Coppola’s flawed masterpiece

The 1970s, as film students and movie buffs know, was a seminal decade for movie-making in the United States. Several innovative film-makers came of age during the decade (Scorsese, Spielberg, De Palma, Bogdanovitch, Friedkin, Demme and a host of others) but one man stood taller than the rest. That larger-than-life personality was Francis Ford Coppola. He made four of the greatest-ever movies in that decade – The  Godfather (1972), the art-house thriller The Conversation (1974), The Godfather Part II (1974), and, the most grandiose of them all, Apocalypse Now (1979).

Apocalypse Now was the ultimate “event movie” – more has been written about it, arguably, than all almost any other motion picture made by a major Hollywood studio before or since. It is difficult for modern audiences to imagine the kind of impact it had on contemporary audiences at the time. It was a movie no one really expected to come into being at various points of its creation. But it did, and when we look back on it, so many years later, it still has the power to evoke huge emotions in even the most jaded of film-viewers.

The origins of the film are well-known but a recap is useful – Coppola associate John Milius wrote a screenplay based on the Joseph Conrad 1899 novella, The Heart of Darkness, transporting the action from the Belgian Congo to Vietnam, America’s key battlefield at the time. That was the basis of the movie’s storyline though it was to undergo many revisions in the years to come.

The basic plot is very simple and linear – an American soldier, Captain Willard, is given the job of “terminating with extreme prejudice” (military speak for execution) a Green Beret colonel, Kurtz, who has gone mad in the jungles of Cambodia and has formed an army of his own. The story is about Willard’s surreal and perilous journey up a river into the jungle, the  adventures on the way and what happens when he finally meets the near-mythical Kurtz in his domain.

Martin Sheen plays Willard as a fairly passive character but it is fascinating to remember that it was the great Harvey Keitel who was Coppola’s original choice as Willard. But Coppola was not happy having Keitel in the key role and sacked him after a few days of shooting on location. That is just one of the many problems that plagued the production in the Philippines. Incidentally, the country was chosen as the stand-in for Vietnam as the landscape was similar.

The roll-call of the various woes the movie suffered during its shooting is worth listing. Other than Keitel’s sacking, these included:

• a major typhoon that destroyed much of the sets constructed for the film in the Philippines;
• the fighting with the rebels in the south which resulted in many of the Philippines Air Force helicopters not being available for key scenes;

• the heart-attack suffered by Sheen;

• the lack of a proper screenplay – Coppola was constantly revising and rewriting the Milius material;

• an ever-ballooning budget which went from an estimated US$10 million to nearly US$32 million (a huge amount of money at the time),

• and the biggest star of them all, Marlon Brando (playing Kurtz), turning up overweight and under-prepared, presenting yet another set of problems for the embattled production crew.

Finally, after many delays and many months later than expected, location shooting was wound up. Coppola screened a rough cut of his movie at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979 as a “work in progress” and it was declared the joint winner of the coveted Palme d’Or. The first viewings immediately polarised most critics and viewers of the time. The fact that the rough cut still did not have a proper ending was not lost on anyone. Imagine the guts of a film-maker to unveil his grandest-ever production at the world’s premier film festival, without a proper finale! That’s pure chutzpah for you. Can you imagine any current big-name director doing the same? No way, I bet.

The theatrical release of the movie a few months later went on to make millions, was recognised as a landmark in motion picture history, and reaffirmed Coppola’s position as the greatest filmmaker of his era. Apocalypse Now was seen as the ultimate Vietnam war movie, even though other great Vietnam war films like The Deer Hunter and Platoon have their supporters too. In 2001, Coppola and legendary editor Walter Murch released a longer version called Apocalypse Now Redux, which added 49 minutes of footage (including the famous “French Plantation Sequence”) to the original theatrical release. Those extra bits helped to flesh out some of the characters and added more colour to the whole picture.

So, how good a movie is Apocalypse Now? Visually and sonically, it remains a stunner and if there is one movie that makes a major case for watching blockbuster films on a big screen it is this. The single most famous scene, Lt Col Kilgore’s (James Caan) Air Cavalry attack on a small village to the strains of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, carries as much punch now as it did when first seen. This is Coppola at his very best as a showman. Watch it here and be amazed:

And let’s not forget Kilgore’s immortal quote here: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” – the single famous line of dialogue from the movie.   

