FRANCE: FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA RELEASES A NEW VERSION OF VIETNAM CLASSIC MOVIE "APOCALYPSE NOW" AT THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

Record ID: 861059

  • Title: FRANCE: FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA RELEASES A NEW VERSION OF VIETNAM CLASSIC MOVIE "APOCALYPSE NOW" AT THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
  • Date: 10th May 2001
  • Summary: SCU MAGAZINE CAHIERS CINEMA
  • Embargoed: 25th May 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: CANNES, FRANCE
  • City:
  • Country: France
  • Topics:
  • Reuters ID: LVA5ZVPKSQ8I9UUBWE2R8N58DWF4
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  • Story Text: While Australian actress Nicole Kidman grooved the night away with 'Moulin Rouge' director Baz Luhrman at a party held in her honour, Francis Ford Coppola arrived in Cannes for the screening of his latest offering.
    It's 22 years since Francis Ford Coppola brought 'Apocalypse Now' to the Cannes Film Festival. The film, not even complete at that stage, snapped up the prestigious Palme D'Or. Now the cult Vietnam war epic is headlining at Cannes once more, with an extra 53 minutes of action that was originally left on the cutting room floor.
    Director Francis Ford Coppola went to hell and back to get his cult Vietnam war epic "Apocalypse Now" to the screens.
    Twenty-two years later and his sanity fully restored, Coppola is returning this week to the Cannes Film Festival where the movie made its triumphant premiere, to unveil a longer version of the classic that he says is truer to his original vision.
    "Apocalypse Now Redux" adds 53 minutes of action originally left on the cutting room floor, putting further flesh on the nightmarish tale of U.S. army captain Ben Willard dispatched deep into the jungle to kill rogue Green Beret Colonel Walter Kurtz.
    "The themes emerge more clearly and the film is funnier, sexier, more romantic, more political and more bizarre, with historical perspective," Coppola said earlier this year when the project was announced.
    One of the United States' most erratic and energetic filmakers, Coppola brought the original "Apocalypse Now" to Cannes in 1979 as a work-in-progress to kill off rumours that the movie was unreleasable despite five years in the making.
    The film, starring Marlon Brando as the despotic Kurtz and Martin Sheen as the loner Willard, blew audiences away with its psychedelic delirium. Even though it was incomplete, it won the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or.
    However, U.S. critics gave the film mixed reviews and Coppola himself was never happy with the final cut, believing he had jeopardised his artistic integrity by bowing to studio pressure and keeping the film down to just over two hours.
    Hence the new "definitive" version, which runs at a mammoth three hours 17 minutes and opens out of competition on the French Riviera on Friday.
    --
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