When I read three years ago that Vittorio Storaro had been chosen as the cinematographer for Apocalypse Now, I was shocked. Storaro, the lush Vogue-style photographer of Last Tango in Paris and The Conformist, for a picture that was being billed as the definitive epic about Vietnam!
However distant it may seem at first glance, Apocalypse Now remains not only deeply indebted to Conrad’s tale but not fully comprehensible without reference to it
In The Power of Adaptation in “Apocalypse Now” Marsha Kinder critically compares and contrasts the film and the novel. In this article, Kinder states that “Coppola rarely hesitates to change Conrad’s story-setting, events, characters-whenever the revision is required by the Vietnam context.”
What does Apocalypse Now mean—the film as we have it, considering the minimal difference between the 35mm version with the title sequence and the 70mm version without, but ignoring all the prerelease stories and versions, preliminary scripts, and encrusted commentary?
Coppola’s “heart of darkness,” like Conrad’s, is a triumph of style over story. Or rather, the description—words for Conrad, mise-en-scène for Coppola—is the story’s raison d’être.
Apocalypse Now achieved its highest aspiration: Not only was it immersed in the historical period and place – Vietnam – but it was an allegory of people facing reality and truth.
Vittorio Storaro recalls the photographic challenges he confronted during the tumultuous production of Francis Ford Coppola’s hallucinatory Vietnam War epic ‘Apocalypse Now’
“The most important thing I wanted to do in the making of Apocalypse Now was to create a film experience that would give its audience a sense of the horror, the madness, the sensuousness, and the moral dilemma of the Vietnam war. “
Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now lives up to its grand title, disclosing not only the various faces of war but also the contradictions between excitement and boredom, terror and pity, brutality and beauty.
Apocalypse Now come segno della divisione fra il moderno e il postmoderno. Saggio di Francesco Binni
Viewed as a conventional updating of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now looks like not much more than a cannibalization.
Joseph Conrad, Cuore di tenebra, introduzione di Francesco Binni, traduzione di Luisa Saraval, Milano, Garzanti, 2002
Traduzione italiana del romanzo di Joseph Conrad pubblicato nel 1902
Speciale pubblicato dalla rivista “Duel” nel 2001 in occasione dell’uscita di “Apocalypse Now Redux”