Stunning visuals abound throughout – the amazing opening scene with the choppers going whup-whup-whup against a napalm-devastated landscape with Jim Morrison singing “The End” playing in the background, the sampan massacre, Brando’s bald head looming out of the darkness of his den, Dennis Hopper’s manic photographer, Willard rising out of the mist-shrouded swamp on his way to kill Kurtz – all these are scenes that are never forgotten once seen. The acting, as in most Coppola movies, is top-notch with most of the big names making a mark. And there is even a cameo by a young Harrison Ford at the start! The cinematography by the famous Vittorio Storaro is gorgeous and justly lauded, as is the superb work by costume designer and Coppola regular Dean Tavoularis.

But there are flaws too – the ending especially comes across as makeshift and put-together. Brando mumbles his lines as usual (without making much sense) and you keep getting the feeling the scriptwriters were writing up dialogue for Brando even as they were shooting his scenes. Brando to me was the centre of The Godfather but here he is sadly the weak link. The movie has an intriguing beginning, a strong middle part which peaks with the Air Cavalry attack, and then falls apart. It is pretty much of a mess by the end, whatever way you look at it. Some viewers may also find the expanded cut to be way too long. The movie simply does not have the tightness of Coppola’s other epics of the 1970s.  

Sadly, Coppola would never again rise to the levels that Apocalypse Now promised. Through the 1980s, he made several of his dream projects but no one great movie. By the 1990s, he had become a director for hire and by the 2000s he had become far more interested in his Napa Valley winery than in making cutting-edge movies. So, in a sense, Apocalypse Now was both his greatest moment and also the beginning of the end of his time as the world’s most famous movie-maker.

For those interested in the remarkable story behind the movie, there are plenty of resources available. Eleanor Coppola, Francis’s long-suffering wife, kept a journal during the crazy days of location shooting in the Philippines and this book titled Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now, along with the invaluable footage she shot at the time, formed the basis of one of the most interesting documentaries ever released on the making of a movie. Called Hearts of Darkness: A Film-maker’s Apocalypse, it was released in 1991 to tremendous acclaim. Film historian Peter Cowie’s The Apocalypse Now Book is also a useful companion study to the whole project. And there are, of course, millions of words written on the film by dozens of critics over the years. Nothing about Apocalypse Now, of course, can be termed to be on a small scale!  

The Eastwood formula

I have been interested in Clint Eastwood’s body of work for a few years now – it has been fascinating for me to observe the smooth way in which Eastwood has converted himself from an iconic (but stilted and somewhat limited) superstar to a serious filmmaker over the last four decades. Eastwood’s has been a model career – and now, at age 81, he is still going strong as a director par excellence. Some of the best and most acclaimed Hollywood movies of the last decade have come from the Eastwood stable – award-winners like Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Changeling and, most recently, J Edgar.

Having read scores of articles, books and interviews about Eastwood and his films, it has been pretty easy for me to identify his trademark touches as a director – Eastwood always brings his movies in under budget, he works quickly and efficiently, he always collaborates with his long-term crew, he keeps everything and everybody relaxed on set and almost every movie he makes gets done with the minimum of fuss and with maximum economy. Eastwood tackles some very interesting subjects in his films – ranging from his favourite passions (jazz, the Western, the cop drama) to biopics and adaptations of popular novels.

For those who would like to know more about Eastwood the auteur, the logical film to start with is a little-known suspense film from 1971, called Play Misty For Me. This psychological crime thriller, which had a tinge of European art-house sensibility, was Eastwood’s first directorial venture and I would rate it as one of his best. Misty was modest in scale and had no great ambitions but it was very effective. It was made for just US$700,000 – a small amount even for 1971 – but at no point does the movie look cheap or shoddy.

Eastwood plays small-town DJ Dave Garver in the film who is stalked by a psychotic fan called Evelyn Draper (played by Jessica Walter) who repeatedly phones and asks him to play the song Misty on air. She orchestrates a meeting with him one evening at a bar and he has a casual fling with her. Casual for him, but not for her, as it turns out! Things go wrong quickly from this point onwards – Evelyn goes after Garver with a vengeance when she finds herself sidelined after his serious girl-friend comes back into the picture.

Walter, who plays the role of the murderous admirer, gives the performance of her life and she is electrifying to watch. This must be one of the few occasions when Eastwood was eclipsed on screen at the peak of his popularity as a megastar. Walter goes from sexy fan to an obsessive killer psycho with ease and she is absolutely terrifying in this role. A pity she was never heard much from after this Oscar-worthy portrayal of a woman spurned.

