As the US Army sinks deeper into the Vietnam War, attempting to dig out the Vietcong from an impenetrable jungle, one officer, Captain Willard, is sent on a mission by the Special Forces to locate and liquidate Colonel Kurtz, an ex-Green Beret who cruelly rules over a primitive “mountain people,” trenched in at the Cambodian border. –Cannes Film Festival

Director

Francis Ford Coppola

He was born in 1939 in Detroit, USA, but he grew up in a New York suburb in a creative, supportive Italian-American family. His father was a composer and musician Carmine Coppola. His mother had been an actress. Francis Ford Coppola graduated with a degree in drama from Hofstra University, and did graduate work at UCLA in filmmaking. He was training as assistant with filmmaker Roger Corman, working in such capacities as soundman, dialogue director, associate producer and, eventually, director of Dementia 13 (1963), Coppola’s first feature film. During the next four years, Coppola was involved in a variety of script collaborations, including writing an adaptation of This Property is Condemned, by Tennessee Williams (with Fred Coe and Edith Sommer), and screenplays for Is Paris Burning?, and Patton, the film for which Coppola won a Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award. In 1966, Coppola’s 2nd film brought him critical acclaim and a Master of Fine Arts degree. In 1969, Coppola and George… read more

In 1971, Coppola’s film The Godfather (1972) became one of the highest-grossing movies in history and brought him an Oscar for writing the screenplay with Mario Puzo The film was a Best Picture Academy Award-winner, and also brought Coppola a Best Director Oscar nomination. Following his work on the screenplay for The Great Gatsby (1974), Coppola’s next film was The Conversation (1974), which was honored with the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and brought Coppola Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscar nominations. Also released that year, The Godfather: Part II (1974). rivaled the success of The Godfather (1972), and won six Academy Awards, bringing Coppola Oscars as a producer, director and writer. Coppola then began work on his most ambitious film, Apocalypse Now (1979), a Vietnam War epic that was inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1993) (TV). Released in 1979, the acclaimed film won a Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and two Academy Awards . Also that year, Coppola executive produced the hit The Black Stallion (1979). With George Lucas, Coppola executive produced Kagemusha, directed by Akira Kurosawa, and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, directed by Paul Schrader, and based on the life and writings of Yukio Mishima. Coppola also executive produced such films as The Escape Artist (1982), Hammett (1982) The Black Stallion Returns (1983), Barfly (1987), Wind (1992), The Secret Garden (1993) etc.

He helped to make a star of his nephew, Nicolas Cage. Personal tragedy hit in 1986 when his son Gio died in a boating accident. Francis Ford Coppola is one of America’s most erratic, energetic and controversial filmmakers. —IMDb

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uglyfact:filmsaremadeoutoffilms

18Jun13

"Never get out of the boat. Absolutely right. Unless, you were going all the fucking way."

Rebeca Magnus

7May13

Holy-....

Joosep Ehasalu

1Apr13

A nice boatride of a film.

Leandro Schonfelder

27Mar13

The concept of "going down the river" is the (physical) merging of story, what was going on in the characters minds and also what was happening behind the cameras: heading for an unknown destination, with uncertain goals, carried by outer forces that makes them vulnerable and susceptible to chaos. If "every film is a documentary of its own making" like Rivette once said, this is one of its most accomplished examples

Johnde and 2 others like this

Trevor Tillman, Bruno Leal

Leandro Schonfelder

27Mar13

- even its surreal touches materializes the state of dystopian dizziness that characters and creators were in on this Freudian quest for the inner self. On the other hand, like the water that flows down the river, all this confusion is carried with great cohesion - even with all of its constant ellipsis, it is a very linear film. It is needed to say that i'm referring to the original cut, since the "Redux" version not only cuts the flow but also breaks down the narrative line: the extended surfing scene, where they steal kilgore's board inserts a comic element that's completely out of the context, specially for willard; the playboy bunnies aftermath does something similar, but also breaks the tension that's beggining to grow (and since its extremely long, also destroys the pacing); the french mansion, although being an interesting idea of something dreamlike, as if they were arriving at an aleatory state of mind and time, its excruciatingly long and terribly inserted (in the original cut, the fog that they get in and out does more or less the same job in a matter of three shots). In other words, the "Redux" version serves just as a curiosity.