Apocalypse Now

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Movie
German title Apocalypse Now
Original title Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now logo.svg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1979
length Theatrical version: 153 minutes
Redux version: 202 minutes
Final Cut: 183 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Francis Ford Coppola
script Francis Ford Coppola,
John Milius
production Francis Ford Coppola
music Carmine Coppola
camera Vittorio Storaro
cut Lisa Fruchtman
Gerald B. Greenberg
Walter Murch
Richard Marks
occupation
synchronization

Apocalypse Now [ əˈpɒkəlɪps naʊ ] ( English for about " apocalypse now" or "end of the world") is an anti-war film by director Francis Ford Coppola from 1979, the action of which takes place during the Vietnam War . It is based on a free interpretation of Joseph Conrad's story Heart of Darkness - Heart of Darkness as well as Michael Herr's Vietnam War stories reveal to Hell - Dispatches . Captain Benjamin Willard, the main character, is a member of an American special unit and is given the task of killing the renegade, supposedly insane Colonel Walter Kurtz. Willard's river trip with a patrol boat to Kurtz's jungle hiding place in Cambodia , where he rules like a king over a crowd of followers, shows the contradictions and madness of war.

The film received the Palme d'Or in Cannes , two Oscars , three Golden Globe Awards and numerous nominations. The shooting in the jungles of the Philippines and the Dominican Republic was accompanied by great difficulties, which made the film known in advance. Tropical storms destroyed the film set several times, and the main actor Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack while filming. Coppola, who struggled to the last with the basic dramaturgical structure of the film, exceeded the budget and the schedule so massively that Hollywood was already talking about the failure of the film.

The film is considered one of the highlights of the so-called New Hollywood era and is counted by many critics as one of the most influential and best films of the 20th century. In 2001, a revised Director's Cut version was released under the title Apocalypse Now Redux , which offers a total of about 50 minutes of additional material compared to the original theatrical version and rearranged some scenes chronologically, bringing the total running time of the film to about 202 minutes. In April 2019, Coppola presented the final cut version of Apocalypse Now at the Tribeca Film Festival with the Final Cut , which has a running time of 183 minutes.

action

Brief summary

In 1969, in the middle of the Vietnam War, Captain Benjamin L. Willard was given the job of liquidating the renegade Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. This has distanced itself from the American military leadership and can no longer be controlled. In the jungle of the neighboring country Cambodia , which was neutral during the Vietnam War , he has built up his own "empire" of deserted US soldiers and Montagnards , over which he dominates. Captain Willard sets out in a patrol boat and crew from Saigon through the jungle. The men's journey develops into a trip to hell through the absurdities of a meaningless war and reveals, analogous to the novel , the depths of the human soul. Confronted with the madness and senselessness of war during the trip, Willard increasingly begins to doubt the justification of his assignment. When he finally finds Kurtz, he is tempted to join him, but ultimately kills the deeply desperate and war-torn man at his own request.

Waiting in Saigon

The plot of the film begins in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City ), the capital of what was then southern Vietnam . United States Army Captain Willard is a member of the 173rd Airborne Brigade and belongs to the MACV-SOG special unit for unconventional warfare . At the beginning of his second period of service in Vietnam, he is waiting in a hotel for a new assignment. Marked by alcohol, boredom and an overwhelming desire to return to the jungle, he says from the off at the beginning of the film : “ Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker. And every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. "(German:" Every minute I spend in this room makes me more powerless. Every minute Charlie (note: US Army slang for the Vietnamese underground army FNL ) crouches in the bush, makes him stronger "). His waiting time ends when he is escorted by two GIs to an intelligence base in Nha Trang . Significantly, the first thing Willard asks the soldiers is what the charges are against him since he believes he is being arrested. His new, top secret assignment is the execution of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, who has probably gone mad. Willard is supposed to drive the fictional Nung River (in which the Mekong can be seen) on board a patrol boat upstream to Cambodia to find and kill Kurtz.

