Hearts of Darkness: a Film-maker's Apocalypse

93m, 1991
"It was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world when vegetation rioted on the Earth and the big trees were kings. Trees, millions of trees,massive, immense, running up high. And at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. Where I imagined it crawled to, I don't know. For me, it crawled toward Kurtz."..Coppola
 This is a documentary about the making of Coppola's film about the Vietnam war. Apart from giving an insight into the process of film making, it makes one feel bad about not liking enough something which took so many people so much time and effort to complete. The making of any movie, more so one like this, is a massive enterprise of corporate scale, under the dictatorial supervision of one man, the director. Ebert had once remarked that it is a miracle that a film gets made at all. The film was a very watchable addendum to the main film.

Apocalypse Now

1979, 196m, Coppola
The war as a subject of film making has been milked dry. This spectacular marathon re-instructs us about the hardening and debasement of humanity wrought by the engine of war. My second encounter with this acclaimed movie was as laborious as the first. It is certainly not worthy of the creator of Godfather. What stays in the mind is the grandeur of the equatorial rain forests and rivers, with towering trees and human sized foliage. The formation of helicopters closing in to devastate a village as a loudspeaker blares Wagner is a sequence of bizarre beauty. Consigliere Duvall memorably reincarnates as a bloodthirsty cowboy joker in khaki. The film brings to mind Kwai and Aguirre in terms of camera work and locales but lacks depth and drama. I am sure the earlier shorter version would be preferable to this unwieldy redux.
Roger Ebert:
"In any event, seen again now at a distance of 20 years, "Apocalypse Now" is more clearly than ever one of the key films of the century. Most films are lucky to contain a single great sequence. "Apocalypse Now" strings together one after another, with the river journey as the connecting link. The best is the helicopter attack on a Vietnam village, led by Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), whose choppers use loudspeakers at top volume to play Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" as they swoop down on a yard full of schoolchildren. Duvall won an Oscar nomination for his performance and its unforgettable line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." His emptiness is frightening: A surfing fanatic, he agrees to the attack only to liberate a beach said to offer great waves ("Charlie don't surf")."
Vincent Canby:
"...the film means to deal with ...such heavy things as the human condition, good, evil, fate... subjects which in an earlier century, would demand to be capitalized..."
Time Magazine:

"...while much of the footage is breathtaking, Apocalypse Now is emotionally obtuse and intellectually empty..."

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Come September

1961, 112m
This light romance resurrected from an obliterated past proves to be a joyful, frolicsome, energetic, entertainment. The screen is sun drenched and sea washed. The script is dispersed with the  flow of uninterruptible Italian. The story never flags between a chain of uproarious situations building up tastefully towards the expected ending. The film dances and sings of an innocent joy in living which seems to be extinct.
Bosley Crowther:
"......calculated and smoothly machined comedy.....Lollobrigida is a superb comedienne, a model of dexterity and physical allure... "
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Rififi

1955, 118m, France
Melancholy,romantic, fatalistic,smoky: these are some of the ingredients of the dish vaguely termed noire. This is one of the best specimens of the species. Here is an accelerating crime drama beautifully framed by the avenues and weathered ambiance of the French capital. The hoods in this case are rather tender hearted and crooks almost as if by fate.The French crook has a restraint which his American counterpart would disdain. In the climax a man barely alive drives through the streets to deliver a kidnapped child. The film is about a jewel heist and itself has the sparkling clarity of a transparent jewel.

Chinatown

1974, 2 hours, Polanski
LA is a city hemmed between a desert and the sea. In this parched environment, the resident crooks in this noire drama seek to cash in on this thirst. Images of gushing water (sometimes with murderous suddenness and force) give this film its unique flavor. As the plot unravels, the truth gets murkier, concluding with a stunning revelation. This is another film which won't erase and John Huston in his limited role is particularly memorable.