Apocalypse Now (USA, 1979)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Starring Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper

When it comes to reviewing films, there are two kinds of masterpieces. One is the film in which every single scene is immaculately perfect, and your emotional involvement supports and compliments this perfection. The other, more contentious kind is a film which on paper is riddled with faults, but the experience of watching it is so intoxicating that all such faults can be forgiven or forgotten.With war films, the first camp is defined by Full Metal Jacket and the second by Apocalypse Now. Where Stanley Kubrick's film is meticulously constructed and judged to clinical precision, Francis Ford Coppola's is simultaneously a bloated, meandering mess and one of the greatest films of all time. Full Metal Jacket is the more accessible and perhaps more rewarding, but on the big screen Apocalypse Now is nothing short of knockout, as all the elements of Coppola's epic collide in a full-on and frightening story of darkness, madness and war.As with so many great films, the production history of Apocalypse Now leads us to believe that things should have turned out very differently. John Milius, who had written much of Clint Eastwood's dialogue in Dirty Harry, drafted a loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness by the middle of 1969. Originally titled The Psychedelic Soldier, George Lucas was set to direct before being hired to helm American Graffiti. In 1974 the project came to Coppola, who had just seen both The Conversation and The Godfather Part II nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.

Shooting for the re-titled Apocalypse Now began in March 1976 and was scheduled to last for five months. Soon after shooting began, Harvey Keitel was replaced by Martin Sheen and in May the entire set was destroyed by Typhoon Olga. When filming resumed a month later, Marlon Brando turned up heavily overweight and completely bald; Coppola compensated by dressing him in black, shooting him in shadow and using a body double in the wide shots. While shooting the ending in 1977, Sheen suffered a heart attack and had to walk a quarter of mile to get medical attention. By the time Coppola finished editing the film for release in August 1979, Apocalypse Now was two years late and three times over budget.If you attempted to write down all the things that are wrong with Apocalypse Now, it wouldn't take you long to get quite a big list. For a start, the film is too long - or at least, it feels too long. The story of Captain Willard travelling up the Nung River unfolds at a very leisurely pace, with every section of the river having some major significance in terms of plot or mood. There is no montage or time-lapse footage of the boat rapidly reaching the Cambodian border, and the longer it goes on the less sure you feel that Coppola actually knew where the story was going.There is a very fine line in screenwriting between poetic and ponderous, and Apocalypse Now crawls along this line like the snail on the edge of a straight razor. The actual scenes of Brando reading poetry in the temple are dull; the fact that we can't always make out what he's saying annoys us at first, but after a few lines we couldn't care less. By the time you have reached the temple, you are more or less certain that there will be some kind of brutal final confrontation between Willard and Kurtz, so that even as you sit there soaking up T. S. Eliot, you wish that things would get a move on.Then there is the problem of characters. Martin Sheen is absolutely terrific as Captain Willard, and in spite of his incoherence Marlon Brando manages to match him in the last truly good performance of his career. But as is the way with epics, a lot of the supporting cast don't get even half the screen time they deserve. When you've got a film featuring Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper, you expect them to be on screen a lot. But only Duvall gets the screen time and the character depth he needs, with the other two becoming largely superfluous.Finally, there are aspects of Apocalypse Now which reek of the indulgence present in New Hollywood and 1970s filmmaking in general. This is typified by Coppola's self-referential cameo as the director of a war documentary; Sheen walks into his shot at the river mouth, and he shouts: "Don't look at the camera! Keep on fighting!". If Coppola was making a point about the psychological role of a director, it's handled a lot more clumsily and self-importantly than Peeping Tom. Add in the sequence of a live cow actually being butchered and you have more than enough reason to dismiss this film.So far, Apocalypse Now would seem like the Vietnam equivalent of Gone With the Wind: commendable for its scale and ambition, but over-long with too many characters and several questionable scenes. And yet, for all the truth in what I have said, none of it really matters. For Apocalypse Now is not a film to be dissected but to be experienced; it will burn its way into your synapses in a mixture of horror and wonder. Watching it is less like making a Swiss watch than walking into a cloud of hallucinogenic vapours. If you refuse to go with it, you won't get it, but if you do, it'll be one hell of a trip.Instead of recreating the experience of Vietnam with a deliberate and calculated sense of hindsight, Apocalypse Now seeks to put the audience in the same place as the soldiers so they can decide how war felt and why men behaved the way they did. Because the script was written during the war, there is no attempt made by Coppola to lecture the audience one way or the other. There are no easy answers to the questions of right and wrong, and the film's slow, meandering tone is vital for us to soak up as much information as we can. Whatever our conclusions, we feel like we've been through hell with these characters, and been changed irrevocably by the horrors of war.So much of Apocalypse Now is about the chaos of war, and so it's appropriate (at least to some extent) that the film should feel out of control. The relaxed discussions at the beginning, in which Willard's mission is laid out, give us some kind of grounding so that we know where he will end up. But the film is populated by profound and moving insights into the inherent anarchy and absurdity of war. These range from Robert Duvall's insistence on surfing at the beach to the post near the Cambodian border where the troops are fighting without a commanding officer. These scenes produce reactions ranging from laughter to sadness to genuine fright, and often all three at once.Apocalypse Now keeps adding more and more literary aspects to its central story, like someone throwing books into a library that had just been set on fire. The final showdown between Willard and Kurtz is an inventive restaging of The Golden Bough, in which the murderer kills the mad king and becomes king himself. Much of Martin Sheen's dialogue is culled from Michael Herr's Dispatches, which would later be used by Kubrick on Full Metal Jacket. And Kurtz takes on aspects of both Eliot's 'The Hollow Men' and Genghis Khan, whom Coppola studied while the sets were rebuilt.