The dossier

Willard receives a dossier about the Colonel from his clients, the content of which the viewer learns in fragments throughout the film: Kurtz, a military model student in preparation for the highest staff post , completed the training course at a very advanced age for this training at his own request against resistance the Special Forces . In Vietnam, he soon deviated from the guidelines of the armed forces. When he shot and killed four alleged double agents without authorization, the army leadership investigated him for murder, although it quickly became clear that his act had been the right decision from a military point of view. Thereupon he broke with his superiors completely and operated only according to his own ideas with deserted regular and local auxiliary troops. Due to his disobedience and the continued brutal and uncontrollable warfare, the decision to liquidate him followed.

The following sentence from Willard can be seen as indicative of the entire order:

"Charging a man with murder in this place is like handing out speeding-tickets at the Indy 500. "

"Prosecuting a man for murder in a place like this is like being warned about speeding in a car."

On board

The patrol boat (English Patrol Boat, River , PBR) Streetgang the US Navy , on the Willard the Nung River upriver towards Cambodia is placed, acts as a mirror image of the US Army. On board are:

  • The boat in command, Chief Petty Officer Phillips
  • Jay “Chef” Hicks, a nerve-wracking saucier from New Orleans who actually has nothing in mind with the war
  • Lance B. Johnson, a freshman and budding pro surfer who'd rather tan and use drugs than fight
  • Tyrone "Clean" Miller, a hot-headed seventeen year old from the Bronx

Willard initially leaves the crew in the dark about the destination of the trip and his assignment, since both are subject to confidentiality. Only later, when the men are becoming increasingly frustrated with the supposed futility of the company, does he inform them about it. In the microcosm of the boat, whose river journey is the central theme of the film, Willard is an outsider because of his separate and secret mission and his secrecy, but is respected. While the crew goes about their "everyday life" on board (drug consumption, boredom, keeping watch), the viewer learns his thoughts through Willard's voice from the off .

Beach boys

The 1st US Air Cavalry , which was supposed to be escorting Willard's boat up the river, approaches a small village ruled by the Viet Cong with light resistance. Here Willard meets the battalion commander of the airmobile unit, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore. Director Coppola plays an instructor for a team of war correspondents in a cameo . Eventually it turns out that the commander does not know anything about the escort order.

After the attack on the village, Kilgore handed out playing cards with the division badge on dead Viet Cong. “ Deathcards, let Charlie know who did this. "(German:" Totenkarten , so Charlie knows who did that. ")

The high-handed and surf enthusiast Kilgore discovers the professional surfer under the boat crew Lance B. Johnson. In the evening there is a campfire with beer and steaks flown in. Kilgore is strumming a guitar, but Willard believes, “ The more they tried to make it just like home, the more they made everybody miss it. "(German:" The more they tried to make it look like home, the more everyone missed their home. ")

When Kilgore heard that the village beach where the boat was to be dropped off had good waves for surfing , he ordered the attack. Loudspeakers attached to the outside of the attack helicopters played - according to Kilgore as a means of psychological warfare - Wagner's ride on the Valkyries during the attack on the village . Immediately after conquering the village, Lance is supposed to show the difference between the enemy and the US armed forces: “ Charlie don't surf! "(German:" Charlie doesn't surf! ")

This section of the film is one of the first encounters with the unrealism and madness of those involved in the war. Kilgore orders surfing even though enemy shells are still striking the beach. Since the soldiers achieve poor results while surfing under constant mortar fire, Kilgore finally requests a heavy air strike using napalm on a row of trees, where he suspects the enemy mortar production. However, the attack fails; shells continue to hit the beach. Kilgore: “ I love the smell of napalm in the morning […] Smells like - victory. ”(German:“ I love the smell of napalm in the morning. […] Smells like - victory ”) The explosion of the napalm creates air vortices, which also make the waves unusable for surfing. Willard and his companions eventually flee onto the boat.

Willard's mental résumé, back on the boat, is very memorable: “If Kilgore was allowed to fight the war his way, I began to wonder what they had against Kurtz at all. It wasn't just madness and murder ... there was enough of it here that something fell away for all of us. "

The defeat is perfected by the theft of Kilgore's favorite surfboard by Capt. Willard. (Only included in the Redux version and the Final Cut.)

