If there's one thing I took away from this famous documentary it was the desire to listen to Welles' radio production of Conrad's novella. That'll be what I do next.
In my later teens I saw Apocalypse Now (1979). It became my favourite film, and today it retains its place in my personal Top 10 movies. For just about as long, I feel, I've been hearing that Hearts of Darkness is as good or even better a story than that told by Francis Ford Coppola's magnum opus. It consists of fly-on-wall production footage recorded by Eleanor Coppola, FFC's wife (and presumably mother of the overrated Sofia), her own a posteriori narration, as well as interviews on set (and long after) and even audio recordings made without FFC's knowledge of him venting his concerns in the midst of the production's chaos. The documentary basically makes the claim that they lived somehow the madness, that their hanging-by-a-thread, brink of disaster existence was a mirror for the existential anguish of Willard and his enigmatic other, Kurtz.
I came away from it with certain details unclear, such as why Keitel was fired and replaced by Martin Sheen, how Brando's improvised ramblings achieved an acceptable form, how the production finally wrapped, and how the epic undertaking of editing the film was achieved. The editing process is after all one of the most unsung and most vital processes of moviemaking, but suddenly we jump to what was presumably footage of the premiere. I also didn't get a clear sense of why FFC was so unhappy with the plantation material that he abandoned it (later restored for the massive Redux movie cut of 2001).
Although basically everything that happens in Hearts of Darkness is interesting, it left me feeling a tad disappointed. I could have gone for more information, such as with regard to the musical scoring, the movie's reception (we get press materials reporting gossip about the production delays), clips from the Oscar ceremony perhaps?
Suffice to say it left me wanting more.
In my later teens I saw Apocalypse Now (1979). It became my favourite film, and today it retains its place in my personal Top 10 movies. For just about as long, I feel, I've been hearing that Hearts of Darkness is as good or even better a story than that told by Francis Ford Coppola's magnum opus. It consists of fly-on-wall production footage recorded by Eleanor Coppola, FFC's wife (and presumably mother of the overrated Sofia), her own a posteriori narration, as well as interviews on set (and long after) and even audio recordings made without FFC's knowledge of him venting his concerns in the midst of the production's chaos. The documentary basically makes the claim that they lived somehow the madness, that their hanging-by-a-thread, brink of disaster existence was a mirror for the existential anguish of Willard and his enigmatic other, Kurtz.
I came away from it with certain details unclear, such as why Keitel was fired and replaced by Martin Sheen, how Brando's improvised ramblings achieved an acceptable form, how the production finally wrapped, and how the epic undertaking of editing the film was achieved. The editing process is after all one of the most unsung and most vital processes of moviemaking, but suddenly we jump to what was presumably footage of the premiere. I also didn't get a clear sense of why FFC was so unhappy with the plantation material that he abandoned it (later restored for the massive Redux movie cut of 2001).
Although basically everything that happens in Hearts of Darkness is interesting, it left me feeling a tad disappointed. I could have gone for more information, such as with regard to the musical scoring, the movie's reception (we get press materials reporting gossip about the production delays), clips from the Oscar ceremony perhaps?
Suffice to say it left me wanting more.