Coppola by Peter Cowie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"'It was a film about morality, and there's not much place in America for those kinds of themes.'"
(Francis Coppola's quote about his Apocalypse Now)

Most people, when asked to name a Francis Ford Coppola movie, would say The Godfather. Indeed, it is a great movie, one of the best in the history of world's cinematography. The Godfather Part II, while perhaps slightly less popular, is critically even more acclaimed. I admire all three parts of Godfather yet I prefer two other films directed by Mr. Coppola: Apocalypse Now and The Conversation. I wouldn't be able to say which of these two I love more, they are certainly among the 10 best movies I have ever seen. In my view, no movie directed by Mr. Coppola after the early 1990s comes even close to the greatness of his early masterpieces so Peter Cowie's biography of the great director, titled simply Coppola, which was published in 1994, is as timely today as it had been 25 years ago.

Coppola is a great biography, unlike the book about Janis Joplin that I reviewed two months ago Pearl or, particularly, the utter disaster of Led Zeppelin bio Stairway To Heaven . In addition to recounting Francis Coppola's life story, Mr. Cowie gives the reader a serious, deep (sometimes perhaps too deep!) and thoroughly captivating analysis of all his films on the background of the social, cultural, political, and movie business environment. The analyses of films are seamlessly merged with the portrait of the times.

We read about Mr. Coppola's Italian roots, his childhood, his overcoming polio, and - naturally - his early fascination with movie projectors and tape recorders. Then come his studies in the Theater Arts Department at Hofstra, graduate studies at UCLA, and the apprenticeship with Roger Corman, the "Z-movie director."

I am now jumping over to the chapter focused on The Godfather. Mr. Cowie writes:

"The notion of family as a paradigm for American capitalism - survival of the fittest, the ruthless annihilation of critics, and the amassing of money which in turn purchases power [...]"

I was eagerly waiting for the author's treatment of The Conversation and I am happy to report that he holds this movie in extremely high esteem:

"No more intense or impassioned film exists in the Coppola canon."

Then comes the chapter about Apocalypse Now. The dramatic story of making this movie, particularly the deeply traumatic events that happened on location in the Philippines are rather well known (by the way, I absolutely have to read Eleanor Coppola's Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now); I just have to emphasize how wonderfully understated the author's coverage of these events is: a lesser author could have offered pages and pages of salacious details. I absolutely adore this chapter and all the quotable passages the reader can find here, for instance:

"[...] the psychological plot from Heart of Darkness, the traumatic ordeal of an entire generation in the Southeast Asian conflict, Francis's own odyssey, and the melodramatic, pop-opera idiom so accurately reflecting time and place."

I have a minor complaint here: although a careful reader may draw the conclusion reading "between the lines" of the text, the author never explicitly compares the grossly under-rated performance of Martin Sheen as Captain Willard with the grossly over-rated performance of Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz. Well, it would be unusual to agree on everything with the author. Chapters on The Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, Bram Stoker's Dracula and several other movies follow.

The book is not only the story of Francis Coppola and his movies, it is also a story of Coppola's Zoetrope Studios. The book is very well written, and well researched, with its 40 pages of detailed filmography, references, and index. I have also found it compulsively readable. Very highly recommended!

Four-and-a-half stars.

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