Today’s a special day for Francis Ford Coppola: he’s set to receive his own star on the iconic Hollywood Walk of Fame. Yet it turns out that he didn’t exactly have high hopes for The Godfather, the film that really cemented his legendary status.
The mafia epic was released almost 50 years ago to the day on March 14th, 1972. While it’s now rightfully hailed as a masterpiece, Coppola never expected it to turn out that way. “I thought it was going to be a special failure,” the director told Variety. “When you make a film going against the grain of what’s going on at the time, those kind of films are tough. You’re not doing what everyone expects or wants you to do.”
Going against the grain is what Coppola cares about the most though. In another recent interview, he bemoaned the relative safety of modern filmmaking. “Now there are Marvel pictures. And what is a Marvel picture? A Marvel picture is one prototype movie that is made over and over and over and over and over again to look different,” he considered.
“Even the talented people—you could take Dune, made by Denis Villeneuve, an extremely talented, gifted artist, and you could take No Time to Die, directed by Cary Fukunaga – extremely gifted, talented, beautiful artists, and you could take both those movies, and you and I could go and pull the same sequence out of both of them and put them together.
The same sequence where the cars all crash into each other. They all have that stuff in it, and they almost have to have it, if they’re going to justify their budget. And that’s the good films, and the talented filmmakers.”
Coppola concluded, “I’ve said before, making a film without risk is like making a baby without sex. Part of it is risk, and that’s what makes it so interesting, that’s why we learn so much when it’s made.”
Not that Coppola is against all current cinema: “I liked Deadpool, I thought that was amazing,” he surprisingly told Variety, also noting that he hopes filmmakers going forward continue to take risks. “Cinema is supposed to illuminate contemporary life, and make us understand what’s going on. So we need the artists to give us a vision of what’s going on.”
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To celebrate its landmark anniversary, Paramount Pictures has restored The Godfather. A 4K Ultra HD release of the trilogy will be released on Tuesday, March 22nd, and can be pre-ordered here.
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Check out trailer for The Godfather 50th Anniversary edition:
