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Special Features
- Coda: Thirty Years Later - A brand new documentary seen here for the first time
Editorial Reviews
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Hearts of Darkness is an engrossing, unwavering look back at Francis Coppola's chaotic, catastrophe-plagued Vietnam production, Apocalypse Now. Filled with juicy gossip and a wonderful behind-the-scenes look at the stressful world of moviemaking, the documentary mixes on-location home movies shot in the Philippines by Eleanor Coppola, the director's wife, with revealing interviews with the cast and crew, shot 10 years later. Similar to Burden of Dreams, Les Blank's absorbing portrait of Werner Herzog's struggle to make Fitzcarraldo, the film chronicles Coppola's eventual decent into obsessive psychosis as everything that could go wrong does go wrong. Storms destroy sets, money evaporates, the Philippine government continually harasses the director, Coppola has romantic affairs, and he can't write the story's ending. Everything is captured on film. In the most disturbing scene, we watch Martin Sheen have a drunken nervous breakdown while his director goads him on (he eventually suffered a heart attack, but finished the film).
Other incredible footage is not visual, but aural as the film includes tapes Eleanor Coppola recorded without Francis's knowledge. In them, he truly sounds like a madman as he confesses his fears about making a bomb of a movie. But while Hearts of Darkness is an amazing, voyeuristic experience, its importance lies in the personal reflections offered by those involved. Sheen, Coppola, and Dennis Hopper speak frankly without embarrassment, offering us an essential piece of film history. --Dave McCoy
Product Description
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse is an engrossing, unwavering look back at Francis Ford Coppola’s chaotic, catastrophe-plagued Vietnam production, Apocalypse Now. Filled with juicy gossip and a wonderful behind-the-scenes look at the stressful world of moviemaking, the documentary mixes on-location home movies shot in the Philippines by Eleanor Coppola, the director’s wife, with revealing interviews with the cast and crew, shot 10 years later.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
88 of 93 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
Subtitled, "A Filmmaker's Apocalypse", this 1991 film is a documentary about the making of "Apocalypse Now", the 1979 film based on Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". Set in Vietnam, it is the story of a captain, Martin Sheen, and his crew's mission to find and kill an insane colonel, Marlon Brando, who had created his own kingdom deep in the Jungle. On the way, everyone is touched with the evil around them. This summer I saw the re-edited version of the film and have been intrigued by it ever since. When I heard about this "Hearts of Darkness" I just HAD to see it.
The filming of Apocalypse Now was supposed to take just sixteen weeks at a budget of $13 million. It wound up costing more than $30 million, much of it put up by Francis Coppola himself, and took almost three years to get to the public. Coppola' wife Eleanor and their three children went along on location in the Philippines. She was interested in making a documentary and shot a lot of behind-the-scenes footage, even secretly recording private conversations she had with her husband about the film. The authenticity of the experience really comes through, as everyone involved with the production seemed to go a little bit insane.
Coppola had serious doubts throughout and we hear his words of despair as he thinks he's making a bad movie. We see the terrible typhoon that destroyed all the sets and realized that the helicopters that were being used for the shooting were actually property of the Philippine government who kept calling them away to fight a real disturbance that was going on just ten miles away. We see shots and scenes that never made it into the original film (although much of it eventually made it into the 2001 "Redux" version). We see and overweight Marlon Brando who insisted on being filmed in shadows. And we are right there to watch the filming of the scene in which Martin Sheehan has a mental breakdown. In order to do this he became bleary-eyed drunk, cut his thumb on a mirror and used the blood as part of the scene. The intensity is chilling and when, a short time afterward, he has a life-threatening heart attack at the age of 36, we're all there to see him as he is given first aid.
Now, years later, some of the actors are interviewed about their experiences. We learn that they did a lot of drugs during many of the scenes - acid, speed, marijuana, alcohol, which certainly added to the authenticity as well as the craziness of the whole production. Robert Duval talks about how his famous line "I love the smell of napalm in the morning was improvised. And the whole cast talks about how they improvised a massacre scene. Laurence Fishburne was only 14 when the film was made, a real coming-of-age experience for him. But this very stirring film portrait belongs to Francis Coppola. We get to meet him as a very imperfect human being doing his best to create an art form out of the script, changing it constantly as he went along, and eventually turning out a small masterpiece which went on to be nominated for eight academy awards.
I give this video my highest recommendation. It is a "must" for movie buffs. And an essential education for anyone involved in filmmaking itself. Don't miss it!