Misty evokes the charm of small-town life perfectly – this is one place where it’s logical to find a DJ as the big local celebrity. Eastwood chose to shoot the movie in Carmel-by-the-Sea (California), the town where he has been based for decades now, and of which he would go on to become the mayor briefly in the mid-1980s. There are some great shots of the lovely locales and the beautiful topography throughout as the movie unfurls in the typically unhurried and languid Eastwood manner.

Misty is, by no means, a perfect thriller. There are a couple of interludes – one is a love-making scene, the other is a sequence from a jazz festival – that go on for far too long and tests the viewer’s patience. Also, there is the question of why a big tall fellow like the hero is repeatedly unable to defend himself against a woman who is about half his size! But then this is a movie after all and sometimes, as we all know, reality is put aside. Eastwood is also typically wooden in some scenes and, as many critics commented at the time, seemed far more keen to show off his body than his acting chops.

Misty had a lovely soundtrack also – besides the title song, it created a hit out of Roberta Flack’s moving interpretation of the ballad, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. Another reason Misty is remembered for is for the guest appearance of Eastwood’s directorial mentor, Don Siegel, in a small starring role as a bartender. Siegel’s presence was vital for the movie’s creation as Eastwood wanted him around on the set for support and help.

Not many people know Misty was the forerunner of and the inspiration for other stalker movies like the smash hit Fatal Attraction (1987). Misty was received warmly by most critics of the day, though it never really caught fire at the box-office. But it remains an essential movie of the early 1970s and a must-watch for anybody interested in anything to do with Eastwood. It was his kind of homage to Alfred Hitchcock, in a way, and it works well, in its own modest manner. So check this under-rated gem out now, if you haven’t … and see how Eastwood’s directorial journey started, more than 40 years ago.

The 1970s – a decade like no other on the big screen

I have always had a weakness for the 1970s – was it because I was born in 1971 or was it because my formative years covered almost the whole of that decade? The 1970s were a hugely eventful time both in the West and in India. The counterculture movements of the 1960s had given way to a different scenario in the US and the UK – governments and ruling authorities were no longer seen as sacrosanct and benevolent. In fact, several governments were now regarded as acting in a suspicious manner in many cases! And, in India, there was the Emergency in the mid-1970s which forever changed the country’s democratic thought process.

The movies made in this decade, not surprisingly, reflected the events that were happening in society. The old generation of film-makers was on the way out while a new young breed was moving in. Alfred Hitchcock, for instance, made his last notable movie, Frenzy, in 1972 but that was already seen as his swansong. It was evident that his glory days were long over.

The new wunderkids – among them such future luminaries as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Brian de Palma and William Friedkin, to mention just the most prominent – were experimenting with works that were far removed from most of the creations that had been seen on screen till then. Hitchcock’s movies, in particular, seemed extremely tame, dated and old-fashioned compared to what these auteurs would come up with the next few years.

Many of the movies that we now consider the greatest ever in the history of movies were released in the 1970s. Take any genre and you arguably have the 1970s to thank for, for providing a template for the future. A sampling of what I mean:

Thinking of drama? Then look no further than The Godfather (1972) which is as close to a complete movie as one can imagine. The 1970s even threw up The Godfather Part II (1974), which many rate as the best sequel ever. Then there is the mini-masterpiece from Scorsese, Mean Streets (1973), which kick-started the director's famed collaboration with Robert De Niro. And a recent Guardian poll of the greatest movies across all categories has just selected Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974) as the best movie ever made. These four movies from the first half of the 1970s went on to influence countless future films, both in Hollywood and elsewhere.

Looking for vigilante justice or police procedural? Well, there are Dirty Harry (1971), The French Connection (1971) and Death Wish (1974) to whet your appetite. Amitabh Bachchan’s iconic “angry young man” persona could be directly traced back to Eastwood’s Harry Callahan. Eastwood also directed his first movie in 1971, the creepy stalker thriller Play Misty For Me, which was the forerunner of the more famous Lethal Attraction from the following decade.

Need a text for the classic underdog movie? Then take a look at Rocky (1976).

Or a template for the stereotypical film of the anti-social loner? Taxi Driver (1976), of course.

