Formal Film Study

For my formal film study, I decided to study two films by the director Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. The Godfather is about the Corleone mob family. It follows Micheal Corleone, the son of mob don Vito Corleone, and his struggle of deciding between joining the family business or staying as a law abiding citizen. Micheal decides to join the family after the death of his brother and the assassination attempt on his father. Apocalypse Now follows Captain Benjamin Willard as he tries to hunt down a colonel who has turned against American orders.

One thing I noticed about the style of Apocalypse Now is the closeness of the camera. It is very rare to see far shots and the camera tends to stay up close to the characters. It's pretty important too, Coppola uses a lot of dialogue to set the story and to develop characters. The dialogue in Apocalypse Now differs from that of The Godfather because although there is side dialogue between the other characters, the most important words are when Cpt. Willard's thoughts are played out loud. This shows what he is thinking and sets the story as he researches more and more into the colonel and what led him to defect from the US army.

The Godfather uses very similar style to Apocalypse Now. There is a lot of dialogue (which helps contribute to its lengthy time). The dialogue is usually very important in this film, there is not a lot of dialogue that is used as just filler like in Apocalypse Now. If someone is talking in The Godfather, you need to be paying close attention. The amount of different people and the different family names can make it very confusing if you aren't paying close attention. The Godfather uses long, drawn out scenes to add to the effect. It forces you to stay with the violence in a way. When someone is shot, you aren't just cut to another scene like in many other movies. For example, when Micheal's brother, Sonny is shot on the highway, the camera doesn't just pan out to a new scene. It actually zooms towards Sonny as he dies, forcing you to see him takes his last breath. It then pans out to show the other mobsters who had just shot him and the indifference they have to killing him.

I feel like these films have a lot to say about how violence is viewed in our culture. In both movies, killing another person is seen as just a fact of life. The enemies are seen as less than people and are killed without any regard to anything. In Apocalypse Now, there is a scene where they have to pull their boat over in order to do a routine check on a Vietnamese boat passing by. As the begin to search, one of the woman on the boat makes a sudden movement toward a basket the soldiers were about to search. Immediately, the soldiers opened fire, killing everyone except the woman. She was severely wounded and the Navy soldiers on the boat attempt to led her onto to the boat so they can get her help. Cpt. Willard, in an attempt to hurry to his objective, pulls out his pistol and shoots the woman in the head and replies that his mission is the priority.

The Godfather also has this same indifference toward killing. When Micheal finds out that the other families attempted to have his father killed, he decides that he will have his revenge. When they Corleone family is discussing what to do, Micheal, who is still a lawful civilian, tells them "I'll kill him". When he grabs the gun form the bathroom, he immediately comes out and shoots the two that he believed to be responsible for the attempt on his father's life.

One big thing I noticed that is prevalent in Coppola's films is the amount of realism he puts into it. In both movies, you see actors drop things, stumble over words, and forgetting to do things. This adds a more humanistic aspect to it. He also uses dialogue to add to the realism of the films. In Apocalypse Now, he uses the music when they play the radio and the random talk between the soldiers to set the atmosphere of where they are at. It makes it seem very realistic when everything is not constantly trying to add to the story. The Godfather adds a sense of realism because the main character isn't really a "good" guy. Coppola moved away from past mob movies and "In contrast, The Godfather presents the gangster's perspective of the Mafia as a response to corrupt society" (De Stefano 68).