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Francis Ford
Coppola |
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Director / Screenwriter /
Producer |
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1939 - |
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Born April 7,
Detroit, Michigan, USA |
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Key
Production Country: USA |
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Key Genres: Drama,
Gangster Film,
Crime Drama, Crime,
Coming-of-Age |
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Key
Collaborators: Dean Tavoularis (Production Designer), Barry Malkin (Editor), Robert Duvall (Leading
Player), Carmine Coppola (Composer), Frederic
Forrest (Leading Player), Fredric S. Fuchs (Producer), Fred Roos
(Producer), Diane Lane (Leading Character Player), James Caan (Leading Character Player), Mario Puzo (Screenwriter) |
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Highly
Recommended: The
Godfather (1972)*, The Godfather Part II (1974)*, The Conversation (1974)*, Apocalypse Now (1979)* |
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Recommended: Rumble
Fish (1983) |
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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) |
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Approach with Caution:
Dementia 13 (1963),
You're a Big Boy Now (1966), The Outsiders (1983), The Cotton Club
(1984), Gardens of Stone (1987), New York Stories (1989) [co-directed by
Martin Scorsese
& Woody Allen],
The Rainmaker (1997) |
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Duds: Jack (1996) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section. |
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Links: [
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[
American Zoetrope ] [
Salon
Feature ] [
Academy of
Achievement Biography ] [
Guardian
Unlimited Interview (2002) ] [
1980s
BBC Interview by Christopher Frayling ] [
BBC
Audio Interview (1983) ] [
A Biography by Jon Matthew ] [
Filmbug Biography ] [
Time Interview (2006)
] [
Wikipedia ]
[
MovieMaker Interview (2007) ] [
Oregonian Interview (2008)
] [
MUBI ]
[
Flickering Myth Profile ] |
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Books:
[
Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola]
[
Masters of Cinema: Francis Ford Coppola]
[
The Francis Ford Coppola Encyclopedia]
[
Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Trilogy] [
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 ] |
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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."
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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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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director
that we haven't seen include Finian's Rainbow
(1968), Youth without Youth (2007), and Tetro (2009). |
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