Playboy Bunnies

The crew arrives at the station at Hau Phat on the right day: a freshly flown in USO show is on the event calendar. Miss August, Miss May and the Playmate of the Year are honored and appear on stage in cowboy and Indian costumes. While the Playmates give their performance, the audience demands that the women undress. Soldiers storm the stage and the Playmates have to be rushed out of the tumult by helicopter.

At a later point in time, they meet two of the three women again in a desolate emergency camp, in which their helicopter had to make an emergency landing due to lack of fuel, and exchange part of their fuel for sexual acts. The women seem traumatized. (Only included in the Redux version.)

Sampan incident

On the way upriver, the Street Gang crew controls a sampan coming towards them. There are some Vietnamese, food and animals on board. Although the locals are behaving perfectly, the mood on the part of the Americans is tense. When the boss checks the cargo, he wants to open a box that a young woman was sitting on before. Then she runs screaming in his direction, which is why Clean opens fire with the heavy on-board machine gun and, together with Lance, shoots all the Vietnamese on the boat. After the fire is set, the boss opens the box and only finds a baby dog ​​that the young woman probably wanted to protect. He notices that the woman is still alive, and the commandant decides to take her on board and take her to a hospital. But Willard, who had refused to control the sampan from the start, kills her with his pistol because he doesn't want to waste any time. He says laconically to the stunned crew: “I said you shouldn't stop.” With this scene, Coppola wanted to address real war crimes committed during the Vietnam War, such as the My Lai massacre .

After this incident, Willard, the narrator, expressed his growing doubts about the meaning of the war: “We had found a way in which we did not have to blame ourselves. We chopped them up in half with machine guns and then bandaged them. It was a lie. And the more I saw of it, the more I hated lies. "

Do Lung Bridge

The last stop before the area in which there is no longer a US Army, only Kurtz, is a night stop of the boat at a base on the contested Do-Lung Bridge. Total chaos reigns in the base, despair and trench warfare dominate the picture. In the background you can hear screams, psychedelic noises and indefinable sounds over loudspeakers. Drugs, disorganization, fear, panic, death, suffering and headless military actions determine the place, deserters try to get away by swimming. Despite the chaos, Willard meets his contact, Lieutenant Carlson, who gives him updated instructions on his assignment and starts to disappear with the words "You don't believe how happy I am now, sir". When Willard asks, Carlson replies, "Now I can get out of here if I find a way" and adds, "Here you are in the fucking ass of the world, Captain!"

A soldier fires wildly with a stationary machine gun at dead Viet Cong. When Willards asked who the commanding officer was here, the soldier replied symptomatically with the question: "Not you?" A soldier with the nickname "Iron Thrower" kills a Viet Cong with an M79 grenade launcher , who lies seriously injured between the enemy positions and keeps shouting "Ami, go to the devil!"

When the crew set off again, the bridge that was under fire finally collapsed behind them.

On French soil

(Only included in the Redux version and in the Final Cut.)

Ruins emerge from the fog and shortly afterwards the crew stands in front of a French plantation. Clean, who died in an attack on the patrol boat, is buried here. During dinner with the French plantation owners, there were heated discussions among the hosts. Willard is implored to learn from the mistakes of the French in the previous Indochina War and to fight with all his might against the FNL (the Viet Cong ) and the North Vietnam that supports them . At the table with the American officer, the French who are present get into a heated discussion about the lost, decisive battle of Điện Biên Phủ . One by one, angrily, they leave the room. Ultimately, only Willard and the young widow Roxanne remain, who sexually seduces him after consuming opium together .

The viewer can get the impression of a parody of French society films in which French people get together in happy circles on the weekend. According to his own statement, Coppola wanted to send the viewer on a kind of time travel to the time of the French colonization of Indochina , because Vietnam was still part of the French colonial empire until a few years before the start of the US intervention . That is why Willard's hosts react with incomprehension and anger to his objection that they could go "home" to France because they consider Indochina to be their home.

