DIRECTOR SPOTLIGHT: Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola no longer makes his films to make money; he doesn’t need any more money, and even if he does he has his vineyards for that. No, Coppola has been making movies the last few years that he wants to make, movies for himself. One of the trailblazing auteurs of the early seventies, Francis Coppola re-shaped American cinema along with Altman, Scorsese, Beatty, Friedkin, Hopper and Fonda, Spielberg and Lucas. But Coppola’s films never felt as commercial, no matter how massive the scope or the success or the eventual popularity. There has always seemed to be a burning desire in Coppola to make films of less scope, less magnitude, more personal pictures outside the studio system that are there for only the most devoted fans of fringe cinema. And he has taken on the marketing and filmmaking aspects in a different way over the years. He was never one to succumb to studio demands too easily, and his stubbornness may have been what made him great. And that is why he has moved into these more personal pictures over the last decade. That’s not to say his biggest films are not his best, they very well may be; even the one that almost killed him.

Coppola, who turned 72 this past April, didn’t take long to gain notoriety in Hollywood. After co-writing the screenplay for Patton in 1970, he would take on an ambitious new project two years later, adapting the Mario Puzo novel The Godfather. Coppola wasted no time in butting heads with the studio suits at Paramount, casting who he wanted where he wanted them cast. Paramount was in financial trouble at the time and needed a big hit, so Coppola’s reluctance to play ball caused a great many rifts on the set. Coppola grew more paranoid as the studio execs flirted with replacing him and shadowing him with another director throughout. Production and budget expanded and tensions arose, until the film was released to critical and commercial success.

The Godfather was a game changer. Until this point in film history, gangster films were all tough talking, fedora-wearing, cops-and-robbers pictures where the crooks held their pistols at their hip. The realism and epic scope of The Godfather was a revelation to the genre and to the way films would be made henceforth. The film would go on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and would open every door for Coppola that may have been closed forever had the film not been a success. Two years later, Coppola’s sequel, The Godfather Part II, would have even more success at the Academy Awards, where Coppola would win Best Director and the films would be the first sequel to win Best Picture. That same year, however, Coppola showed he was more than a hired studio hand, directing a smaller, more intimate thriller, The Conversation.

The Conversation stars Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert, and a cripplingly private man, who believes his surveillance job is leading to the murder of two people. While not as commercially successful as his Godfather films, The Conversation is a film Coppola had been wanting to make for years, and was able to do so after the success of The Godfather. It is widely seen as one of the best thrillers of the decade, and would win the Palm D’Or at Cannes that spring. Coppola’s next film, Apocalypse Now, unarguably one of the finest war films to ever see the silver screen, definitely took something out of him.

The production hell of Apocalypse Now is an article in and of itself, and is documented in the film Hearts of Darkness, a behind-the-scenes documentary about the production filmed by Coppola’s wife. Coppola was convinced the film would be a disaster, but it turned out to be a darkly revelatory bit of filmmaking, a tour-de-force the likes of which has never, and may never, be challenged. Coppola poured his soul and his sanity into the production of Apocalypse Now, and despite all the heartache and emotional strife of the production he wound up making a staple of American cinema.

The 80s were much more low key for Coppola, as he would direct smaller pictures like Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, and perhaps his most popular film of the decade, The Outsiders. In 1986 he would direct his nephew, Nicolas Cage, in Peggy Sue Got Married. The film would become a modest success, and would launch Cage’s career. Coppola directed only four films in the 90s, the first one being the final piece of the Godfather trilogy. While it collected a hefty number of Oscar nominations, The Godfather Part III is undoubtedly the black sheep of the trilogy, clumsy at parts and suffering from a poor acting job by Coppola’s daughter (and much more successful director than actor), Sofia. Two years later, Coppola would ambitiously remake Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

The film is wild and sporadic and quite messy, but thrives on the creative ambition of Coppola and the dedication of Gary Oldman as the Prince of Darkness. While not a completely satisfying picture, Coppola’s version of Dracula became one of the highest grossing films of 1992. From there, Coppola made his most confounding decision to direct the Robin Williams comedy, Jack, a sterile and melodramatic comedy about a boy who ages rapidly. A year later, he would direct a John Grisham story, The Rainmaker, and the film would come and go without making more than a dent in the film landscape. This was not where Coppola was best anymore, making studio films. It would be a decade before he would direct again.

It was clear, in 2007, that Coppola had turned his back on the conventional studio system. He directed Youth Without Youth, a bewildering, time-traveling, linguistically-based drama that is even more confusing than that description. The film was panned, and rightfully so as it is disastrously confusing and visually murky. Coppola would go deeper into independent filmmaking in 2009 with the deeply personal Tetro, a film starring Vincent Gallo and focusing on an Italian-American family. This year, Coppola is directinf a supernatural thriller, Twixt, starring Val Kilmer. The promotional trailer can be found on YouTube, and shows the makings of a lurid and compelling gothic thriller.

Some may argue that Francis Ford Coppola has lost his touch as a director. I don’t think this is the case. What I see is an auteur trying to change the way he makes movies, experimenting on a smaller scale, with more introspective pictures. He has made all the mainstream blockbuster studio pictures he will ever need to make; why not challenge himself and the audience? It is rare to see a filmmaker or an actor reinvent himself in his later years instead of mailing in performances and films. Just look at Robert DeNiro. And it’s apparent the directing style of his daughter, Sofia, has influenced his filmmaking recently. He is shrinking the scale, trying something different, and while the result may not always be the best, you cannot blame him for giving the effort.