A wedding in a Long Island garden, a horse's head in a producer's bed, and an offer that cannot be refused (1972)
The Godfather — from Mario Puzo; Marlon Brando won Best Actor and refused the award.
Film · Hollywood
Francis Ford Coppola
born 1939 · American
New Hollywood
Francis Ford Coppola had the most extraordinary run of any director of the 1970s, taking two Palmes d'Or and five Academy Awards in a single decade, before nearly ruining himself with films that no studio wanted to make. His great subject is the family as an empire, and power passing from one generation to the next. He has gone on financing his own projects from his Napa winery into his late eighties.
How to spot them
- ▸Family dynasties, succession and the corruption of a son; Catholic ritual intercut with violence
- ▸Operatic scale, long dissolves, and Gordon Willis's near-black interiors in the crime films
- ▸Bravura set-pieces staged like arias — a baptism, a helicopter attack, a wedding
- ▸A clan of collaborators: his father Carmine composing, his sister Talia Shire acting, his daughter Sofia and nephew Nicolas Cage
- ▸Vast personal financial risk, from a self-funded Philippines shoot to a self-funded epic in his eighties
Key films
A surveillance expert bugs a couple in Union Square, then tears his own flat apart hunting for a microphone (1974)
The Conversation — Gene Hackman as Harry Caul; it won the Palme d'Or in 1974.
A young Sicilian immigrant's rise intercut with his son's Nevada decline, and a kiss on the mouth in Havana (1974)
The Godfather Part II — the first sequel to win Best Picture, and his Best Director Oscar.
Helicopters attack a village to Wagner, and a colonel waits at the head of a Cambodian river (1979)
Apocalypse Now — from Conrad's Heart of Darkness; it shared the Palme d'Or with The Tin Drum.
Two gangs of Tulsa teenagers, greasers against socs; 'Stay gold' (1983)
The Outsiders — from S. E. Hinton, with a cast of future stars.
A middle-aged woman faints at her high-school reunion and wakes in 1960 (1986)
Peggy Sue Got Married — Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage.
A Transylvanian count in a blood-red robe, with in-camera effects and no digital work (1992)
Bram Stoker's Dracula — Gary Oldman in the title role; it won three Oscars for its craft.
A self-financed fable of an architect who can stop time, rebuilding a decaying New Rome (2024)
Megalopolis — funded by selling part of his winery, and a famous commercial failure.
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Detroit on 7 April 1939 and raised in Queens; polio confined him to bed as a child, where he worked puppets and a home projector
- •He learned the trade with Roger Corman and won his first Oscar for co-writing Patton (1970)
- •He has won two Palmes d'Or — for The Conversation in 1974 and Apocalypse Now in 1979, the latter shared with Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum
- •He won five Academy Awards in the 1970s, including Best Director and Best Picture for The Godfather Part II
- •The Apocalypse Now shoot in the Philippines ran for well over a year: a typhoon destroyed the sets, Martin Sheen had a heart attack, and Marlon Brando arrived overweight and without having read the book; his wife Eleanor's footage became the documentary Hearts of Darkness
- •One from the Heart (1982) lost so much money that it bankrupted his American Zoetrope studio
- •His father Carmine Coppola shared the Oscar for the score of The Godfather Part II; Talia Shire is his sister and Nicolas Cage his nephew
- •He received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 2010, and in April 2025 the 50th AFI Life Achievement Award, presented by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg
- •He spent a reported $120 million of his own money on Megalopolis, which took a small fraction of that at the box office
- •Still working at 87, he is developing an adaptation of Edith Wharton's Glimpses of the Moon in southern Italy
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- Variety — Francis Ford Coppola pays tribute to Robert Duvall
- Francis Ford Coppola — The Godfather Notebook