Luca Guadagnino reveals top Francis Ford Coppola movie

For Luca Guadagnino, The Godfather III is the best in the legendary director Francis Ford Coppola’s filmography.

During an interview with Sight and Sound, the Call Me By Your Name auteur said, “[‘The Godfather: Part III’] is the best of the three for me.”

“‘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,” the director shared his views on the famed trilogy.

“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,” he continued.

Apart from the trilogy, Luca said he also enjoyed Francis’ Peggy Sue Got Married and Jack.

“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,” the 53-year-old said.

“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,” Luca concluded.