Escape and heist films? Papillon (1973) and The Getaway (1972) were notable entries in those categories and there were also lesser-known gems like The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) – the colour-coded criminals in this thriller found a ready reference in the 1992 Quentin Tarantino offering, Reservoir Dogs.

And, perhaps inevitably, the ultimate action/war movie would turn out to be a typical 1970s product: the ground-breaking Apocalypse Now (1979), which showed the way forward for so many war movies to come.

Would the world of comic heroes have been the same if not for 1978’s seminal Superman: The Movie?

Martial arts? Look no further than Enter the Dragon (1973), which unleashed hundreds of wannabe Bruce Lees into the high-kicking genre.

How about musicals, you ask? The disco-tinged Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978) showed the dance-floor moves for scores of music-and-dance themed films especially in overseas markets like India.

The disaster movie category came of age in the 1970s and gave us plenty of well-known offerings, including The Towering Inferno (1974) and the various Airport films.

Jaws came along in 1975 to inaugurate the “summer blockbuster season” and neither sharks nor beaches were ever seen the same way again. It was a masterclass in suspense in which the real enemy is rarely seen but is only sensed (or heard) throughout the film. The ageing Hitchcock would have surely been proud of such an exercise in fright.

Horror saw a real harvest of seminal fright-fests ranging from The Exorcist (1973) to The Omen (1976) and Carrie (1976), all of which are routinely rated as the most influential in their genre.

The slasher era was also inaugurated with The Last House on the Left (1972), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and, of course, Halloween (1978) - all of which predated the hugely successful slasher and "torture porn" films of the 1990s and 2000s like the Scream and the Saw series. Blood and gore were no longer taboo on the big screen after these films came along, unlike in the days of Psycho.

Sci-fiction made its first forays into a fictional galaxy with 1977’s pop-culture phenomenon Star Wars, influencing a whole generation of creative artists and laying the base for the CGI-dominated movies that became the norm in the years afterwards. Alien (1979) was another classic sci-fi movie of the period, which was almost as important as Star Wars in its influence on its genre.

A peculiar 1970s phenomenon was the conspiracy movie with such offerings as The Parallax View (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975) and All the President’s Men (1976), the last of which was the screen version of the Watergate affair. All were political thrillers which took a long hard look at the (US) government and did not particularly like what they saw. Though the heyday of the political conspiracy thriller is probably over, no recent thriller can deny the influence of the above movies in more ways than one.

Arguably, the most enjoyable movies in Hindi film history were also made in the 1970s, though present-day audiences will have no memories of those! The greatest of the Hindi pot-boilers, Sholay, rode into theatres in 1975 and forever changed the Bollywood landscape. Sholay was the ultimate “curry western” and, like The Godfather, it had everything in it – action, tragedy, drama, comedy, great dialogue, wonderful chase and shoot-out sequences, memorable heroes, a villain for the ages and above-average song-and-dance numbers.

The above movies are some of the obvious choices for the greatest films of the 1970s but surely every movie-buff will have his/her own list, with possibly many other films on them. But, whatever the different selections are, film buffs have much to thank the 1970s for. The most notable movies of that decade, as we have seen, provided the blueprint for much of what was to come in the next 30 years. And, let’s not forget, the best of these films were also hugely exciting. It was, truly, a period to remember for big-screen aficionados.

Revisiting 'First Blood'

Movies starring Sylvester Stallone seem easy to pigeonhole at first glance. Plenty of slam-bang action with lots of shootings and explosions, very little dialogue, stereotypical characters, American jingoism, male machismo - these are the staple ingredients of a typical Stallone film, especially those released in his 1980s and early 1990s heydays. But there remains a little gem of a film that had all these elements, yet which managed to rise above its limitations. The name of that movie is First Blood (1982, directed by Ted Kotcheff), the first instalment in the hugely lucrative John Rambo franchise.

When the movie fan thinks of Rambo, the image that immediately comes to mind is that of an over-muscled and highly-trained physical specimen who bursts into explosive rage at an imagined or real slight and lays waste to whatever he can with as much military firepower as he can muster. Yet, in First Blood, when we first meet him, Rambo is at his quietest and most vulnerable. He is not looking to pick a fight with anyone. But he certainly objects to being pushed around and run out of the small town he visits - how can a war hero and Green Beret submit to a bully of a local police chief like that, without a whimper? It's just not likely.

