Frances Coppola

I chose Frances Ford Coppola for my Auteur due to his interesting journey and exposition in film making and to the media as a whole.   Coppola was gifted with the genes of entertainment being that his father was a composer and mother was a successful actress.   His interest in film originally came from photography where he forged his creativity, recovering from his Polio affliction.   Going to school at UCLA, he made became friends with Spielberg and Lucas and went on to film some of the acclaimed movies of all time, The Godfather Series, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now.

Now speaking from the box-office point of Hollywood, a great director creates a critically acclaimed movie that brings in substantial return for the studio.   Being an auteur on the other hand, implies a innovative precision to both work and ideal when creating films.  Coppola’s film history would make him critically acclaimed, however his “next life” of film pales in comparison.

First, since the assignment requires it, I’ll mention some themes of his “old career”.  Coppola use of light and shadow can easily be seen in the God Father Series and Apocalypse Now.  In a dissention into madness, his characters traverse their inner demons to the brink of humanity.   As his characters emerge from the darkness, we as the audience thrillingly go along for the ride.  Or as in the case of the Conversation, as he plays his Saxophone amongst his ruined house, the audience too is stricken by sadness.

During the latter part of Coppola’s career, he seemed to have fallen off the film radar.  His Bram stokers Dracula was heralded as a masterpiece of horror cinema.  He created a few pop movies in the 80s as well, however due to some financial pitfalls, it seemed that Coppola’s time had come to an end.

Away from the assembly line of Hollywood, Coppola branded his “new life” in film cinema. All of Coppola’s movies deal with family structure and social relationships; themes have been grounded in his own upbringing.  Coppola wanted to ground his film career in the same fashion, creating movies for him and not the masses.     Veering from Hollywood’s focus on gross profit, Coppola has separated himself from the modern film industry by financing his own films and producing them in different countries.   He his quest of being a next generation film maker, he only works in digital film and hires 100% of his work-force from the country he films in.  

Coppola explains this difference in an interview with The Film Talk group. “Through digital photography we now have the ability to compose a film in the same manner that a soundtrack is scored.  You don’t cut the film in a sense, you compose the film.  With this you have total freedom over the images and thus how those images relate to one another.  The cinema process is more of a composition process then a cutting process. ”   

Coppola has filmed two movies currently in his “new life”: Youth without Youth and Tetro.  When watching these films you get a distinctive difference the rehashed Hollywood scripts.  The delicate battle of cinema and soul witnessed within Tetro it hard to describe.  Not only is the production and mis en sang revolutionary, but you realize that these aren’t hardened actors, but everyday people like you or me.   

Maltese Falcon: Detective Stories

Maltese Falcon:

As I read the Maltese falcon I thought of the many types of detective stories that I have read over the years.  Although the Film Nior genre is very enticing, the one type of story that rings out in my mind from my childhood was reading the Dick Tracy books and comics.    This types of stories work upon the same thread as the adventure tales, however they add a puzzle as a twist.  We as the reader are tempted to help solve the case, crime in a game of literary “who dun it”.  It brings us into the fold and helps us to be engrossed in the tale.  Some of the other heralds to the detective story is the classic red herring.  Letting the reader believe one thing then revealing another spices the story and our perception of the characters.   This is taken a step further in Spy novels which build upon this genre. 

With spy novels ( at least in my opinion ) I always suspect that there is a double agent and am always waiting for his reveal.  With a detective story, there may or may not have a Judas in the crowd.  This fascination for looking behind the scenes into the crimes that are committed in our mist helps readers put a face to the headlines of murder and treachery in the tabloids.  Modern day CSI stories or “detective” + “science” genres still further placates this desire for the public to put a face to the crimes that are committed every day.   Whether it lessens the impact of the true nature of the vicious crimes or it is a way for the public to look past the gruesome nature of the crime is still the greater mystery that these stories present.  

Lolita Recap

I chose the following caption to recap.  

This then is my story. I have reread it. It has bits of marrow

sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies. At

this or that twist of it I feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding

into deeper and darker waters than I care to probe. I have

camouflaged what I could so as not to hurt people. And I

have toyed with many pseudonyms for myself before I hit on

a particularly apt one. There are in my notes "Otto Otto" and

"Mesmer Mesmer" and "Lambert Lambert," but for some

reason I think my choice expresses the nastiness best.

When I started, fifty-six days ago, to write Lolita, first in the

psychopathic ward for observation, and then in this wellheated,

albeit tombal, seclusion, I thought I would use these

notes in toto at my trial, to save not my head, of course, but

my soul. In mind-composition, however, I realized that I could

not parade living Lolita.

Even through all the madness, the author still has the mind not to not publish his work till after both he and Dolly had both died.  His hurt both internally and externally ( from imprisonment to death ) is weighed on how his desires were never fulfilled, however I feel that his distain for himself and her is in the same comparison as someone dying from cancer. 

You don’t hate the cancer, but you hate the spread.  The individual desires don’t measure in his mind, but how the his entire being aches for the passion of the “whole”  When we look at what people feel sorry about or what their needs are, rarely do we have a small list with bulleted points.  More or less we have a lacking sense of ourselves, a yearning beyond our sense of comprehension.  Lust tends to do that, but its because our desires are not reciprocated.    Now if Dolly had never lead our author on, those yearnings would never have been stoked in the fire of lust.  Lust only holds to our base presumptions of what could happen, but never will.  Secretly everyone who lusts ( or loves unconditionally without equal reciprocation ) knows they will never have what they desire, but the temptation to “maybe” get it if you try hard enough outweighs the logical reasoning.

I find the lines interesting where he states that he did not write these memoirs to explain to others why this happened or why he did what he did, but to confess these desires to his inner soul who drove the madness in hope of self forgiveness.  Although not completely in line with the nature of Lolita’s age, most older men tend to desire younger women ( lets say 18-26 ) not necessarily because of the woman’s age or beauty.  But, just as a midlife crisis, its makes them feel young again.   Having someone younger desire you is akin to an expert praising your work.  It gives purpose to what you do and who you are at the primal level of satisfaction.