This is the end, indeed!

Rating: 2/10 (12 May 2005)

I have just finished reading an interview with Vittorio Storaro, cinematographer for Apocalypse Now, and I am in a state of shock. Apparently, the plan, when preparing Apocalypse Now Redux, was to keep the original negative intact, and to edit the new material into a freshly struck inter positive. Unfortunately, the negative, 25 years old, was starting to fade, and Storaro was concerned that new prints would not be up to his, or the audience's, high standards. He suggested to Coppola that they re-edit directly into the original negative. This, of course, would eliminate the need for an inter positive, and allow for beautiful new prints to be struck. On the other hand, the original negative in its "classic" incarnation would be gone forever. Storaro asked Coppola, "Let me know one single thing, in the future, in 10, 20, 50, 100 years from now, which version would you want the audience to see?" And he said, "This one."
I remember asking myself why the additional footage couldn't have been relegated to the "Extras" section of a DVD. My guess had been that the entire affair was a cynical attempt stir up interest in a theatrical re-release in order to make a few more bucks for the perennially cash- hungry Coppola. Would that he had been so cynical. Now we will never have the chance to see a beautiful new Technicolor dye transfer print of the original Apocalypse, a genuine classic, because Coppola actually thinks that the god-awful Redux, a bloated, ponderous, amateurish mess, is the version for which he should be remembered.
I have seen the original Apocalypse dozens of times, and each time it has felt fresh, vital, visionary. I almost walked out of the theater during Redux. Like mold, the new footage had corrupted the old, making the whole film dank and dreary. Most of the new footage was hasty, improvised, and pointless, and integrated badly into the whole. The performances resembled juvenile acting class exercises. The legendary French Plantation scenes were so over the top and silly that I thought an unused sequence from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life had been dropped into the film.
As Paulette Goddard once said of Chaplin, "(Coppola) sometimes thinks he thinks." Despite his reputation as a rebellious visionary, Coppola has always done his best work for hire. When he has been allowed to go off the rails, he has produced crap fests like One From the Heart (which I actually saw in a theater) and Redux. Looks like it was only the pressure to deliver that prevented box office disaster and bankruptcy in 1979. I, like many others, have spent the last 25 years waiting for another Coppola masterpiece. From the evidence in the Storaro interview, we have all waited in vain. The man's judgment is faulty. Maybe if he can get back together with Bob Evans...