fiery temper yet impressed by his loyalty, agrees to include Vincent in the family business.

Michael knows that the head of the Vatican Bank, Archbishop Gilday, has accumulated a massive deficit and offers $600M in exchange for shares in Internazionale Immobiliare,[3] an international real estate company, which would make him its largest single shareholder. He makes a tender offer to buy the Vatican's 25% share in the company, which will give him controlling interest. Immobiliare's board approves the offer, pending ratification by the Pope.

Don Altobello, a New York Mafia boss and Connie's godfather, tells Michael that his partners on The Commission want in on the Immobiliare deal. Michael pays them from the sale of his Las Vegas holdings. Zasa receives nothing and, declaring Michael his enemy, storms out. Don Altobello, assuring Michael that he can diplomatically resolve the matter, leaves to speak to Zasa. Moments later, a helicopter hovers outside the conference room and opens fire. Most of the bosses are killed, but Michael, Vincent, and Michael's bodyguard, Al Neri, escape. Michael realizes that Altobello is the traitor, and suffers a diabetic stroke. As Michael recuperates, Vincent and Mary begin a romance, while Neri and Connie give Vincent permission to retaliate against Zasa. During a street festival, Vincent kills Zasa. Michael berates Vincent for his actions and insists that Vincent end his relationship with Mary because they are first cousins and because Vincent is in organized crime.

The family goes to Sicily for Anthony's operatic debut in Palermo at the Teatro Massimo. Michael tells Vincent to pretend to defect from the Corleone family in order to spy on Altobello. Altobello introduces Vincent to Licio Lucchesi, Immobiliare's chairman. Michael visits Cardinal Lamberto, anticipated being the next pope, to discuss the deal. Lamberto persuades Michael to make his first confession in 30 years, during which Michael tearfully confesses that he ordered Fredo's murder. Lamberto says that Michael deserves to suffer for his sins, but can be redeemed. He gives him sacramental absolution, permanently forgiving all his past sins in the eyes of God. Michael discovers that the Immobiliare deal is an elaborate swindle, arranged by Lucchesi, Gilday, and Vatican accountant Frederick Keinszig.

Vincent tells Michael that Altobello has hired Mosca, a veteran hitman, to assassinate Michael. Mosca and his son, disguised as priests, kill Corleone family friend Don Tommasino as he returns to his villa. While Michael and Kay tour Sicily, Michael asks for Kay's forgiveness, and they admit they still love each other. At Tommasino's funeral, Michael vows to sin no more. Following the pope's death, Cardinal Lamberto is elected to succeed him, and humbly accepts, choosing as his name Pope John Paul I. Subsequently, the Immobiliare deal is ratified. The plotters against the ratification attempt to cover their tracks and Gilday kills the new pope with poisoned tea. Michael sees that Vincent is a changed man and names him the new Don of the Corleone family, in return for ending his romance with his cousin Mary.

The family sees Anthony's performance in Cavalleria rusticana in Palermo while Vincent exacts his revenge:

• Vincent's men smother Keinszig and then hang him from a bridge, making his death look like a suicide;
• At the opera, Connie gives Altobello a poisoned cannoli and watches him die from her opera box;
• Calò, Tommasino's former bodyguard, stabs Lucchesi in the neck with his own spectacles.
• Neri travels to the Vatican, where he shoots and kills Gilday.

At the opera house during Anthony's performance, three of Vincent's men search for Mosca, but he overcomes them. After the show, on the opera house steps as they leave, Mosca shoots at Michael, wounding him; a second bullet hits Mary, killing her. Vincent shoots and kills Mosca. Michael cradles Mary's body and screams in agony; the scene fades out into a montage of Michael dancing with Mary, his first wife, Apollonia, and finally, Kay.

Years later, an elderly Michael, sitting alone in the courtyard of Don Tommasino's villa, slumps over in his chair and falls lifeless to the ground.

Francis Ford Coppola (pictured in 2011), director of the film

Coppola felt that the first two films had told the complete Corleone saga. He intended Part III to be an epilogue to the first two films. A dire financial situation initially caused by the failure of One from the Heart (1982) compelled him to take up Paramount's offer to make a third installment.[4][5][6] Coppola and Puzo preferred the title The Death of Michael Corleone, but Paramount Pictures found that unacceptable.

Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, and Talia Shire reprised their roles from the first two films. According to Coppola's audio commentary on the film in The Godfather DVD Collection, Robert Duvall refused to take part unless he was paid a salary comparable to Pacino's. In 2004, on the CBS program 60 Minutes, Duvall said, "if they paid Pacino twice what they paid me, that's fine, but not three or four times, which is what they did."[7] When Duvall dropped out, Coppola rewrote the screenplay to portray Tom Hagen as having died before the story begins and created the character B. J. Harrison, played by George Hamilton, to replace the Hagen character in the story. Coppola stated that, to him, the movie feels incomplete "without [Robert] Duvall's participation". According to Coppola, had Duvall agreed to take part in the film, the Hagen character would have been heavily involved in running the Corleone charities. Duvall confirmed in a 2010 interview that he never regretted the decision of turning down his role.[8]

