The film's initial reception was measured disappointment, not dismissal or horror as we now assume. He wanted The Death of Michael Corleone to be the title back in 1990, but Paramount, the studio releasing it, did not. "For me the tragedy of The Godfather, which is the tragedy of America, is about Michael Corleone," he says in the extras on a DVD set of the three films released in 2001. He just happened to be a mob boss.Ĭoppola was always lucid about the trilogy's vision, even when others were confused. But the new version clarifies Coppola's epic vision, revealing how much the Corleone story was always Michael's, a deeply moral saga of guilt and redemption. They have penetrated the culture, from their language ("I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse") to their quintessentially American story of immigration and upward mobility.
It is too flawed to come close to the accomplishments of The Godfather (1972) or its sequel, both among the most towering and influential films of the 20th Century. But until its altered ending, it is fundamentally the same film, better in parts than as a whole. Twelve minutes shorter, it rearranges some key episodes, eliminates a few minor scenes and trims a line here or there. And the word 'death' signals its dark inevitability, although the meaning of that word is slipperier than it first appears. Calling it a coda emphasises its connection to the earlier instalments, and even hints at its lesser stature. It now has the title Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. Hindsight alone would tell us how seriously the film has been undervalued, even without Coppola's newly restored, re-edited and renamed version.
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