Word: epical
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...mini-series that brought him more millions. Three-and-a-half years ago he came close to bankruptcy when a typhoon and other problems drove the cost of Apocalypse Now from the budgeted $12 million to over $30 million; now, 18 months after its release, the Viet Nam epic is in the black. Still, Coppola can't help envying the even greater financial success of another hot moviemaker. In 1973 Coppola produced a low-budget feature by George Lucas, and the film, American Graffiti, became a surprise hit. With Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, the protege...
...Micnael Cimino presented his "contemporary" epic of men at war--in this case, the Vietnam War--and, initially, it received universally enthusiastic reviews. Most critics ignored the film's contrived, overdone script and Cimino's bland direction, and praised The Deer Hunter for its emotional power. But, after having their tears jerked and their guts wrenched for three poorly-paced hours, many viewers recognized The Deer Hunter as a thoroughly racist, reactionary depiction of America's involvement in Vietnam. Cimino claimed he had set out to show what the war was really like. Instead, he made a hollow, melodramatic adventure...
...movie. At its end, the two great-men-to-be were on their feet, cheering. Malraux remembered De Gaulle waving his long arms and crying, "Bravo, magnifique!" It is said that De Gaulle never forgot the images of glory he found that evening in Abel Gance's epic reconstruction of another young soldier's climb to greatness, Napoleon...
...English film historian (The Parade's Gone By, Hollywood: the Pioneers), who spent a decade painstakingly collecting bits and pieces of film. It is appropriate, perhaps inevitable, that Brownlow's work should be presented by Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now), a modern inheritor of the epic tradition. He has brought a showman's flair to the project, commissioning a score from his composer father, Carmine, who led the American Symphony at last weekend's premiere. It is-as silent film scores always were-full of quotations from the masters and plenty of bombast. (After...
...American rituals of machismo apply a fortiori to Italian-Americans; the pathetic pulp idiocy of Rocky virtually created Raging Bull. It is the story of Jake LaMotta only as much as Taxi Driver was the story of Travis Bickle, for Scorsese's new film has the same epic thrust of the earlier one. But where Taxi Driver was about America after Vietnam, Raging Bull is really about Martin Scorsese; only this essential decadence keeps it from greatness...