Kurtz or: The horror

Shortly before reaching the goal, the crew is attacked by jungle dwellers with bows and spears. Impaled by a spear, the commander tries to take Willard with him to death (possibly to protect his comrades who are still alive), but fails. Shortly afterwards, the first structures of Kurtz 'base emerge from the fog, and a US photojournalist and supporter of Kurtz' guides the crew to the shore. He greets Willard and the boat crew with an enthusiastic eulogy for Kurtz: “He is a warrior poet in the classic sense.” Dozens of corpses and severed human heads are spread over the site, which partly consists of a dilapidated temple complex. When the photographer notices Willard's dismay, he apologizes that Kurtz sometimes exaggerates, but that he should not be condemned for doing so. On a wall it is written: "Our motto: Apocalypse Now!"

Captain Willard is captured and taken to Kurtz. A long dialogue develops between the two, in which Willard von Kurtz is referred to as an “errand boy” who was “sent by grocers” to “present the bill”. Shortly afterwards, Willard receives a horrific present from Kurtz: the severed head from Chef. He had attempted to radio the operations center with the Almighty code to request an air raid on the area, just as Willard had ordered in the event of his capture. The viewer experiences the simple dialectic of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz: “Horror and moral terror are your friends. If not, they are your feared enemies. "

During the following time, when Willard is a prisoner and listening to Kurtz's monologues about his worldview, he too alienates himself and approaches Kurtz's views. In the last dialogue between the two of them, Kurtz indirectly asks Willard to kill him: “I am worried about the thought that my son might not understand what I was really about. And, if I should be killed, Willard, I want someone to go to my house and tell my son. Everything. Everything I've done, everything you've seen. Because there's nothing I loathe more than the stink of lies. And if you understand me, Willard, you will do it for me. "

Willard disguises his face with an archaic-looking war paint and stalks Kurtz at night, only to kill him with a machete. At the same time, a ritual of Kurtz's followers taking place at the same time is shown alternately in initially calm, then faster and faster cuts, in which at the end the head of a water buffalo is cut off. The entire scene is underlaid with the Doors song “ The End ” , with the speed of the cuts and the drama of the plot increasing in sync with that of the music. Finally the camera shows the face of the dying Kurtz lying on the ground in close-up, who as the last words whispers: “The horror! The horror! "

Willard searches Kurtz's papers and records, in which he found the handwritten note, “Drop the Bomb. EXTERMINATE Them All! "(" Drop the bomb. DESTROY them all! "). With papers in hand he appears in front of the temple and Kurtz's followers throw themselves on the floor in front of him. He throws the machete away, whereupon the others throw away their weapons too. Willard brings Lance out of the crowd and returns with him to the boat, turns off the boat's radio and sets off with the boat.

reception

Reviews

“War and anti-war film masterfully staged by Coppola, which - in its ambiguous portrayal of the aesthetic fascination of war - tries less to illuminate the military and political than the psychological aspects of the Vietnam debacle. Based on a novel by Joseph Conrad, the cruelty of war becomes as clear as its futility. The revised version, which allows supposed subplots more space, sets new standards and allows a clearer view into the depths of the human soul. "

"After him there shouldn't be any other war films."

“In any case, Apocalypse Now, viewed again after 20 years, is clearer than ever as one of the key films of the century. Most films are lucky enough to have one great scene. Apocalypse Now strings one after the other, with the river journey as the connecting element. […] Apocalypse Now is the best Vietnam film and one of the greatest films of all because it goes into the darkest corners of the soul and thus leaves other films far behind. It's not so much about the war itself, but rather about the truths war brings to light that we would have been fortunate to have had we never discovered. "

“There are films that show something, and a few of them do it well, most of them rather badly. In the first episodes of "Apocalypse Now" we can still have the impression that this film too wants to "show" us something about the war in Vietnam. But the extended version shows better than the original that this is just a little feint at the beginning. The film "shows" nothing and it "knows" nothing, it shows less and less and knows less and less. He exposes himself to being mad about this war and mad about the culture that brought him here. That has lost none of its enormity and, in its metamoral way, also looks at the wars that came to Vietnam and are still to come. "

Aftermath

The famous "Charlie don't surf" scene was adapted in many later works. Among other things, the scene in the film Jarhead runs in a cinema in the barracks. Other variants and allusions can be found in the television series The Simpsons , in the films Watchmen - The Guardians and Small Soldiers, and in the video games Duke Nukem Forever and Battlefield Vietnam .

