Vietnam on Film: Apocalypse Now (1979) Final Cut
Director: Francis Ford Coppola Run Time: 182 min. Rating: R Release Year: 1979
Starring: Frederic Forrest, Laurence Fishburne, Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall
Country: United States
Language: English, French, Vietnamese
Vietnam on Film: 50 Years Later
A collection of films presenting the war’s origins and lasting impact. Presented by Gateway Film Center in partnership with the National Veterans Museum, the National Veterans Film Festival, and the Ohio History Connection.
Join us for the final presentation, Apocalypse Now Final Cut, the definitive version of Francis Ford Coppola’s vivid Palme d’Or-winning war epic.
About the film:
At the height of the Vietnam war, American Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, “does not exist, nor will it ever exist.” His goal is to locate – and eliminate – a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has reportedly massacred hundreds of innocent people and set up his own fiefdom in the jungle. Willard and his crew encounter strange sights and people on their surreal journey into the heart of darkness.
“Apocalypse Now is not merely the greatest film to come out of the Vietnam experience but one of the great works about the madness of our times.”
After a notoriously difficult production, Apocalypse Now was honored with the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered unfinished. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards – including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor for Robert Duvall – and won Best Cinematography and Best Sound. Considered one of the greatest films ever made, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2000.
In April 2019, Coppola premiered the definitive version of his film, Apocalypse Now Final Cut – restored from the original camera negative at 4K – for the 40th anniversary screening at the Tribeca Film Festival.
About the filmmaker:
Francis Ford Coppola is an influential film director, producer, and screenwriter. Along with other New Hollywood filmmakers, his unconventional ideas challenged contemporary filmmaking and helped shape American cinema. In 1969, Coppola and George Lucas founded American Zoetrope, an innovative, independent film production company based in San Francisco that has produced feature films for directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, Wim Wenders, Godfrey Reggio, and Coppola’s daughter Sofia.
Among his own projects, Coppola co-wrote the script for Franklin J. Schaffner’s Patton (1970). He then revolutionized the gangster genre with The Godfather (1972), and The Godfather Part II (1974) became the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. He won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for The Conversation (1974) followed by his vivid Vietnam war epic Apocalypse Now (1979), making him one of only nine filmmakers to have won the award twice. His other features include The Rain People (1969), The Outsiders (1983), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), and The Rainmaker (1997). Among other accolades, Coppola has won five Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, and a British Academy Film Award (BAFTA). He recently wrapped filming on his upcoming feature Megalopolis.
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