the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s. Along with The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, Coppola’s The Godfather and Scorsese’s Taxi Driver helped to define the American New Wave.
During the half-century that they’ve been two of the most revered directors in the world, Coppola and Scorsese have remained big ers of each other’s work. In a special piece for Scorsese’s best film than in naming his own. It can be tough to judge one’s own work, because it’s impossible to remove yourself from it — and that’s why Coppola is so wrong about his own best film while being so right about Scorsese’s.
Francis Ford Coppola Named Megalopolis As His Own Best Movie, But That's Far From The Case
Megalopolis Has Got Nothing On The Godfather & Apocalypse Now
In his The Godfather is practically a perfect movie — it turned gangster films into a fine art and deftly captured the corruptibility of power and the dark side of the American Dream — and the sequel, The Godfather Part II, is somehow even better, as it takes those themes further and explores the characters and their parallels deeper.
Compared to all these Coppola masterpieces, Megalopolis is a bitter disappointment. It’s a jumbled hodgepodge of conflicting ideologies, pseudo-intellectual soundbites, and easy solutions to complex problems.
Apocalypse Now is a surreal, psychedelic Vietnam epic that visualizes the horrors of warfare in a hauntingly beautiful way. The Conversation is a masterpiece of the Watergate-era political thriller: a taut, tense look at the paranoia surrounding the Nixon istration’s corruption. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a slick gothic horror opus that brings the iconic novel to life. Compared to all these Coppola masterpieces, Megalopolis is a bitter disappointment. It’s a jumbled hodgepodge of conflicting ideologies, pseudo-intellectual soundbites, and easy solutions to complex problems. It plays like the most expensive student film ever made, not The Godfather director’s greatest work.
Coppola Was Right When He Described Raging Bull As Martin Scorsese's "Towering Achievement"
Raging Bull Is Scorsese's Rawest, Most Brutally Honest Character Study
With the distance for objectivity, Coppola’s choice of Scorsese’s best movie has a lot more clarity and justification behind it than his bold claim about Megalopolis. In the Esquire piece, Coppola mentions that he ires a lot of Scorsese’s films — name-checking Mean Streets, The King of Comedy, and the little-known Who’s That Knocking at My Door? — but he names Raging Bull as Scorsese’s “towering achievement” in cinema. While Taxi Driver and Goodfellas could both lay claim to the title of Scorsese’s magnum opus, Raging Bull arguably has even more depth and humanity than those films.
Robert De Niro won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his turn in Raging Bull.
Scorsese’s dramatization of boxer Jake LaMotta’s life is the rawest, most brutally honest character study of his career. The director doesn’t pull any punches (so to speak) in depicting LaMotta’s uncontrollable temper, and how it drives away everyone he cares about. Coppola points out that Scorsese’s use of improvisation allowed his actors to “feel the freedom of life,” but his airtight dramatic structure ensures that the movie never spins out of control. In of its rhythm, its lifelike feel, its universal human themes, and its gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, Coppola compares Raging Bull to the best of Fellini.
Scorsese's Choice For Coppola's Best Movie Is Better Than Coppola's Own
Scorsese Named The Godfather Part II As His Favorite Coppola Film
In the same Esquire article, Scorsese nominated a much better candidate than Megalopolis for the title of a young Vito Corleone’s origin story, “touched me in a deep, personal way.”
What Megalopolis Means For Francis Ford Coppola's Career & Future Movies
Francis Ford Coppola made the movie he wanted to make with Megalopolis — but its box office failure means it'll be a lot tougher to make his next one.
The Godfather Part II is very clear in what it wants to say about “the dissolution of the American Dream” and “the paradoxes of the historical analysis” — and it never lets its themes and messages get in the way of good storytelling and character work. Megalopolis, on the other hand, beats its audience over the head with messaging that’s as contradictory as it is unsubtle. Megalopolis is not Francis Ford Coppola’s best movie; in fact, it’s one of his worst. Scorsese is right; The Godfather Part II is a much stronger contender for the director’s finest work.
Source: Esquire, Francis Ford Coppola
Megalopolis
- Release Date
- September 27, 2024
- Runtime
- 138 Minutes
- Director
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Writers
- Francis Ford Coppola
Cast
Forest Whitaker
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