Having just recently read the script of GF trilogy, I was wondering that when Mary Corleone is murdered does Mikey lose his eyesight? Pacino enacts the devastation felt by Mike perfectly. Also when he dies alone in Sicily he seemed blind. And it was known that Michael was diabetic, so could it be that the tragic event along with his sickness caused his blindness. Kay foreshadowed this in GF II when she says Michael, you are blind. I think that this adds to Mike's had punishment for his sins.

His vision was failing before Mary died. In one thread someone posited that the last thing he saw was Mary die because the shock of it literally blinded him....pparently this can happen. In any case in the final scene most likely he is either totally blind or can barely see. I don't recall seeing any kind of cane or eeing eye dog, and there was a bowl of oranges on the table, which I suppose he could get by feeling for them, but it seems odd that a totally blind man would be left alone in a spot like that except for cinematic purposes.

Maybe it was a seeing-eye pig?

I also thought Michael was blind. Blindness can be a complication of diabetes. It rarely happens in the industrialized world, because it's easily preventable, but maybe Michael went into a shell after Mary's death and stopped taking medical care of himself.

AD, a very interesting wrinkle came up on that subject a few years ago:

As you know, Fredo dropped a bomb on Michael in the famous boathouse scene: "The Senate lawyer, Questadt--he belongs to Roth." Michael didn't know that. A sharp-eyed paisan on this board spotted Questadt momentarily appearing in the scene where Batista introduces all the big-business pezzanovanti sitting around his table in Havana. Questadt is sitting directly behind Roth.

Now, if Michael had seen Questadt sitting behind Roth at that meeting, he would never have perjured himself at the Senate hearing where Questadt turned up as the Senate's lawyer. He would have seen immediately that the questions Questadt put to him were traps laid by Roth. So, how could Michael not have spotted Questadt in Havana, since he was in the same room with him? Some people here speculated that it was an early sign that Michael was losing his sight.

Like so many things in the novel and film that we speculate about, we can speculate endlessly about Michael's possible blindness. However, I don't find anything in the novel or film to support that. He wore sunglasses most of the way through III and he did have diabetes. However, that's a long way from blindness. There's nothing in his death scene to indicate blindness. He takes off and puts on his sunglasses just as any elderly person would.

Not seeing Questadt? I think it was just a production slipup. If his eyes were affected at the time, certainly he would have had to be wearing sunglasses during the hotel birthday party balcony scene under the blazing Havana sun becuae his eyes would have been quite sensitive to that much sunlight. Also, he seems able to view what is going on when the rebel is being arrested even though that is happening 50-100 feet away.

It was a production slipup:

I had speculated that Questadt's appearance in that scene was part of some alternative scenario that was abandoned in the final cut. Sure enough, after some back-and-forth on that subject, another of our paisani surfaced an earlier script in which Michael was supposed to have met Questadt in Havana, and made a deal with him. But it didn't make the final cut. I guessed that the scene (shot in the Dominican Republic) was operating under the earlier script. But after the final cut dropped the Michael/Questadt meeting in Havana, FFC simply left in the momentary sight of Questadt in Havana, not wanting to shoot the scene again. I guess he didn't figure on the sharp-eyed folks on this board.