Left Field Cinema

The Director: Although the man has not made an uncontrovertibly great film in twenty-five years and has not died or retired in the subsequent two and a half decades since Rumble Fish; he is still one of the greatest directors to ever live. The reasons are very clear to anyone with even a fleeting understanding of cinema. Coppola is a colossus, standing tall above most of his contemporaries. Responsible for four monumentally extraordinary films in his forty-seven year career, and of those four, three are widely considered some of the greatest American films, and are often uncontested as three of the greatest films ever made without a national prefix. Beginning in the 1960’s, his first decade in film was underwhelming, as Coppola found his feet, and his voice, with films like The Terror, Dementia 13, Tonight For Sure, You’re a Big Boy Now, and The Rain People fading into general obscurity because of the mediocre to poor nature of the content. If there was anything to be gained by these films it was Coppola’s introduction to talents like James Cann and Robert Duvall, who would return to work with him again in subsequent films.

The 1970’s would be a completely different story for Coppola, and was not only his most successful decade – it was his decade, in what many consider the second golden age of Hollywood when the radicals made the important decisions, and creative freedom was at its highest in the war against television. It is no small accomplishment that Coppola is seen as the father of that decade. Coppola metaphorically owned Hollywood for ten years and produced films as important for American cinema as Casablanca, or Citizen Kane. Starting in 1972, with The Godfather, the first part of an extraordinary set of films. The Godfather introduced Coppola and Al Pacino to the world, and is generally recognised as one of the greatest films ever made. Based on Mario Puzo’s novel it is as close to flawless as physically possible, every scene has a remarkable attention to detail; this sprawling epic is a class act from opening frame to the closing credits. Using some of the finest established and new acting talents from across the United States, Coppola built a remarkable cast, headed by screen legend Marlon Brando despite the head of Paramount stating that the producers would use Brando “over his dead body”. Every actor in the cast worked twice as hard to keep up with Brando, and if there was ever a case of catching lightening in a bottle - this is it. The film and the franchise follows the highs and lows, the transitions and traditions of the Corleone family and their criminal empire, it is a powerful exploration of the Italian-American underworld. A contorted and often converse view of the American dream. But pushing past its larger frame-work and sociological implications to present a single story of the innocent son Michael, who wants nothing to do with his families business but finds himself being irretrievably pulled into the murky existence of a Mafia boss. Al Pacino and the rest of the cast are extraordinary in this highly influential film. Coppola did not miss a trick in a project that he himself was initially uninterested in. The Godfather Part II is in some respects even more impressive, taking his incredible success and continuing it with a more complex plotline switching timelines for a parallel story of a father rising to power and a son losing his soul. Part II is considered by many the greatest sequel ever made and one that uniquely surpassed the original in both emotional complexities and subtleties. Both films are indelibly linked to American popular culture with the often mis-quoted line “my father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.” Part II remains to this day the only sequel to ever win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It also truly feels like a second half to The Godfather, a natural progression from the original like it had always been intended that way. Neither film has dated either, with the exception of some unrealistic fake blood the films feel like they could have been produced this year, a testament to the quality of Coppola’s production.

The monster was still to come, with the most powerful Vietnam War movie ever made, Apocalypse Now. A literal and metaphysical decent into hell, Coppola’s expansive journey into the darkest reaches of the mind is difficult, original, edgy, bloodthirsty, lyrical and shocking. Taking literally years to complete, dogged by financial and creative difficulties, it is an achievement in itself that it was ever completed. Coppola was famously reckless and head-strong at this stage in his a career, a reputation only enhanced as it became known that George Lucas based the Star Wars character Han Solo on Coppola. Once released Apocalypse Now was increasingly considered a definitive Vietnam film. Coppola once stated that “My movie is not about Vietnam… my movie is Vietnam.” An arrogant statement, but cited as particularly accurate if not for the content, then definitely for the mood. If factual accuracy and emotional truth are mutually exclusive concepts then by rights a director may have one without the other, and emotional truth in many respects is the more valuable commodity in film. Sometimes described at Vietnam on LSD, it is a narcotic fuelled journey into the depths of despair and insanity. The hallucinogenic element only serves to amplify the films power in conjunction with its content, rather than marginalise the films meaning through disposable and exclusive drugs-based resonance. Only Full Metal Jacket comes close to this film within the genre they share, but even Kubrick’s entry with its cold condemnation of the war on communism falls short of Coppola’s gloriously over-blown spectacle. Coppola returned to the film years later to re-edit and produce an extended cut entitled Apocalypse Now Redux, which divided opinions into traditionalists and revisionists. It is no surprise that the re-edit was not met with universal applause; his earlier revision of The Godfather Parts I and II into a single chronological entity was also divisive. Stories of the Apocalypse Now production are legendary, from Martin Sheen’s heart attack to Brando and Coppola’s famous clash of egos. Like most legends, some of it is true and some of it is false, but one thing is for certain, it broke Coppola. His decadence had paid off, but never again would he succeed in such an unequivocal measure, because where as previously he jumped into the void head first, Apocalypse Now made him think twice.