At the heart of Apocalypse Now is the darkness at the heart of all mankind, and the ability of such darkness to consume all that is good and just and sane if fully unleashed. Kurtz has tipped over into this darkness by his experiences in Vietnam. The war has caused him to see the futility and the nonsense in his orders, and he now lives out his days as a hollow man who has understood evil at the cost of losing his soul. Willard kills Kurtz to fulfil his mission, but the very act of obedience threatens to tip him over into the same darkness. Although he manages to resist, he leaves Kurtz's kingdom as a shell of a man, his life shattered by knowledge of that same evil.Apocalypse Now is a truly extraordinary piece of work which is fully deserving of its masterpiece status. In spite of its myriad flaws, it retains an indescribable aura which leaves us shrinking into our seats, mesmerised and paralysed with fear and wonder. It's a film which damaged both Coppola as a filmmaker and the New Hollywood movement, whose reputation for indulgence had finally caught up with them. But at the dawn of the blockbuster age, it is a fantastic last hurrah and remains one of the most extraordinary experiences in American cinema.

Rating:
Verdict: New Hollywood's last hurrah

Gone With The Wind (USA, 1939)
Directed by George Cukor, Victor Fleming & Sam Wood
Starring Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland

There's no getting away from Gone with the Wind, either as a darling of the Academy or as one of the most commercially successful films of all time. Nor is there any escaping its influence on filmmaking, from its direct impact on the golden age of Hollywood, through to less desirable legacies in the shape of Out of Africa and Heaven's Gate. With a reputation exceeding that of almost any other film, it is something that everyone should see once - but probably only once.Apart from anything else, you have to admire the sheer ambition of Gone with the Wind from a production point of view. The scale of filming is immense, taking in huge barren plains, long warm sunsets, sprawling towns and every kind of weather other than snow. At a budget of $3.9m in 1939, it was already the third most expensive film ever made, behind only Hell's Angels and the 1925 version of Ben-Hur. There is nothing about the production which feels cheap or half-hearted, with impeccable craftsmanship in every set and shot.This is more remarkable when you consider the film's complex and convoluted production history. David O. Selznick purchased the rights to Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel for a record $50,000 in 1936. What followed was two years of bartering and in-fighting where Selznick and the executives at MGM and Warner Bros. grappled over matters of budgeting and distribution rights.

