Anthony Corleone gives up law school to become an opera singer, seemingly out of the blue.

Within a very short time of Michael's reluctant approval of this career path, Michael has his diabetic stroke, and during his recovery, at the hospital, Anthony appears with the news that he will be starring in an opera, in Sicily, within a matter of months. There is no evidence that Anthony ever had any formal training as a classical singer. We don't even know whether he spoke Italian (he was educated mostly by Kay, in New England, so it is unlikely).

In the face of this we are expected to believe that in a very short time he was able to learn lyrics, go to Palermo, audition, pass over Lord knows how many people, get the starring role, and return to New York to tell his father the news?

To have accomplished this Anthony would have to be the most gifted natural tenor ever born ----unless----he got some Johnny Fontaine style "help " from the family. Is there any reason to believe he didn't?

This is a very good point you have made. However, I have a few things Iwish to poit out.

1, Anthony, I believe, was getting more in thouch with his Italian side as an adult. he seemed to be finding himself, and I believe that he knew for quite some time that he wanted to be a singer. He very well could have taken lessons, though, some are simply born with a gift.

2, it was quite a while before he told his father about the opera. I would guess almost a year, and, if Anthony already knew how to sing, which is very likely, then it is very possible that he could have got a good part in Cavaleria Rusticana. Though I still wouldn't be very surprised if the Corleone Family help a bit. perhaps, Michale was nervous for his son and figured if he wasn't going to be a lawyer, then he would assure that his son would have a good career in singing.

Still, very little of this is explained, and can be considered a plot flaw. We can't be expected to be splitting hairs like this...

Yes, I figure he was doing both for some time. Then said the hell with Law School. I don't like it as much as I do singing.

There was no way that I thought that he just out of the blue said that he wanted to be a singer and click I have a lead role.

I saw the title of your topic and the first thought that came to my mind was "Just one?"

Anthony could leave law school to pursue opera since he had enough of the Family money to fall back on. Most people in the same situation would not have had such a luxury.

I saw the title of your topic and the first thought that came to my mind was that it should be:
GF3 PLOT IS ONE HUGE FLAW.
Sure it's one of those achievements that make it worse.
Another thing that made me laugh:
what a degenerate must Antony be, how many years in school was he obliged to repeat, to be almost 30 years old and still unable to get his law degree?
Just one of those little things to make one's day, you know!

You said it all right there, JustMe.
To be fair: Anthony could have been pursuing opera even while he was in law school. And there's no indication that he just quit law school at the time of Michael's party--he may have dropped it way earlier and have been concentrating on opera.
And, let's not forget the $100M the Corleone Foundation donated to Sicily. Could be enough to get an unknown a starring role for one night in the Palermo Opera House.

To emphasize what someone has already stated: Anthony would have been about 30 years old. Certainly he had plenty of time to develop his singing and pursue his law degree. Being a Corleone probably helped him gain an opera audition and he took it from there.

Gosh, you all are TERRIBLE!!! I mean, it's just a movie! Why do you always have to be so pedantically meticulous about everything regarding GFIII. A movie (especially a fictional one) is supposed to give you emotions, not legal papers. I understand that GFIII gives us more bad vibs than good ones, but, c'mon....it is not a documentary, not an historical essay...it's just....a movie. A total flop when compared to the previous GFs, but still decent and watchable.

Relax, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!!!! I'm kidding, of course....it's nice to analyze everything, but this is hammering away at this poor GFIII!!!!

As for Anthony, he could have easily learnt the Italian needed to sing an opera. It should not have required a terribly long time to memorize a part (it's something most of opera singers do as a routinary task of their work: you can't be a opera singer without knowing any Italian) and I believe he got some decisive help from his family to speed his career up. I don't think other horses' heads were found in other beds, though... That was the past. I'd rather think a huge amout of money was released in some strategically important pockets.

And of course, Italian isn't the hardest language to learn. It's like french, also easy to learn. Dutch is hard to learn (glad it's ny native language). English is easy to learn the basics, but hard to master. Look at me, learned it a bit at school (never studied much on it), watched The Simpsons and American movies, and I'm already able to post on an English message board. But, I'm absolutely sure my language ressembles that of an 8 year old American.