Few people know that Rambo was first born in the pages of a debut novel by David Morrell, a Canadian-American writer. The novel was published in 1972 with the Vietnam War as the backdrop for the main character's motivations and it was made into a movie, also titled First Blood, a good 10 years later. The movie ending differed from the book's finale in one major way, which I will not disclose here. Suffice to say that if the novel's climax had been followed in the film treatment, we would not have seen three Rambo sequels. Again, that might have been a good thing as the latest Rambo film, released in 2008, was disastrously bad!

But it is First Blood we are concerned with, not its sequels. There is much to commend in this tight-as-a-drum, 97-minute chase movie. It starts quietly enough as a taciturn Rambo comes to the little town of Hope looking for a former Army colleague. He learns his friend is no longer alive. On his way out of town, Rambo runs into the local police chief (played superbly by Brian Dennehy in the role of his life) who takes an instant dislike to the long-haired stranger. Rambo is hauled off to the town police station where he suddenly runs amok (literally) after some rough handling by the cops sets off bad memories from his time in the Vietnam War.

The movie changes gear at this point and there follows an exhilarating series of superb set-piece action sequences when Rambo flees into the woods and the full might of the state machinery is turned against him. These scenes are still stunning to watch, even after so many years. Rambo goes into full guerrilla battle mode and he turns hunter quickly, attacking the hapless cops who do not know what they are dealing with. There is one stunning encounter where Rambo sets booby-traps and literally melts into the undergrowth in between attacking his pursuers. Another memorable scene is when he jumps from a cliff into a mass of trees to escape the helicopter that is attacking him.

Finally the cops realise that who they are dealing with. The National Guard is called in to deal with the menace. The only man who can actually control this one-man army - Rambo's former training officer and mentor, Col Sam Trautman (Richard Crenna, in his most famous role) - makes an appearance at this stage. Rambo at this point is completely berserk and he goes after the police chief himself following a series of attacks on the town. It is at this stage that the book and film treatment part company.

Rambo in First Blood is not the cartoonish superhero he would become in the sequels. This is just a disturbed war veteran who fights back after being unjustly pushed around. In the subsequent Rambo films, the canvas becomes much bigger. Rambo fights the evils of the Cold War era, even taking on the might of the entire Soviet Army in the third film in the franchise.

While all the Rambo films are exciting to watch for action buffs, it is First Blood that is the most believable and the most satisfying (at least for me). Another interesting thing is that despite all the violence on screen, there is very little blood and gore in any of the scenes. The movie is also beautifully shot - the encounter scenes in the mountains are visually beautiful, for instance, and intensely claustrophorbic, which is perfectly suited for the overall theme.

Though Stallone is a gifted script-writer (another fact that many people hardly know of), the late scene in First Blood where he rambles on is probably the weakest one in the whole film. Dialogue delivery has never been Stallone's strongest point and, to this day, I have never really understood what his character says in this supposedly key scene. Rambo's raw appeal works best when he just grunts and mumbles and gets on with his business of mayhem and destruction.

In the part of India I grew up in, there are some superheroes that are always popular, especially among men - Bruce Lee's martial-arts personas and Stallone's Rambo reign supreme there even many decades after they first burst on the screen. Their appeal never seems to fade even when they have become a joke to the more sophisticated cinema audiences in the wider world. Is this because because we remember a much more simpler world through these rough-hewn characters? There was not much CGI then and so the action we saw on screen was usually performed by actual people (usually the stunt doubles) - there was a gritty realism to these movies that is sorely lacking in the current action films.

The influence of First Blood was huge and yet we hardly remember this movie now as a trend-setter of the genre. It was not a commercial blockbuster, unlike its first two sequels, though critical reviews were generally favourable. But First Blood deserves to be more widely watched and appreciated, especially now when special-effects have taken over much of the "action" in action movies.