Rumble Fish is also debatably his last great film, with the possible exceptions of The Godfather Part III and Dracula depending on how lenient the viewer is. Rumble Fish was a charmingly inventive film, suffering from a few flaws surrounding its focus and a dated soundtrack from Stewart Copeland. It is visually audacious but given Coppola’s other successes it feels light on content. The Godfather Part III would suffer from a lack of the subtlety which made Parts I and II classics. There is also a feeling of the unnecessary about it; the conclusion sixteen years earlier in Part II was so perfect that only a commercially driven film would dare to add anything to it. However the same criticism could just as easily be applied to Part II, and had it not triumphed on release it probably would have been chastised by critics as a self-indulgent and irrelevant cash-in. Also Coppola’s famed nepotism would finally sting him with Part III, Nicholas Cage, and Talia Shire were successful but Sophia Coppola fell flat as the Michael’s daughter, she was cruelly lampooned by audiences and critics when it was her father who had put her in the line of fire, only later in life would karma re-align for Sophia Coppola as a young talented director with a bright future in her fathers trade instead. It is as ever context which harms Part III, with a heavy set of expectations to live up to and a problematic shoot it didn’t stand a chance against its superior predecessors. Dracula was a wonderful experiment in lighting and shadows, taking the Peter Pan notion of a shadow with its own personality and putting a sinister spin on it. The film was very ambitious and in many respects still remains innovative in terms of style, the stop motion style point of view shots as Dracula makes his attacks in beast form were excellent, the vampire’s movements wonderfully eluded any form of physics or logic, and the snowy sun set for the films final set piece was equally original. But the film suffered from poor casting with all the British actors playing non-British characters, and all the British characters played by non-British actors. It also suffered from fudged set of character dynamics - never has a film been so confusing for audiences in understanding where their empathy should be placed, or for how long it should be there. In many respects it is a great love story more than a horror film, but Coppola hadn’t decided which one it was going to be, so what remains is as inspired as it is clumsy. Coppola’s time has been and gone, with later, by-the-numbers cinema like Jack and even a John Grisham adaptation, The Rainmaker. From this type of subordinate cinema, it is clear that the days of insanity in the jungle, or majestic scope with American gangsters have since become a thing of the past, with more concentration now put into producing and seeing new talents thrive in their formative years. His absence is the price both Coppola and audiences have had to pay for Apocalypse Now, such an exhausting film that it wore down whatever edge Coppola had - It was a price worth paying.

The Film: Conventionally considered his greatest work, The Godfather Parts I and II may have received the greatest critical acclaim; however it is the film he made in between which is his most artistically credible, experimental, and efficient film - The Conversation. Often overlooked and underrated it is a daring portrait of a surveillance specialist who who is hired to monitor two young people, and picks up fragments of a conversation and suspects that his targets are in danger of being murdered by his client. When he refuses to hand over the tape of the conversation he is then hounded and he too becomes a victim of surveillance.