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
Shot by Francis Ford Coppolla's wife, Hearts of Darkness is an incredible, one hour fifty minute documentary that reveals the horrors of making the very popular Apocalypse Now. The film took forever to make, driving many of its participants to the brink of insanity, not just Coppolla, who was emotionally-unstable for much of the film. Viewers of this fascinating documentary will be amazed to learn that Harvey Keitel was originally cast as Willard, but was dropped after only two weeks of shooting. Though only 36 years-old, Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack during filming, an event that further postponed its debuts in theaters. There is some really great footage included here, especially the shooting of the opening sequence of the film which involves a very drunk Sheen lashing out as both his character and himself (at that point, Sheen was experiencing a lot of hostility towards Coppolla and had it out with him right then and there, an episode that would appear in the finished movie). Even if you didn't particularly care for Apocalypse Now, you will most likely find Hearts of Darkness interesting, nonetheless. It is a magnificent look at the troubles and triumphs of a film crew headed by a somewhat mad, but brilliant director. This shouldn't be missed.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Hearts Of Darkness glosses over one of the more important aspects of the film's creation, the hiring and firing of the first actor, Harvey Keitel, to portray Lt. Willard. We are simply told it was not working, and cut to Francis's hiring of Martin Sheen. But, we never see any of the footage shot with Keitel, we never learn if he was simply too different from Francis's vision of Willard to work, or was he simply doing a poor job, a malcontent, or clashing too frequently with Francis. For a so-called documentary to leave such wide open says much of the aims of the documentarian, in this case Eleanor. Also left open-ended is a much talked about aspect of the filming that the documentary does not cover, and that is Francis's infidelity on the set, and how that contributed to the distance between the couple. How this affected Eleanor's documentary, much less Apocalypse Now, is certainly ripe for discussion. This is the rare instance where such is not mere gossip for gossip's sake, but pertinent information about the director's state of mind in the improvisatory aspects of the film. Was his film more gloomy because of the infidelity's consequences? Hearts Of Darkness does a great disservice to its viewers by totally avoiding such questions, even as it claims a rare intimacy, due to Eleanor's claim to have surreptitiously recorded conversations without Francis's knowledge.
Overall, the DVD package is barely worth an investment, especially if a Coppola fan, but once again the studio that put out the DVD could have offered so much more for so little an investment. Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse is a good and worthwhile 'Making Of' feature for a DVD release, but, as a stand alone documentary, it is rather lacking. Thus, with two making of documentaries, and no real feature, the package is saved by the aforementioned pluses alone. Better than nothing, but most viewers will wind up asking, 'Well, that's it?'
'Tis.
Overall, the DVD package is barely worth an investment, especially if a Coppola fan, but once again the studio that put out the DVD could have offered so much more for so little an investment. Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse is a good and worthwhile 'Making Of' feature for a DVD release, but, as a stand alone documentary, it is rather lacking. Thus, with two making of documentaries, and no real feature, the package is saved by the aforementioned pluses alone. Better than nothing, but most viewers will wind up asking, 'Well, that's it?'
'Tis.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Superb documentary about the making of "Apocalypse Now"
During the mid to late 1970's, Frances Ford Coppola asked his wife Eleanor to document the filming of "Apocalypse Now" primarily for purposes of promoting the film. Read more
Published 6 months ago by M. Oleson
An amazing in depth, personal documentary
Maybe the best film about the making of a film ever.
Funny, frightening, informative, sad and triumphant, it fully
captures the madness of creating one of the great... Read more
Funny, frightening, informative, sad and triumphant, it fully
captures the madness of creating one of the great... Read more
Published 9 months ago by K. Gordon
Francis Ford Coppola and Friction
In his treatise on strategy and warfare, On War, Carl von Clausewitz explains that "Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Nathan R. Uldricks
Not just more trivia about the making of APOCALYPSE NOW, but some...
Francis Ford Coppola's film APOCALYPSE NOW was one of the most infamously troubled productions in the history of Hollywood, so resonating in collective memory that it can still be... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Christopher Culver
"Heart of Darkness"...Sheds No Light
Ha haha...sorry about the title of my review...I guess I need to get out more.
Anyway, I don't see how this is a 5 Star movie. Read more
Anyway, I don't see how this is a 5 Star movie. Read more
Published 23 months ago by PM in NY
DVD is different than original release
HEARTS OF DARKNESS is not only a great documentary, it is perhaps one of the best ever made. It is up there with CRUMB, THE THIN BLUE LINE, WOODSTOCK, MY BEST FIEND, and GREY... Read more
Published on March 5, 2010 by Christopher B. Murray
very good!
It's really interesting to see how much was done in order to come up with something like apocalypse Now, it reveals lots of things that I didn't know about the making of the film. Read more
Published on February 13, 2010 by Rafael Esparza Calvo
Superb
I just saw this documentary for the second time and remain as enchanted by it as ever. Francis Ford Coppola's wife Eleanor is responsible for much of the footage and it's a... Read more
Published on July 29, 2009 by Bernard Chapin
A NECESSARY COMPANION TO APOCAPLYPSE NOW
If you're a fan of Apocalypse Now, this DVD is a necessary purchase. It gives essential insight into the creative process and bedraggled production of one of the greatest films of... Read more
Published on January 28, 2009 by Joe
If You Loved the Movie, you'll like this film
Where do I begin?!? What sort of focus can I create out of the chaos?!? How important is it to convey my concepts in an intelligble manner?!? Read more
Published on December 27, 2008 by Randy Keehn
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