Gone with the Wind took nearly two years to cast, with Vivian Leigh only being installed as Scarlett a week before shooting started. Filming began in January 1939 and last for five months, during which time Selznick fired both the cinematographer Lee Garmes and original director George Cukor. His replacement, The Wizard of Oz director Victor Fleming, expressed dissatisfaction with the script, so Selznick and screenwriter Ben Hecht re-wrote the entire film in five days. In May, Fleming briefly left the production due to exhaustion, with Sam Wood being drafted in to cover.This version of events would seem to paint the production as one of ego gone mad - Selznick's, namely - and would set the film up to be a total catastrophe. But it's worth remembering just how radical aspects of Gone with the Wind were when it was first released, and how it courted controversy with the censors. This was the age of the MPAA's Production Code, in which there were clear lines between what could and could not be said or shown in a film. Clarke Gable's famous final line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" sent shockwaves through the Code's administrators, and Selznick only avoided a hefty fine by an amendment passed by the MPAA board, which permitted the use of "damn" or "hell" within an appropriate historical context.For a film that went through three directors, two cinematographers and one of the most hands-on producers in the history of Hollywood, it is remarkable that Gone with the Wind still looks and feels like a single film. The visuals in places are exceptionally beautiful, particularly the bright pink sunsets and the composition of the battle scenes. One of the best sequences comes during the Civil War part of the story, which finds Vivien Leigh wandering through acres of injured men, lying and dying all around her.In terms of its themes, Gone with the Wind explores the concepts of chivalry and honour. It is nostalgic about the age of chivalry, in which masters and their companions went through life side by side, doing what is honourable and helpful to others even at the cost of one's own life or happiness. Scarlett's multiple unhappy marriages reflect this theme, as she repeatedly makes herself unhappy out of silent respect for the marriage between Ashley and Melanie. In turn Melanie thanks Scarlett for her loyalty, delivering the film's central lines as she lies dying: "Look after Ashley, Scarlett... but... don't ever let him know."Much of this review so far has focussed on the reputation of Gone with the Wind. The positive comments made therein would seem to confirm its status as the greatest American movie of all time. Sadly, this is not the case. For when stripped of its acclaim and its trophy cabinet full of Oscars, Gone with the Wind is riddled with myriad flaws which, while not totally scuppering it, severely tarnish its image.The first, and most obvious flaw, is that the film is way, way, WAY too long. Even if we take out the intermission and the title cards, it still overstays its welcome by at least an hour, insofar as the story could have been handled in a shorter time through a simple act of compression. There is an argument that today's audience are more impatient, and would not watch a four-hour film no matter how good it was - an argument supported by the initial screenings, in which the punters begged MGM not to cut a single frame. But there are whole sections of Gone with the Wind which are so baggy and repetitive that even devotes of The Deer Hunter would struggle to resist looking at their watches.The first hour in particular is very difficult to get into, being populated by a huge number of characters who are all in some way unlikeable. The barbecue at Twelve Oaks consists essentially of spoilt rich people bitching about each other, with Vivien Leigh coming across as a childish brat who moans and screams and cries whenever she doesn't get her way. Leigh is a good actress who is undeniably beautiful, and very good at demonstrating the ambivalence of the character in her attitude to others. But we end up as ambivalent to her as she does to Ashley, and it take a lot of patience to stay with her character.Because the film is attempting to be so big in every single department, it ends up as the dictionary definition of sprawling. Although it just about manages to keep us focussed on the central characters (anchored by the great performance of Clarke Gable), the supporting cast is way too big, with potentially enthralling individuals endlessly drifting in and out. When characters do come back, they re-appear in the most contrived way imaginable; Sam, for instance, just happened to be sitting around the campfire when Scarlett was being attacked on the bridge.This brings us on the racial aspect of the film. The arguments here are the same as those surrounding The Birth of a Nation: do we accept the racial attitudes as a product of an historical period, or do we criticise such a revered film for being so deeply questionable? If we take the latter view, then the film is totally reprehensible, with almost every black character being reduced to pantomime; they never question their duty and seem incapable of functioning without being ordered around by impeccably dressed white nobles. If we accept the former, then the film is slightly more enjoyable, but the characterisation of Prissy as a screaming, incapable slave girl is still nothing short of toe-curling.In the last half hour, the film's poor storytelling is exposed and things get completely silly. In further testimony to it rambling, aimless style, most of the main characters are quickly killed off so that we arrive, very clumsily, at the union of Scarlett and Rhett. Every plot point in this section is prompted by an unfortunate death - Bonny falls from her horse like Scarlett's father, and Melanie falls mysteriously ill again, just so Scarlett can realise that Ashley never loved her. The plot drags laughably as we yearn to get to the staircase and Rhett's final line (which, of course, is not the end of the film).Gone with the Wind remains that most difficult of films: something which is so heavily flawed and hugely overrated, but also essential viewing for anyone who loves cinema. It is better than subsequent epic romances like Out of Africa because even at its weakest, baggiest moments it still feels like it is going somewhere. But its greatness is ultimately tarnished by its dated attitudes, poor storytelling and ramshackle structure. In short, it contains both the best and the worst that Hollywood has ever offered; it's massively, massively flawed, but also strangely irresistible.

Rating:
Verdict: Overrated but still essential