FORMAL FILM STUDY: Francis Ford Coppola

For my formal film study I decided to study the works of Francis Ford Coppola. I watched Apocalypse Now (1979), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), and The Godfather (1972).

The one discovery that I connected with all three films was the theme of family.  In each of these films the main characters have to deal with their family and how important family is. In Peggy Sue Got Married, the main character Peggy is sent back in time to her senior year where she desperately tries to change her fate but is unsuccessful. When she is sent back she is nice to her sister and tries to make up for ignoring when they were younger. In The Godfather (1972) family is a HUGE part in this movie. The whole movie Don Corleone (the head of the gang in New York) is trying to keep his organization together and at the same time trying to protect his family from the Tattaglias gang. In the movie if you messed with a person in Don's family he would have you killed or you might wake up with your prized horse's head in your bead. Don is also trying to keep his son out of the business because he does not want him to live the life of crime. All the violence is family oriented, whether someone killed your cousin you he kills your brother it always is someone protecting their family and getting revenge. In The movie Apocalypse Now there is really no family in the literal sense but in war your unit becomes your family and you would do anything to protect eachother from the enemy. Even in the end after Willard kills Kurtz he can't leave without Lance and goes and finds him and they leave together. Also even when Chief goes crazy and starts to attack Willard and tries to kill him Willard does not kill him but he dies at the hands of the enemy. In all of these movies the theme of family always dictates the actions of the main character and the plot. I also noticed a theme in these movies of Hope. Each main character is looking for Hope in some way or another. In Peggy Sue Got Married she is looking for a chance to start over and she hopes that somethings will be different. In The Godfather there is Don looking for hope of his family making out of this ordeal alive. In Apocalypse Now there is the hope of surveying the war.

In Apocalypse Now there is a narrator (Willard) and there is a narrating in the Godfather in some parts as well but there are no parts in Peggy Sue Got Married of narration. In Peggy Sue Got Married everything is very bright and colorful but in Apocalypse Now everything is dark and hard to see. The Godfather is dark in some places when something bad is about to happen but light in places when something good happens. I also noticed that in Apocalypse Now sometimes when the helicopters are coming by the sound of the blades rotating is slowed down giving it a more dramatic effect and make sort of a soundtrack. Apocalypse Now was probably made to show how horrible the war in Vietnam was and how war can change a man and mess with his head. This correlates to The Godfather because that movie shows how when you are in the crime business people you love are going to get hurt or be killed no matter what. The Godfather also shows how violence can change who you are, just like in Apocalypse Now.

There is one particular shot in Apocalypse Now where the face of Willard is upside down. I think that this is like that to show how crazy this movie is and how strange and not normal it is. Most of the camera shots in Apocalypse Now were close-ups or shots from the waist up. Peggy Sue Got Married had more long and wide shots showing the full character. The Godfather had a combination of both.  A symbol in Peggy Sue Got Married is her heart Locket. It is shown in the movie and you can tell that it is important because they zoom in on it. It proves to be the reason she makes the decision in the end and becomes a symbol of love.

These three movies are very different but they all have something that tied them together like the theme of the movie or the way of the camera angles. Francis Ford Coppola is a very good director and i enjoyed watching his films.