The first draft of a script had been written by Dean Riesner in 1979, based on a story by Mario Puzo. This script centered around Michael Corleone's son, Anthony, a naval officer working for the CIA, and the Corleone family's involvement with a plot to assassinate a Central American dictator.[9] Almost none of the elements of this early script carried over to the final film, but one scene from the film – in which two men break into Vincent's house – exists in the Riesner draft and is nearly unchanged.[10]

Julia Roberts was originally cast as Mary but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.[11] Madonna wanted to play the role, but Coppola felt she was too old for the part.[12] Rebecca Schaeffer was set to audition, but was murdered by an obsessed fan.[13][14] Winona Ryder dropped out of the film at the last minute due to nervous exhaustion.[11] Ultimately, Sofia Coppola, the director's daughter, was given the role of Michael Corleone's daughter. Her much-criticized performance resulted in her father being accused of nepotism, a charge Coppola denies in the commentary track, asserting that, in his opinion, critics, "beginning with an article in Vanity Fair," were "using [my] daughter to attack me," something he finds ironic in light of the film's denouement when Mary pays the ultimate price for her father's sins.

As an infant, Sofia Coppola had played Michael Corleone's infant nephew in The Godfather, during the climactic baptism/murder montage at the end of that film (Sofia Coppola also appeared in The Godfather Part II, as a small immigrant child in the scene where the nine-year-old Vito Corleone arrives by steamer at Ellis Island). The character of Michael's sister Connie is played by Francis Ford Coppola's sister, Talia Shire. Other Coppola relatives with cameos in the film included the director's mother, father (who wrote and conducted much of the music in the film), uncle, and granddaughter Gia.[15]

Principal photography was set to begin on November 15, 1989, but the start date was pushed back to November 27.[16] Filming continued throughout much of 1990.

The film's soundtrack received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Score. The film's love theme, "Promise Me You'll Remember" (subtitled "Love Theme from The Godfather Part III") sung by Harry Connick, Jr., received Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Song.

Al Martino, who portrayed Johnny Fontane in The Godfather and The Godfather Part III, sings "To Each His Own".

The film was distributed by Paramount Pictures, premiering in Beverly Hills on December 20, 1990 and released in the United States on December 25. Prior to the home video release, Coppola re-edited the film, inserting 9 minutes of previously deleted footage. This cut, initially released on VHS & Laserdisc, was advertised as the "Final Director's Cut", and was the only version of the film available on home video until 2020. The original theatrical version was released in 2022 exclusively as a part of The Godfather Trilogy 4K Boxset.

Parts of the film are very loosely based on real historical events concerning the ending of the papacy of Pope Paul VI, the very short tenure of Pope John Paul I in 1978, and the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in 1982. Like the character Cardinal Lamberto, who becomes John Paul I, the historical John Paul I, Albino Luciani, reigned for only a very short time before being found dead in his bed.

Journalist David Yallop argues that Luciani was planning a reform of Vatican finances and that he died by poisoning; these claims are reflected in the film.[43] Yallop also names as a suspect Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who was the head of the Vatican bank, like the character Archbishop Gilday in the film. However, while Marcinkus was noted for his muscular physique and Chicago origins, Gilday is a mild Irishman. The character has also drawn comparisons to Cardinal Giuseppe Caprio, as he was in charge of the Vatican finances during the approximate period in which the movie was based.[44]

The character of Frederick Keinszig, the Swiss banker who is murdered and left hanging under a bridge, mirrors the fate (and physical appearance) of Roberto Calvi, the Italian head of the Banco Ambrosiano who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 (though it was initially unclear whether it was suicide or murder, in 2002 courts in London have ruled the latter[45]). The name "Keinszig" is taken from Manuela Kleinszig, the girlfriend of Flavio Carbone, who was indicted as one of Calvi's murderers in 2005.[46]

Following the reaction to the third installment, Coppola stated that the idea of a fourth film was discussed but Mario Puzo died before they were able to write it. A potential script, told in a similar narrative to Part II, would have included De Niro reprising his role as a younger Vito Corleone in the 1930s; Leonardo DiCaprio was slated to portray a young Sonny Corleone gaining the Corleone family's political power;[47] García as Vincent Corleone during the 1980s running the family business through ten years of destructive war, haunted by the death of his cousin Mary, and eventually losing the family's respect and power.[48] García has since claimed the film's script was nearly produced.[48]

Puzo's portion of the potential sequel, dealing with the Corleone family in the early 1930s, was eventually expanded into a novel by Edward Falco and published in 2012 as The Family Corleone.[49][50] Paramount sued the Puzo estate to prevent publication of the novel, prompting a counter-suit on the part of the estate, claiming breach of contract. The studio and the estate subsequently settled the suits, allowing publication of the book, but with the studio retaining rights to possible future films.[51]

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• The Godfather Part III at IMDb 
• The Godfather Part III at the American Film Institute Catalog
• The Godfather Part III at Box Office Mojo
• The Godfather Part III at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Godfather Part III at Metacritic