There are several parts of The Conversation which make it stand out as a film, and not least of which is Gene Hackman’s performance; a career high point as Harry Caul. A surviencence expert who is respected and admired for his ability to bug even the safest of conversations between individuals, be them on a boat in the middle of a lake or in the centre of a crowed inner city park - Caul can get them on tape. He’s described at one point as “the best bugging man on the west coast”. But Caul is a man riddled with contradictions, both morally and personally, and this is where Coppola and Hackman have gotten into the thick of it. As the more his character intrudes on the privacy of others, his own life is increasingly intruded upon. He spends his life listening to other peoples conversations and yet is completely paranoid about the prospect of others listening to him. He values his privacy so much that he alienates all of his potential friends and lovers, but also interestingly enough he lives in Spartan surroundings, so obsessed with privacy that he actually has nothing private – except his work and his methods, which he also keeps close to his chest.

Caul is also deeply religious, taking easy offence at his co-worker for using the lords name in vain, and yet his religious views don’t intrude on his work, or the ethics there of. He is able to personally deny culpability for the consequences of his work, earlier in his career a family was murdered because of a recording he made. He’s managed to live with that by denying responsibility. But with this latest threat of innocent people being murdered, Caul can’t stand idly by any longer. Later his religion would be turned against him, as he even abandons this in his paranoia, destroying a model of the Virgin Mary to be sure a bug wasn’t planted inside. Caul is also a Laconic character for most of the time, not particularly expressive with anyone, but contradictorily he is a part time saxophonist, and has no problem expressing himself musically in front of a large crowd, in fact it seems that this is the only way Caul can express himself anymore. There is no danger in music, no incrimination except the compulsion to be artistic. Hackman plays Caul with delicacy and subtly, giving us a very believable, quiet, desperate, lonely man. A far cry from the roles we often expect Hackman to play, like The French Connections Popeye Doyle; through Caul we can truly get a sense of what a great actor Hackman is.

The Conversation is an audio visual treat, and in this sense is far more interesting than Coppola’s other films. The whole film is shot like surveillance videos, its opening image of the open courtyard from the top of a tall skyscraper is a perfect epigraph for the films visual style. Always the voyeur, always from behind something, or at a distance. Often the focus shifts like a photographer trying to get there subject sharp through a lens, sometimes the characters move behind intrusive objects, or extras wonder in front of them. Sometimes the camera will pan away from a character only for him or her to then walk forward into the frame. It is a very disorientating effect which is best seen to be understood. This is also the coldest of Coppola’s worlds, scenes often flooded with cold blue tinted or white light, scenes are notable for the heavy howling winds which move past Caul as he stands alone in a dream or in reality. His clients work in a hideous, lifeless grey stone and chrome metal monstrosity, and Caul himself keeps his office in a massive floor space that is entirely empty except a few square feet his uses in one corner. Caul is stuck, isolated in a modern hell, surrounded be characterless architecture, and unlikable people.

The visual inventiveness is matched by the sound scape, which likewise switches between different conversations with surprising effect. David Shire’s abstract score also adds greatly to the effect, often switching between soft jazz and menacing ambience, sometimes pushing the dynamic range as far as it will go, with sudden and shocking changes in volume and quality. Helping a sense of menace permeate the film. This horrific music mirrors the content too, as The Conversation frequently borders on horror, with disturbing images like blood flooding from a toilet, and assaults from behind translucent glass add to a mood of total unease and sometimes terror. As Caul states in one of his dreams: “I’m not afraid of death, I am afraid of murder”. Fear is a far reaching and prevalent force within the films narrative, and almost as important a one, as paranoia. Cauls major character flaw is that the more he thinks he knows about the people who are after him, the less he actually knows.

The Conversation is most definitely Hackman’s film, but it is also nice to seen guest turns from Robert Duvall and Harrison Ford, both playing against type with excellent results. Also a special note is also due for John Cazale, a Coppola favorite whose premature death in 1978 from Bone cancer, ensured he would retain a rare, perfect filmography, with The Conversation, The Godfather Parts I and II, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter as his complete feature credits.

The Conversation is Coppola on experimental form, but unlike Dracula for example, here the experiment is backed up by equally strong content. With great performances, perfect pacing, and interesting plotting which is not damaged by any superimposed formula. Not a typical opinion, but I actually believe The Conversation deserved to win best picture in 1975, over The Godfather Part II, if only for its efficiency of plot and experimental audio/visual techniques; both of which The Godfather sequel lacked.

M. Dawson