Some thoughts on old-fashioned movie-making

I am getting very interested in the technical aspects of movie-making these days - gone is the time I would just watch a movie for the heck of it. Now I choose movies only after a rigorous process of elimination and then see them with a critical eye. I like watching the old Hollywood classics (even the black-and-white ones, which I used to studiously ignore at one time!). The oldest full-length movie I have seen to date is Todd Browning's influential Dracula (1931), which has Bela Lugosi in the title role.
Old movies have a charm of their own - with little or no special effects and CGI creations, the emphasis is heavily on dramatic performances and dialogue. The black-and-white film noir movies of the 1940s - like The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946), both starring the gruff Humphrey Bogart as the private eyes Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, respectively - were hugely enjoyable for me. Of course, both films were based on the two most famous novels in the hard-boiled detective genre and so the basics were strong.
Then, of course, when it comes to technical aspects, there is no better education than watching Alfred Hitchcock's films. Some of them are over-rated, no doubt, but still even the worst of Hitchcock's creations had much to commend them. I love the films from his golden period (the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s) during which time he helmed classic after classic (Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds) and there are plenty of technical aspects to note from these magnificent movies. Even in a weak late-career Hitchcock effort like Frenzy (1972), there is a marvellous continuous tracking shot of the camera moving from an upstairs bedroom (where a murder is about to be committed) to the street downstairs.
Tracking shots, when they come off, are wonderful to watch - the five-minute visual stunner on the beaches of Dunkirk in the recent Atonement has come in for an inordinate amount of critical praise but the most famous example of such an uncut shot in a mainstream movie was, perhaps, the opening scene in the Orson Welles noir gem, Touch of Evil (1958). But, then, the great Welles was a master at technical wizardy - he tried almost every innovation possible in his Citizen Kane (1941).
Hitchcock used to shoot entire movies in his head. He was a classic storyboard director - every shot was carefully storyboarded in advance and then the actual shoot was a mere formality for him. He must have made use of all his technical prowess in that wonderful "runaway car on a downhill slope" sequence in his final feature, Family Plot (1976). One wonders what Welles and Hitchcock would have done with the special effects now easily available to even obscure directors!
Nowadays we associate action movies with constant movements, loud noises and explosions - but check out the great thrillers from the early 1970s like Dirty Harry and The Parallax View. These films made extensive use of lengthy silences and long-distance shots to great effect. One needs to watch them a few times to appreciate the actual impact.

Sequels and prequels - recreating box-office magic

The moment a movie hits gold at the box office, its makers instinctively start thinking about doing a sequel using the ingredients of the same formula. But, very often, a sequel may not have the polish of the original film and ends up as a damp squib. Audiences also go to watch it with far greater expectations and so it is often difficult to live up to the hype generated by the first one. In most cases, a sequel is made in a rushed manner and the end product may pale in comparison when compared with the original.
A classic example of the failed sequel was Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). The original Exorcist (1973) was a seminal movie, which set the benchmark for many horror films. But the immediate sequel, despite having a stellar cast, received such bad reviews that the distributors were forced to pull it out of theatres within days of its release!
In many cases, strangely, there might be another sequel and very often, the third film in the series turns out to be far better than the second one - a good example is the Jurassic Park series. The original was a huge global hit in 1993 while the 1997 sequel, also directed by Steven Spielberg, was a crashing bore. But, to everyone's surprise, Jurassic Park III (2001) turned out to be an entertaining thrill ride.
In very rare cases, a sequel goes on to earn the reputation of being as good or even better than the original which inspired it. The prime example of the great sequel is Godfather II (1974), that was made following the enormous critical and box-office success of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather in 1972. Many critics regard the original Godfather as an almost perfect movie but its immediate follow-up matched it in every regard and some Godfather fans even rate Godfather II as the superior of the two. But Godfather III (1990) - also directed by Coppola - couldn't sustain the magic touch and turned out to be the weakest entry in the series.
Strangely, India's Hindi-film industry, which is notorious for copying successful Hollywood hits and "Indianising" them to local tastes, doesn't seem to believe in making too many sequels. The sequels to mass hits like Munnabhai MBBS and Dhoom were rare events. However, modern-day Hindi filmmakers are now getting more interested in sequels and one of those in the works is Sarkar Raj, the sequel to the hit Sarkar (2005) - which was itself a desi homage to the Godfather films.
Some movies generate sequel after sequel and it becomes a franchise in its own right. The Pink Panther movies, starring Peter Sellers, worked well as long as the great Sellers and director Blake Edwards were around; after Sellers died, the makers still didn't give up and even made a dire Panther movie using unused old footage of Sellers as the immortal Inspector Clouseau! In more recent years, the character of Captain Jack Sparrow (brilliantly portrayed by Johnny Depp) in The Pirates of the Caribbean movies has become such an enormous pop-culture phenomenon that sequel after sequel has come out - but even the versatile Depp was looking rather washed out by the time the third installment set sail.
A recent trend in Hollywood is the creation of prequels, rather than sequels - hence the sudden entry of movies like Batman Begins (2005) and Hannibal Rising (2007). Many sequels have already been made with the primary characters of these flicks and, at some stage, the filmmakers decide to go back in time and get a prequel done showing the back stories for the hero (or the "villain-hero", as in the case of Dr Hannibal Lecter). Of course, the most famous prequels are the ones in the Star Wars saga; it can even be argued that they started the "prequel craze" in many ways.
The strongest sequels have been those which are good enough to stand up in their own right - a classic example is the Jason Bourne series. All the three movies starring Matt Damon as as the amnesiac super-spy have been equally good and the most recent one - The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) - has spectacular stunts (not CGI ones, mind you) that could easily match even those in a contemporary James Bond film like Casino Royale. The Mission: Impossible movies have also maintained their high standards with each outing so far.
A sequel that is made with care and patience has far more chances of doing well when compared to one that is rushed out to cash in on the success of the original. That remains a primary rule, whether the sequel is made in ultra-professional Hollywood or in any other movie industry.