In 2008 the Belgian singer Pham Quynh Anh released the single Bonjour Vietnam . While the title alludes to Good Morning, Vietnam as a translation , the text does so on Apocalypse Now , in which Quynh Anh sings about "Coppola's film" and "Angry helicopters".

In 1980 The Clash processed the laconic remark "Charlie don't surf" in the song of the same name on their triple album Sandinista! .

production

The film, produced by Coppola's production company American Zoetrope for United Artists , was shot in the Philippines and the Dominican Republic (Rio Chavon). For the helicopter attack on Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" aircraft of the Philippine Air Force were provided.

The shooting was accompanied by legendary difficulties; for example, the set was almost completely destroyed by a storm. Leading actor Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack, which is why individual scenes had to be shot without him. After all, the shooting lasted 16 months, the production costs were more than double the originally planned amount, which is why Coppola had to invest a large part of his private fortune in the film. His health is said to have suffered too, but today he puts these reports into perspective.

Coppola said at the film screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979 :

“The movie is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. We were in the jungle. There were too many of us. We had access to too much money, too much equipment - and little by little, we went insane. "

“The film is not about the Vietnam War. He is Vietnam. We were in the jungle. We were too many. We had access to too much money, too much equipment - and gradually we went insane. "

Coppola's wife Eleanor Coppola documented the shooting on 16 mm film with a handheld camera. This material was published in 1991 under the title Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse or Hearts of Darkness - Reise ins Herz der Finsternis . The directors George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr were also involved in the completion . The film was u. a. awarded two Emmys. Eleanor Coppola also wrote a book ( Notes On the Making of Apocalypse Now ) in which she describes the filming from her perspective and which provides unusually deep and profound insights into the entire process of making the film, including interpersonal problems and marital crises.

Actors Steve McQueen and Harvey Keitel were suggested for the role of Captain Willard prior to filming. Steve McQueen turned down the role. Harvey Keitel had already played the role of Willard for two weeks when Coppola declared him unsuitable because of his "overdone" playing style and passed the role on to Martin Sheen . Much of the material filmed up until then had to be re-shot.

In the making of Hearts of Darkness you can see how Sheen, who at the time - according to his own statement - was in a life crisis in the opening scene in the hotel room in Saigon, so absorbed in the role that he accidentally smashed a mirror and cut himself so, that he was bleeding profusely. He went on playing anyway, and the realism of his (obviously unplayed) desperation was so "terrifyingly good" that he retained the lead despite his subsequent heart attack and the long hospital stay that followed.

Francis Ford Coppola and Marlon Brando had several arguments during the filming, among other things because Marlon Brando had mistaken the script by John Milius for the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and found it bad. In addition, Marlon Brando appeared on set very overweight and from a physical point of view not at all suitable for the role of Kurtz, since he is described as a thin man in the book. Brando's photos were mostly taken in twilight or almost total darkness, often only his face can be seen in the semi-darkness. These means strengthen the eerie charisma of the supposedly insane Kurtz. In the book about the shooting, however, Coppola's wife describes that these stylistic devices emerged primarily from the director's wish to conceal Brando's heavy weight. It was only in the Redux version that Coppola integrated a few scenes in which Kurtz can be seen completely in daylight.

Dennis Hopper had to be treated for an infection at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg.

In the 25th minute of the film (both old and Redux versions), Coppola has a cameo as the director of a team of war correspondents. Several times he repeated his request to the soldiers passing by not to look into the camera.

In 1979 Apocalypse Now was released in cinemas with a playing time of 153 minutes. In 2001 Apocalypse Now Redux was released , the digitized and 50 minutes longer version, which had been completely re-cut and supplemented by a number of previously unseen scenes.