I don't agree at all. Italian is one of the most difficult languages to learn, if you want to be correct in grammar and syntax. Of course, if you want to limit your skills to Buongiorno and buonasera, spaghetti and ciao bella it's a totally different matter. But go get a page of good Italian. You wouldn't find it easy at all.

Technically speaking, Italian is not a language at all, but a bunch of dialects. The "true" Italian is supposedly spoken in FLorence and Siena. People from Milano claim they cannot understand people from Sicily, so to speak it throughout Italy it is indeed a difficult language. As for operatic Italian, there are a lot of liberties taken with the language so the words can fit with the music.

There are far larger plot holes in Part III. This is just a detail that they perhaps rushed along a little too quickly, but then again, maybe Michael could have pulled some strings and gotten him the role. Also, Corleone was a huge name in Palermo, so maybe the opera producers thought that having a Corleone in the opera would mean huge returns.

Who knows.

About the ages of characters in Part III... I imagined Anthony to be about 25 and Mary to be about 20. But if Anthony is 10-11 at his first communion in 1955, he would definitely be 30, or older, at the time of Part III.

Mary would be older than she was portrayed in Part III as well.

I don't know how Catholic you are, but first communion is always at the age of 6, maybe 7.
So he's born in '49, making him exactly 30 in 1979.

Anthony was 7 when he recieved holy communion, about the same age as most children are when they recieve first holy communion. That would put him at about 29 years old when he performed in Italy in GFIII.

Mary would be about 27 years old when she is killed in GFIII.


Don Cardi

Mary seemed a lot younger in GFIII.


DS

thats not true Italain is easy compared english, and its not that hard to learn italian in a song, i have ppl in my school who r in like all state chorus and one song they sing is in italian and non of them know italian they just learn the song

That is not LEARNING a language. It's imitating the sounds just like a parrot would be able to do.

The Italian language exists (technically and ideally) since about 1300, from Dante on, when the so called "volgare" (the language born from Latin, spoken by uncultured people, while Latin remained the language of culture) was given a literary dignity (The Divine Comedy was in fact written in Italian). Of course, being a living language, it was quite different from the current one. It developped through centuries, and literates have been discussing the so called "Language Question" for ages. The question was about what form should the literary language have. The question was somehow solved in XIX century: the real Italian should be the language spoken in Tuscany by the literate people. It is true that the dialects spoken throughout the Peninsula are very different but they are just the basis on which the Italian language was built. The expert tell that a real linguistic unity was achieved thanks to the "television era".

Hear hear. I think of all the romance languages, italian is the hardest to learn because grammatically it's such a tricky language. It takes so much concentration to get everything in a sentence correct, and in the right place!
Spanish and French are IMO easier to learn but difficult to sound authentic in - but italian? I can't ever imagine being able to pass for a native in Italy the way I can in France.

When I was in Sicily I was painfully aware that I must have stuck out like a sore thumb for speaking Italian to people who responded in a dialect. I mean, they understood my Italian, but I only understood about half of what they said back, because it was in Sicilian.
I guess it's like accents in Britain. People who learn english as a foreign language here are encouraged to speak with a BBC accent (standard pronunciation) but in fact only a tiny percentage of people have that accent. Everbody else speaks with some degree of strong regional accent, which it's practically impossible for a foreigner to pick up accurately.

As for Anthony though, I think we underestimate the power of imitation by ear. It's unusual for popular english speaking singers to have to learn foreign lyrics, but abroad many popular singers have to release english songs to widen their audience. Many of them have very little knowledge of english. I don't think it's unbelievable for Anthony to learn lyrics in italian, given the libretto, rehearsals, and a basic knowledge of the language picked up from his relatives and his short time in Palermo.

I spent a year in Florence andI picked up Italian easily. French is mugh harder because of the accent.

A plot flaw???

In GFIII ?????

I find that difficult to believe.



Apple

Yeah, I know....its tough....almost as difficult as finding inferior acting.

Exactly as I thought it too


FH

Ahem....back to the topic at hand. I think we have established that Anthony is about 30 in GF III. This means he probably finished college at 21, and then took several years off before he started law school, which takes three years. I suppose he could have been going to Julliard or someplace during those years to study music, but if that had been the case, it would not have come as sucha a surprise to Michael. As far as all this talk about learning Italian, what everyone here is missing is that as an opera singer, Anthony would not have only had to commit Cavaliera Rusticana to memory, but a number of other operas in the reperatory as well. To be able to sing, act and otherwise perform he would have had to been through some kind of formal training, and he would have had to have had experience singing in the chorus and then moving up to smaller parts. I say again you just dont drop out of law school and then suddenly get the lead in a major production in Palermo.

