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| Francis
Ford Coppola |
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| Director
/ Screenwriter / Producer / Composer |
| 1939 - |
| Born April 7,
Detroit, Michigan, USA |
| Key
Production Country: USA |
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Key Genres: Drama,
Crime Drama, Gangster Film, Crime,
Coming-of-Age |
| Key
Collaborators: Dean
Tavoularis (Production Designer), Barry Malkin (Editor), Robert Duvall (Leading
Player), Frederic
Forrest (Leading Player), Fredric S. Fuchs (Producer), Fred Roos
(Producer), James Caan (Leading Character Player), Carmine Coppola (Composer),
Al Pacino (Leading Player), Mario Puzo (Screenwriter) |
| Highly
Recommended: The
Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974), The Conversation (1974), Apocalypse Now (1979) |
| Recommended: Rumble
Fish (1983) |
| Worth
a Look: The
Rain People (1969), One From the Heart (1982), Peggy Sue Got Married
(1986), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), The Godfather Part III (1990),
Bram Stoker's Dracula
(1992) |
| Links: [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [ All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[
American Zoetrope ] [ Salon
Feature ] [
Academy of
Achievement Biography ] [ Guardian
Unlimited Interview (2002) ] [ 1980's
BBC Interview by Christopher Frayling ] [ BBC
Audio Interview (1983) ] [
A Biography by Jon Matthew ] [
Filmbug Biography ]
[
Time Interview (2006)
] [
Miami Herald Article (2007) ] [
MovieMaker Interview (2007)
] [
Oregonian Interview (2008)
] |
| Books: [
Francis
Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life ] [ Francis
Ford Coppola: Close Up - The Making of His Movies ] [ Hollywood
Auteur: Francis Coppola ] [ Francis
Ford Coppola: Interviews ] [ Whom
God Wishes to Destroy: Francis Coppola and the New Hollywood ] [ Coppola: A
Biography ] |
| DVD's:
[ Amazon
] |
| 1,000
Greatest Films: The
Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974), The Conversation (1974),
Apocalypse Now (1979), The Godfather Part III (1990) |
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"Coppola
restlessly veers between commercial and personal projects,
social criticism and a celebration of ritual tradition; as an
artist he is as divided a personality as many of his creations.
That's why, perhaps, his finest work is ironic and ambivalent:
the cross-cutting between baptism and bloody murder in The
Godfather, the conflict between professionalism and ethics
in The Conversation, the idea that war can be horrific
and exciting in Apocalypse Now. Sadly, his recent work is
a pale shadow of those audacious, ambitious movies." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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"His
reputation has fallen a good deal as a filmmaker in the years
since Apocalypse Now. But no American career has had such
endless, entertaining turmoil, or says as much about making
movies in America now. No one retains so many jubilant traits of
the kid moviemaker, or has inspired darker comments." - David
Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002) |
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"Over
the years Francis Coppola has teetered between success and
disaster, often rising like a phoenix from the ashes every time
his career seems doomed. He remains one of America's most
creative, if erratic, filmmakers, his place in motion picture
history secured by The Godfather films." - (The
MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994) |
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"Coppola deals with issues of contemporary America: the
alienation of the young in You're a Big Boy Now (67), the
disenfranchised woman in The Rain People (69), the
invasion of privacy in The Conversation (74), organized
crime in The Godfather (72), and the Vietnam War in
Apocalypse Now (78)." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"The essence of cinema
is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary
images of people during emotional moments, or images in a
general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy." -
Francis Ford Coppola |
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"You have to really be
courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise you'll
just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable
will be lost." -
Francis Ford Coppola |
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