Different credits version

In the original version of the film there was no title sequence and no credits. The information should only be available in an issued program booklet. However, this was changed for the mass launch of the film. Thereupon the end credits showed the destruction of Kurtz's camp (extremely alienated by false colors and other effects). This version was also shown in German cinemas.

In the bonus material of the Redux version, however, the director expressly points out that this scene should not represent an end, not even an alternative one. At the request of the Philippine government, the film buildings at Kurtz's base had to be destroyed after the shooting ended. Coppola had the destruction filmed and alienated the material for the end credits, accompanied by the music of the Doors with the song The End .

When he discovered that many viewers were misunderstanding this as a bomb attack on the jungle base, which Willard had requested, he had another version of the film made, in which the credits were played against a black background. However, some versions of the film that are still in circulation still have the original ending.

Music and sound

The soundtrack for the film was composed by Carmine Coppola , the father of Francis Ford Coppola, and conducted by Walter Murch . For the Redux version, two additional pieces were recorded with the help of sheet music by the late Carmine Coppola. The sound is mostly determined by synthesizer sounds arranged like a collage, with war and environmental noises such as helicopters and wind mixed in. Mickey Hart , the drummer for the rock group The Grateful Dead , recorded percussion improvisations with the Rhythm Devils for the river cruise scenes. In 1980, Carmine Coppola received the Golden Globe Award for the music of Apocalypse Now , and Walter Murch received an Oscar for Best Sound.

In addition to the music specially composed for the film, well-known songs by popular musicians can also be found in the film: The opening sequence of the film and the killing of Kurtz are backed up by the song The End by The Doors . Another well-known scene in the film is the air cavalry's helicopter attack on a Vietnamese village to the sound of Richard Wagner's Valkyries ride . The scene has its historical model in the German newsreel of June 4, 1941 (from 12:30 pm onwards) , in which the German air landing on Crete was highlighted with the same play. Furthermore, the pieces Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones and a cover version of the Dale Hawkins title Suzie Q can be heard in the manner of the Creedence Clearwater Revival recording.

Literary references

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) quotes from TS Eliot's The Hollow Men in his final monologue . The poem has references to the original of the film, the novel Herz der Finsternis by Joseph Conrad, because Eliot had prefixed it with the sentence: Mistah Kurtz - he dead, alluding to Herz der Finsternis . The concluding words The horror, the horror are the closing words from Kurtz from Herz der Finsternis .

synchronization

The German-language original version was created in the studios of Interopa Film GmbH , Berlin under the dubbing direction by Christian Rode based on the dialogue book by Horst Balzer. The film was completely re-dubbed for Apocalypse Now: Redux. This version was made in the Babelsberg film studio under the direction of Andreas Fröhlich based on the dialogue book by Alexander Löwe . Except for Christian Brückner in the role of Captain Willard, all other roles have been filled.

Role name actor German dubbing voice
Original version Redux version
Colonel Kurtz Marlon Brando Gottfried Kramer Thomas Fritsch
Captain Willard Martin Sheen Christian Brückner
Colonel Kilgore Robert Duvall Heinz Dragon Pure beauty
boss Frederic Forrest Fred Maire Tobias Master
Chief Albert Hall Wolfgang Hess Oliver Stritzel
Lance B. Johnson Sam Bottoms Mathias Einert Kim Hasper
Clean Laurence Fishburne Joachim Tennstedt Björn Schalla
Photojournalist Dennis Hopper Michael Chevalier Joachim Kerzel
Colonel Lucas Harrison Ford Frank Glaubrecht Bernd Vollbrecht
Hubert de Marais Christian Marquand - Georges Claisse
Roxanne Sarault Aurore Clement - Beate Haeckl

Available versions

Shortly after the DVD appeared in 2000, the 1979 version of “Apocalypse Now” was released on the German market as a “Widescreen Edition”, but was withdrawn from the market shortly after it was announced that the Redux version would be released in theaters .

The Redux version was also released on DVD in 2002, but without a continuous director's commentary and only the separate, commented “Kurtz-compound” ending as the only bonus material.