From the heretofore undiscovered draft screenplay of GFIII -recently found stored in a mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagenells porch and read for the first time at noon today:

It appears that during his audition, Anthony happened to mention that his father was Michael Corleone, his grandfather was the late Vito Corleone...and that either the director's brains or signature would soon be on a contract.

That's a true story.

Apple

Only our Apple!

Karnak holds a sealed envelope on his forehead

"And the Answer Is Cavaliera Rusticana."

"Cavaliera Rusticana."

"Correct Buffalo breath"

(Karnak opens envelope)

"What do you call oxidation on an Iron Knight?"

My dad was Napolitan and Abruzzese. He was fluent in Italian - in the dialect that he grew up with mostly which was Napolitan. That's because his mother spoke it to him. She was from around Naples. His dad didn't speak it much with him. BUT, my dad flunked Italian in school and not because he didn't try hard enough to learn.

I speak Napolitan (well, a version of it somewhat). Both my dad and my relatives can hardly understand my Italian because other dialects (from around the neighborhood) bleed in and my pronounciation is really bad. It's true. People from the mainland have a hard time understandng Sicilians.

I agree with a previous post. Try reading La Stampa. It's a real challenge. Italian can be difficult just like any language. If you have an affinity for learning languages, then it's easier to learn - not easy.

Here's a list of mistakes in GF3:

# Continuity: Al Neri helps break up the fight between Vincent and Joey Za Za. Yet Neri left the room before the fight began, and never reentered.

# Anachronisms: The montage of newspaper clippings describing the Corleone family's involvement with Immobliare, the text underneath describes events which happen between 1988 and 1990.

# Continuity: A hand can be seen on the shotgun on the table in the opera, followed by a shot of the hand reaching down to pick it up.

# Continuity: While making her presentation speech early in the film, Mary Corleone pronounces her own surname two different ways.

# Revealing mistakes: A headline about Immobiliare appears in the Wall Street Journal, but the text underneath the headline is from a word-processing manual.

# Continuity: At the beginning of the movie Vincent gets in a scuffle with security at the party being held for Michael. Vincent's coat gets knocked off his arm but in the next shot it's there again. This happens a few times and when Vincent walks away the coat is back on his arm.

# Continuity: After the shootout at the opera house, Vincent goes up the stairs, then he is back down at the bottom and then at the top again, all within a matter of seconds.

# Audio/visual unsynchronized: At the opera house, Vincent is heard yelling while his mouth is not moving.

# Continuity: When Michael lies in the hospital, the oxygen tube on his pillow changes its position.

# Factual errors: The Opera Cavalleria Rusticana is shown out of chronological order. The prologue is shown first (Anthony singing backstage), fallowed by a scene near the end. The procession scene shown next, is actually in the middle of the opera. Then the conclusion is shown.

# Anachronisms: In the first "overview" shot of New York City at the beginning of the film, the World Financial Center is shown. Construction of the complex began in 1981 and was not finished until 1987.

# Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Although the details of Pope John Paul I and his death in the film are not always consistent with those of the real Pope John Paul I, this is not a factual error, as this film is only presenting a fictional story partially (and loosely) based on true events.

# Anachronisms: When the Corleone family moves to Sicily, one white car license plate can be seen. White car license plates were not introduced in Italy before 1988. The movie takes place towards the beginning of the 1980s.

# Plot holes: When Michael is at the Vatican, before confessing his sins to the Cardinal, he has a diabetic reaction and needs sugar. The priest leaves before the cardinal finishes telling him what to get and within seconds is back with a whole tray full of orange juice and candy bars.

# Continuity: When Michael visits Archbishop Gilday, the Archbishop has a lit cigarette cupped in his hand. While telling of the bank's woes and his need for Michael's help, another priest offers the Archbishop a cigarette and lights it for him. The first cigarette has disappeared, yet there has not been enough time for, nor any action indicating onscreen, the Archbishop has extinguished the first cigarette.

Congrats. Those are quite a few good points about GFIII. I especially noticed the quick response of the priest to Michael's need for candy bars and juice. I can understand juice being on tap, but candy bars!