The Godfather Coda. The new edit, maybe even the new name, make for something like a whole new film. I still think Michael Corleone's memory of December '41 and the look on his face as he remembers say it all about him and the tragic nature of his life, but if there was going to be a third film, Coppola made a good one; it did need a better title and a better edit than the version that was put out in the early nineties. Michael's deeper tragedy has two prongs: A. once he was in Mafia life he could never really escape it, no matter how much or how hard he tried, and B. the effects of his criminality on the next generation. He has the grace to let his son go his own way, but his daughter, however much he might try to protect her, is destroyed. (Said daughter might have been better played by someone other than Sofia Coppola.) I suppose you could read A. in terms of some sort of Greek tragic-flaw notion, but the real catch in Michael's life, as he comes to understand, comes from the nature of capitalism itself; the higher he climbs in ostensibly post-Mafia realms, “the crookeder it gets.”

A dramatic road not taken: In re Michael's return visit, in Kay's company, to the town of Corleone, I wonder what surviving relatives of his doomed Sicilian bride might have had to say to him.

Speaking of the Sicilian bride, probably the most poignant scene is when Michael remembers her during the only appearance in the film of what was called the love theme from the first film—the famous Nino Rota instrumental that every American of a certain age associates with it. Here it's revealed as a love song from Corleone, in Sicilian of course, sung by Anthony Corleone to an acoustic guitar; his father is visibly moved.