Coppola
Brando's raspy-voiced role (later to be mimicked by a host of impersonators) was difficult in one respect for Coppola in that the actor was 47 at the time, much too young for the aging Mafia don. The problem was solved by makeup expert Dick Smith, who has accomplished similar wonders in The Exorcist (1973) and in Little Big Man (1970), where he aged Dustin Hoffman to 100 years old. Smith added wrinkles to Brando's skin by applying liquid latex, especially around the eyes and nose. A leathery appearance was achieved the same way, along with loose flesh and bags beneath the eyes. He imparted olive skin tones to give Brando a Mediterranean appearance. A special denture was inserted along his lower jawline to make the actor's jaw jut out in a completely different bite and to cause his cheeks to sag. He then stuffed the actor's cheeks with a gummy substance to affect heavy jowls, and it was this device that altered the actor's appearance drastically, giving rise to wild speculation that Brando spent hours stuffing his cheeks with cotton, facial tissue, and newspapers. The film is dark--Coppola had cinematographer Gordon Willis deliberately underlight each scene; the mood is dark; and the climax, in which Mich
Since the early Seventies, and continuing into the next two decades, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola has occupied a special place in the pantheon of great directors; no modern director has commanded as much respect as the former UCLA film school graduate - Scorsese always excepted - and his films display a complete mastery of the medium throughout a wide variety of genres. Maybe his last two offerings - Jack, and the John Grisham potboiler The Rainmaker - were beneath him from an artistic standpoint, but they still testify to Coppola's amazing versatility as an artist. Who knows if his long-cherished wish to film a live-action version of Pinocchio will bear fruit, but at the moment it's enough to look back at that amazing body of work, containing such towering masterpieces as The Godfather, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now, and proclaim Francis Ford Coppola a true giant of modern cinema.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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