Part of Essential Coppola
Sun, Sep 15 at 7:30pm: Introduction from Belcourt staff member Coley Hinson | BUY TICKETS
Francis Ford Coppola brings a definitive new edit and restoration of the final film in his epic Godfather trilogy — Mario Puzo’s THE GODFATHER, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), now in his 60s, seeks to free his family from crime and find a suitable successor to his empire. That successor could be fiery Vincent (Andy Garcia) — but he may also be the spark that turns Michael’s hope of business legitimacy into an inferno of mob violence. The film’s meticulously restored picture and sound, under the supervision of American Zoetrope and Paramount Pictures, includes a new beginning and ending, as well as changes to scenes, shots and music cues. The resulting project reflects author Mario Puzo and Coppola’s original intentions of THE GODFATHER PART III — and delivers, in the words of Coppola, “a more appropriate conclusion to THE GODFATHER and THE GODFATHER: PART II.”
Programmers Note: While there are a few ways to see the GODFATHER trilogy across a 7-day period, only Sun, Sep 15 offers the possibility to see all three films sequentially in one day.
“Coppola's revelatory revision feels like a far more focused and purposeful film…. To watch it today is to marvel at the levels of craft, camera blocking and thematic visualization that have all but vanished from big-budget studio filmmaking.” —Sean Burns, WBUR “A far more poignant capstone to the Corleone saga than THE GODFATHER III has ever been widely considered; it’s often gripping, sometimes masterful, and almost never betrays its history as the work of a wayward giant scrambling back toward respectability after a long decade lost in the wilderness.” —David Ehrlich, IndieWire “The re-edited version is a puckish paradox: it is only slightly different from the original—yet, now, this movie, which was widely derided at the time of its release, in 1990, is being acclaimed by a (mainly) new generation of critics, even if not quite as the masterwork that some of us knew it to be from the start.” —Richard Brody, New Yorker “Does seem different, thanks largely to how [Coppola] opens and closes the film. Overall, this version feels even more elegiac — a true coda instead of just another part of the same story…. The biggest change that Coppola makes is to get right to the heart of the story, and it's a drastic improvement.” —Brian Tallerico, rogerebertvoices.com