Remakes - hit-and-miss affairs

What exactly drives a filmmaker to do a remake of a famous movie? Some may see a remake as an easy way to do a film - take the ideas/screenplay from an established classic, add a few frills here and there, and, hey presto, you have an extra point on your resume. Or it could be a homage to a movie that had influenced the filmmaker when he was cutting his teeth in the business. Or it could be a genuine attempt to update a path-breaking film and make it more relevant for modern-day audiences.
Whatever be the motivation behind a remake, there is no predicting how they will fare at the box office. Some of them can become big successes in their own right while others will disappear under an avalanche of hostile criticism. A recent example of how a remake can go totally wrong is illustrated by the case of the ill-fated Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag. Varma tried to remake the most beloved of India's movies, the evergreen "curry Western" Sholay (1975), and it ended up as the biggest flop of the year. Audiences seemed to actually resent the fact that Varma would dare to "reinterpret" a perennial Indian favourite. Aag may have been an ineffective film but, amidst the catcalls, it was forgotten that even Hollywood regularly updates their own classics.
Alfred Hitchcock's horror benchmark, Psycho (1960), was faithfully remade almost frame by frame by Gus Van Sant in 1998; the only difference being that the remake was in colour and, of course, had contemporary actors. On its own, the new Psycho seemed to be a perfectly adequate film but when it is compared to the original, there were no fresh ideas and so it was immediately derided as a waste of time and money. What was forgotten was that a much younger audience was exposed to a classic this way and it could be argued that at least some of the newer moviegoers would seek out the older movie to find out how good it was. Last year's release of the cult Amitabh classic Don, in the Indian context, probably had the same effect. It is very much like remixing a vintage song for a younger audience - while the newer generation will definitely prefer the updated version, it does give them a context and an incentive to check out the original.
But some remakes do stand up well in their own right - a good example is Martin Scorcese's 1991 version of Cape Fear. It was far bloodier and over the top compared to the critically-acclaimed 1962 original, but thanks to Robert De Niro's scenery-chewing performance as the villain, the Scorcese thriller garnered a lot of positive headlines. A similiar success was Peter Jackson's 2005 version of King Kong. Jackson was paying homage to the 1933 movie of the giant ape which was a childhood favourite of his, and with the many advantages that modern-day technology offered him, was able to make a film that was arguably way better than the original.
Some other slick recent treatments of old classics that are worth mentioning here are The Italian Job, The Manchurian Candidate, and The Thomas Crown Affair. It could even be argued that the 1999 update of The Thomas Crown Affair was at least as good as the 1968 orginal which starred uber-cool superstar Steve McQueen in his prime.
But some Hollywood remakes are truly awful and pointless. The 2004 update of Stepford Wives , for instance, took away the brilliant twisted ending of the 1975 original and made the climax totally farcical.
There are, thus, no hard and fast templates for how a remake should be. Some filmmakers treat the original material intelligently and so they stand a better chance of making a name in their own right. (The remake of Ocean's 11 has been so successful that it has been spun off into a franchise of its own with the predictable sequels popping up in theatres every year or so). Those who try to copy the seminal product slavishly end up having their updated versions critically destroyed.
It is interesting, however, to note how so few of Hitchcock's classics have been remade so far; it is almost as if modern-day filmmakers have admitted to themselves that it is impossible to successfully attempt a reinterpretation of a Hitchcock standard.