Product Details

• Actors: Dennis Hopper, Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, George Lucas, Robert Duvall
• Directors: Eleanor Coppola, Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper
• Writers: Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper
• Producers: Doug Claybourne, Fred Roos, George Zaloom
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Paramount
• VHS Release Date: January 1, 1998
• Run Time: 96 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302414016
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #122,191 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

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

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

85 of 90 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A stirring portrait of the making of a masterpiece, January 3, 2002

By 

Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse [VHS] (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!

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Documentary Is Even Better than the Actual Movie, June 2, 2000

By 

Weston J. Kathman (Lakeside Park, KY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse [VHS] (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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Solid, July 29, 2009

By 

Cosmoetica "cosmoeticadotcom" (New York, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hearts of Darkness - A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (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.