Francis Ford Coppola - Mrs Frisenda

Francis Ford Coppola

Biography:

A Director, producer, writer, and businessman. Born on April 7, 1939, in Detroit, Michigan. Francis Ford Coppola emerged as one of the twentieth century’s leading directors in the 1960s. Stricken with polio as a child, he was bedridden and found creative ways to entertain himself, including producing his own puppet shows. Coppola developed an interest in film early on and studied theatre at Hofstra University in New York.
After graduating in 1960, Coppola moved to California to attend the prestigious film program at UCLA where he learned from many great instructors, including pioneering female director and screenwriter Dorothy Arzner. While in graduate school, he worked with B-movie king Roger Corman. It was Corman that gave him first shot of directing a feature film, 1963’s Dementia 13, which Coppola also wrote. While that film failed to take off, he found directorial success with the 1968 musical Finian’s Rainbow.

 

Film Style:

Coppola is fascinated by families – their members, structures, dynamics, rules and rituals. These families come in all shapes and sizes: those created by birth (The Godfather) and social forces (The Outsiders), as well as those springing from shared goals (Tucker: The Man and His Dream) and random circumstance (Apocalypse Now). Coppola is intensely interested in how people are able (or unable) to live and work together.
The most famous Coppola family is the Corleones whose history he chronicles in The Godfather trilogy – a series of movies made over a period of 18 years
(1972–1990).
Therefore it is obvious of Coppolas' auteur status of injecting his fascination of families into the films he is a part of.

Filmography:

Dementia 13 (1963) also writer

You’re A Big Boy Now (1966) also writer
Finian’s Rainbow (1968)
The Rain People (1969) also writer
The Godfather (1972) also writer
The Conversation (1974) also writer/producer
The Godfather Part II (1974) also writer/producer
Apocalypse Now (1979) also writer/producer
One From The Heart (1982) also writer/producer
The Outsiders (1983)
Rumble Fish (1983) also writer
The Cotton Club (1984) also writer
Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)
Gardens of Stone (1987) also producer
Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)
New York Stories (segment: Life Without Zoe) (1989) also writer
The Godfather Part III (1990) also writer/producer
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) also producer
Jack (1996) also producer
The Rainmaker (1997) also writer
Apocalypse Now Redux (2001) also writer/producer
The Outsiders: The Complete Novel (2005)
Youth Without Youth (2006) also writer/producer (anticipated)

 

In the Godfather trilogy we witness Coppolas' auteur style of injecting his fascination of families into the films he is a part of. In the film we learn that Vita Corleons is the head of the Corleone Mafia family, whose youngest son Michael has returned from WWII. It is made known to the audience that the whole Corleon family are involved in the Mafia, but with Michael wanting to live a normal life. A drug dealer looking for a Mafia family to offer him protection in exchange for a profit of his drug money approaches Vita, who turns down the offer. This does not please the drug dealer, who has Vita shot down but some of his hit men. Vita barely survives sparking his son Michael to begin a violent mob war against the drug dealer tearing the Corleone family apart. Therefore it is clear of Coppolas' fascination of the structures and dynamics of families as he explores it through the characters of the Corleone family and the struggles they face.