Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Fax Bahr directs. Shana Hagan behind the camera. Todd Boekelheide scores. Michael Greer cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

• 135 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.
• 2Directed by Fax Bahr, shot by Shana Hagan. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
• 3Original score by Todd Boekelheide. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
• 4Editor Michael Greer shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
• 5Francis Ford Coppola and Eleanor Coppola and John Milius carry the top of the cast.
• 6Marketing tagline: "The magic and madness of making Apocalypse Now".
• 7IMDB entry: tt0102015 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
• 8Classified under 9 themes, including "movie business", "philippines", "behind the scenes", "madness".

The technical file

Cinematography

Shana Hagan

Original score

Todd Boekelheide

Editing

Michael Greer

Runtime

96 min · 1h 36m

Aspect ratio (typical)

1.37:1 (Academy)

Status

Released

Box office

$1,394,661

Original language

EN

Certification (US)

R

IMDB

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991) ↗

Rotten Tomatoes

100% 🍅 Fresh

Metacritic

95/100

IMDB rating

8.1/10 · 25,187 votes

MPAA

R

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

• 

  ▶
  Official Trailer

  Trailer · Official
• 

  ▶
  Heart of Darkness Trailer

  Trailer
• 

  ▶
  Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse 1991 Trailer | Documentary

  Trailer

Community reviews

What people are saying

• CRCulver2018-09-05
  ★ 6/10

  Francis Ford Coppola's film <i>Apocalypse Now</i> was one of the most infamously troubled productions in the history of Hollywood, so resonating in collective memory that it can still be parodied in new-millennium like <i>Tropic Thunder</i>. A typhoon struck the set in the Philippines, local officials were difficult to work with, Martin Sheen had a heart attack during filming, and Coppola was constantly troubled how to bring his script to a powerful ending. The 1991 documentary <i>Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse</i> chronicles these trials and tribulations through audio recordings that Coppola's wife Eleanor made for her filming diary, informal footage of life on the set and interviews with cast and crew. If all <i>Hearts of Darkness</i> did was rehash the same general trivia one can get from Wikipedia, like so many documentaries, it wouldn't be very good. I was pleased to find that it reveals a lot about the story that I never knew before. The genesis of the screen adaption of Joseph Conrad's novel in earlier attempts by Orson Welles and George Lucas is charted. Dennis Hopper's maniacal performance is placed in the context of his own nervousness at a career slump and his thankfulness that Coppola was giving him a second chance. Perhaps the strongest point of the film is how it reveals the mind of someone tormented by his drive to create, and how a film can result from spontaneous choices on set that go far beyond any script. When the film was first shown at Cannes, Coppola said of the production "little by little we went insane", and indeed his highs of inspiration and lows of self-doubt are captured here. The opening of the film where Sheen's character drunkenly breaks a mirror and slumps, bleeding and crying next to his hotel room bed, is shown to have resulted from the cameras rolling when Sheen did drunkenly stumble on set. Upon its 1991 release this documentary must have been even more interesting as it contains much footage that appeared only in the <i>Apocalypse Now Redux</i> director's cut in 2001: the French Plantation scene, the interlude in the abandoned, muddy camp, etc. I was surprised to hear Coppola insist on cutting the French Plantation scene because he was unsatisfied with the quality of the French actors and the lighting, not because of its place in the story. But what remains remarkable about <i>Hearts of Darkness</i> is that it betrays nothing of the scenes out of the 5-hour workprint that remain cut from commercial release, such as the prominent role given to Lt. Colby and his murder of the American photographer. There's also absolutely no shots of Harvey Keitel as Captain Williard before he was replaced.

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• Wuchak2019-08-01
  ★ 9/10

  Outstanding documentary on the making of the hallowed "Apocalypse Now" Released in 1991, "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" chronicles the making of 1979's "Apocalypse Now," combining footage shot by Eleanor Coppola during the shooting of the film with more recent interviews with the cast & crew. Documentaries or commentaries on how a particular film was made don't interest me because I'm not a filmmaker and only care about the final product. As a writer and former musician I'm familiar with the creative process and understand how some ideas fail to deliver the goods and must be thrown out, etc. As an example, I heard some demos of a couple of my favorite songs and they were lousy compared to the final product and almost ruined my view of those songs. This explains why I'm generally not interested in the harrowing details of how my favorite movies were made and the parts that were thrown out, etc. This documentary is an exception because (1.) "Apocalypse Now" is my all-time favorite movie (the original theatrical version, that is) and (2.) the documentary is just so well-done. In fact, it's fascinating from beginning to end. "Hearts of Darkness" shows the monumental problems Coppola and crew encountered in making the movie: The sudden firing of their leading man (Harvey Keitel) after three weeks of shooting and replacing him with Martin Sheen; the delays in filming due to the Philippine Army taking back their rented helicopters to quell an uprising; a hurricane that ruins the sets; Sheen having a heart attack at only 36 years of age and the corresponding delay; overweight Brando arriving to the set unprepared and making $1 million a week with an unwritten, improvised ending; the amusing tiger incident; Francis venting in genuine uncertainty at various stages of the creative process, particularly the entire ending; etc. The interviews with cast and crew are also very informative and entertaining, like Frederic Forrest's commentary on the tiger sequence and John Milius' insights on his original screenplay and his encounter with Francis during filming where the latter convinced him that it'd be "the first film to win the Nobel prize." This documentary came out ten years before the "Redux" version of the film was released and, as such, it was the public's first glimpse of various scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor, like the French Plantation sequence and the typhoon-with-the-bunnies sequence. In my opinion, "Redux" is a failure and those scenes should've never been inserted into the movie as very little of the added footage works, but those sequences ARE interesting as deleted scenes or viewing them (in part) in the context of "Hearts of Darkness." For some good laughs, be sure to check out the spoof of this documentary: "Hearts of Hot Shots Part Deux: A Filmmaker's Apology," which was released in 1993 and is available on Youtube in a couple parts. The film runs 96 minutes. GRADE: A

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Production companies

Who made it

• 

  American Zoetrope

  US

• ZA

  Zaloom Mayfield Productions

  US

Key crew

• ProducerLes Mayfield
• ProducerGeorge Zaloom
• Executive ProducerDoug Claybourne
• Executive ProducerFred Roos
• EditorMichael Greer
• EditorJay Miracle
• Camera OperatorLes Blank
• Executive ProducerFrancis Ford Coppola

Themes & keywords

What it's about, really

• movie business
• philippines
• behind the scenes
• madness
• ego
• making of
• life imitates art
• woman director
• typhoon

Release history · US

When it landed

• Theatrical (limited)1991-11-27R
• Theatrical (limited)2015-10-16R· Harvard Film Archive

Also known as

International titles

• Ins Herz der FinsternisDE
• O Apocalipse de um CineastaBR
• En Filmares Vånda: Coppolas ApocalypseSE
• Hearts of Darkness: The Art of Eleanor CoppolaUS