In America (region code 1) a double DVD with the subtitle "The Complete Dossier" was available, which contained both versions with a director's commentary and various bonus material. However, both versions were cut in two. DVD 1 each contained the first half plus bonus material, while DVD 2 contained both ends plus bonus material.

In the spring of 2011, a box of three with both versions, a director's commentary, the Hickenlooper / Elanor Coppola documentary “Hearts of darkness” and other bonus material that went beyond the material of the “Complete -Dossier "edition.

In autumn 2011, the ARTHAUS material, which was previously only available on Blu-ray, was released as a 4-DVD box set.

Awards

  • Cannes Film Festival 1979 :
  • Academy Awards 1980 :
    • Best camera (for Vittorio Storaro)
    • Best tone (for Walter Murch, Mark Berger, Richard Beggs, Nat Boxer)
    • Best film nomination
    • Nomination for equipment (for Dean Tavoularis )
    • Nomination for script editing
    • Nomination for Best Supporting Actor (Robert Duvall)
    • Nomination for direction
    • Nomination for editing
  • Golden Globe Award (1980):
    • Best Director - Francis Ford Coppola
    • Best Supporting Actor - Robert Duvall
    • Best Score - Carmine Coppola
    • Nomination: Best Film (Category: Drama)
  • 2000: Admission to the " National Film Registry " of the Library of Congress (USA)
  • Awards from the renowned American Film Institute :
    • 1998: No. 28 in the list of the 100 best films of all time (2007: No. 30)
    • The quote: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. reached number 12 on the list of the 100 best movie quotes of all time

The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.

literature

  • Peter Krause, Birgit Schwelling: Films as places of collective memory. Aspects of dealing with the experience of the Vietnam War in "Apocalypse Now". in: Michael Strübel (Ed.): Film and War. The staging of politics between apologetics and apocalypse. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2002, ISBN 3-8100-3288-3 , pp. 93-108.
  • Eleanor Coppola: Maybe I'm too close. Notes in the making of Apocalypse Now. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1987, ISBN 3-499-14634-7 (English: Notes On the Making of Apocalypse Now ).
  • Werner Faulstich : Didactics of Horror: An Interpretation of Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocalyps Now' (1981). In Gunter Grimm, Werner Faulstich, Peter Kuon (eds.): Apocalypse: Doomsday visions in the literature of the 20th century. Materials. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 978-3-518-38567-8 , pp. 246-267.
  • Gilbert Adair : Hollywood's Vietnam. From the "Green Berets" to "Apocalypse Now". Proteus Books, New York 1981, ISBN 0-906071-86-0 .
  • Ralf Debus: Dragged into a swamp. Psychology of film effects using the example of “Apocalypse Now”. In: Medium, Volume 10, Community work of Protestant journalism, 1980

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Michael Wood: Just one of those ends . In: London Review of Books . Vol. 23, N. 24, December 13, 2001. Coppola said at the film screening in Cannes in 1979: The movie is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. We were in the jungle. There were too many of us. We had access to too much money, too much equipment - and little by little, we went insane.
  2. Benjamin Moldenhauer: Shooting of "Apocalypse Now". Everyone was crazy in the end. In: Spiegel Online one day. January 28, 2015, accessed February 26, 2015 .
  3. Apocalypse Now Final Cut on tribecafilm.com (accessed April 29, 2019)
  4. In this case the translation is misleading - the "Death Card" corresponds to the death card in the Tarot and is popularly interpreted as a sign of inevitable death; however, this was lost in the translation.
  5. Statement by "Lance", Sam Bottoms, in one of the interviews in the making of Hearts of Darkness
  6. Apocalypse Now. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  7. Roger Ebert : Critique of Apocalypse Now . In: Chicago Sun-Times . November 28, 1999.
  8. ^ Georg Seeßlen: Apocalypse Now Redux. Konkret, 11/01, p. 65, quoted on getidan.de
  9. Peter Körte: Final Cut of "Apocalypse Now": Film became a war . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . 20th July 2019.
  10. Review by Simon Duff at Musicfromthemovies.com ( Memento from May 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) (Retrieved February 15, 2009)
  11. Review by Michael Boldhaus on Cinemusic (accessed February 15, 2009)