Luca Guadagnino Says ‘The Godfather: Part III’ Is the ‘Best of the Three for Me’

"'Part II' is too perfect and 'The Godfather' is too legendary."

Leave it to Luca Guadagnino to single out the most subversive selections from Francis Ford Coppola‘s filmography.

The “Queer” auteur told Sight and Sound that Coppola’s “The Godfather: Part III” is, for him, “the best” of the famed trilogy, which concluded in 1990. Guadagnino also pointed to how “Peggy Sue Got Married” and controversial film “Jack” are among Coppola’s “masterpieces.” There’s no mention of “Apocalyse Now,” “The Conversation,” or even “Megalopolis” here…

“[‘The Godfather: Part III’] is the best of the three for me,” Guadagnino said when asked what his go-to films over the holiday season are. “‘Part II’ is too perfect and ‘The Godfather’ is too legendary. But ‘Part III’ has the ambition of a man who did everything and the fragility of the man who is going toward this older part of his work and his life. And it’s full of this longing melancholy.”

Guadagnino continued, “The scene where Diane Keaton listens to her son sing at the party in the villa, where she wanders in her mind and the movie cuts back to the past because it’s connecting both her and Pacino to their lost love, it’s so incredible. And it has parallels with one of the great movies I love, John Huston’s ‘The Dead.’ It’s a wonderful movie.”

Guadagnino also showed love to “Peggy Sue Got Married” and “Jack” starring Robin Williams.

“Coppola’s films that I love are this one [‘The Godfather: Part III’] and ‘Peggy Sue Got Married.’ And ‘Jack’ is one of his masterpieces,” Guadagnino said. “For me, a great director invisibly masters everything he does. In ‘Jack,’ you feel the way in which he’s taking this kind of conventional story but bringing humanity, and the way in which the world is created. It’s so beautiful.”

He concluded, “But I come back to ‘The Godfather: Part III’ at that time of year because usually my Christmas is quite silent: we don’t have a big family, we are not a lot of people. It’s beautiful to have the silence of the winter and immerse yourself into that movie. I have time. No more phone calls, no work. It’s a long movie [two hours, 42 minutes] and I want to dedicate myself to that. But do not watch the version that Coppola re-edited — watch the original 1990 version. It’s a masterpiece.”