The Godfather Part III is rightly considered to be a step or two down from the previous movies of the Godfather trilogy. That doesn’t make it a bad film – it’s just that The Godfather Parts I and II are among the greatest works of cinema ever produced. On the other hand, there’s one key aspect of the trilogy in which the third installment of the movie saga improves upon its forerunners. The Godfather and its sequel might be universally recognized as seminal works of art, but it’s undeniable that both movies have to answer for their portrayal of female characters.
Vito and Michael Corleone rule a world dominated by men with macho sensibilities, where there’s little room for women to prosper beyond their familial responsibilities. As its тιтle suggests, the Godfather trilogy is principally about a family patriarch, around whom the fate of the other characters in the movies revolves. Although most things about The Godfather still hold up today as much as they ever did, the lack of female involvement in its central plot now rightly comes under scrutiny. Likewise, The Godfather Part III deservedly comes in for praise because it places women at the heart of its story.
Female Characters Are Limited To Background Roles In The Godfather & Its Sequel
The Godfather’s Women Are Important, But Ultimately Secondary
Although it could be said that Diane Keaton’s Kay Adams-Corleone is the unsung hero of The Godfather and its sequel, female characters aren’t fundamental to the plot of the first two Godfather movies. The first film does begin with Connie Corleone’s wedding, yet she has virtually nothing to say throughout the event. Instead, the main events of The Godfather’s long opening sequence take place in Vito Corleone’s office, or involve Michael Corleone explaining his family’s backstory in lengthy monologues.
Michael’s girlfriend, Kay, is a bemused bystander who teases answers out of Al Pacino’s character that he’s more than happy to give anyway. It’s true that Michael Corleone’s character arc in The Godfather is changed by the death of Apollonia, his first wife, via a car bomb intended for him in Sicily. But she, too, barely utters a word throughout her appearance in the movie. She’s simply cast as an accessory on Michael’s arm, whom he falls for only because of her looks, and who has little to offer as a character herself.
Later, Connie Corleone’s marital troubles become a factor in the death of the eldest Corleone son, James Caan’s Sonny Corleone, but Connie herself has no conscious part in what happens. She’s just depicted as a spoiled, hysterical daddy’s girl who’s ultimately beholden to the will of her husband or her brothers.
Meanwhile, The Godfather Part II involves its female characters even less. Connie Corleone is almost entirely absent from the film, while Kay Adams only gains any form of agency by finally deciding to leave Michael. Carmela Corleone, Vito’s wife, plays an important role in her son Michael’s worst crime in The Godfather movies, but she does so simply by dying, allowing the new Don Corleone to murder his own brother, Fredo, without any recriminations from his mother.
The Godfather Part III Puts 3 Women At The Center Of The Story
Kay, Mary & Connie Corleone All Play Key Roles And Have Their Own Agency
Conversely, in The Godfather Part III, Kay Adams-Corleone is promoted to a central role in the story alongside Michael. The couple reconcile, and Kay is seen to play a more equal part in their relationship, with an equal stake in the future of their children. It’s also Kay who convinces Michael to confront his guilt about the killing of Fredo at the end of The Godfather Part II, even though she’s still divorced from him when she raises the issue. Kay actually has more agency as Michael Corleone’s ex-wife than she does as his wife in the first two movies.
What’s more, The Godfather Part III involves Connie Corleone as a more proactive and powerful character than she ever was in Parts I and II. We see her giving permission and making orders on behalf of the Corleone family, and even taking an active part in killing a rival mafia boss. It’s Connie who murders New York mafioso Osvaldo Altobello, her own godfather, by poisoning him via a birthday present.
The third female power-player in the movie is an entirely new character, and one of the most controversial in the entire trilogy. Michael’s daughter Mary Corleone is played by Sofia Coppola in The Godfather Part III, in a performance that was roundly panned at the time of the film’s release. Nevertheless, Coppola’s character is another of the movie’s strong women, a single-minded young adult who knows what she wants regardless of what her powerful father wants for her.
Mary Corleone is still The Godfather Part III’s ultimate victim, serving as a means for Michael to experience a fate worse than his own death. Still, up to the moment of her killing in the crossfire, Mary cuts a very different figure from the helpless and subjugated Corleone women of previous generations.
The Godfather’s Story Can Be Interpreted As Either Sєxist, Or A Critique Of Toxic Masculinity & Misogyny
There’s Certainly Some Authenticity To Its Misogynistic Representation Of The Mafia
There’s no doubt that The Godfather Part III shows up the previous two films in the trilogy as prime examples of women being underrepresented in American cinema. However, there is an argument that the Godfather movies are simply an accurate representation of the Sicilian-American mafia, including its rampant misogyny.
The Godfather trilogy very deliberately critiques the macho culture of the mafia, as well as other aspects of its morality. Whether the movies are critical enough, or they leave too much up to the viewer when portraying blatant acts of Sєxism and female oppression, is up for debate.
Scenes in both movies clearly demonstrate that their male characters are intended to be bad examples of masculinity, from Sonny’s callous disregard for his own wife and family to have Sєx with Connie’s maid of honor at her wedding, to Michael’s treatment of Kay and his children in the final act of The Godfather Part II. There’s even Vito Corleone’s ᴀssertion, “You should never come between a man and his wife,” in a deleted scene of The Godfather. At multiple points in the trilogy, characters discuss their preference for having a son over a daughter.
These things obviously aren’t worked into the movies with uncritical eyes. The Godfather trilogy very deliberately critiques the macho culture of the mafia, as well as other aspects of its morality. Whether the movies are critical enough or leave too much up to the viewer when portraying blatant acts of Sєxism and female oppression is up for debate. Either way, it’s hard to argue with the realism and artistry they employ to represent the world of real-life mobsters and develop their stories.
