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.