PARIS (Reuters) – A director's cut of Francis Ford Coppola's seminal Vietnam War film “Apocalypse Now,” adding nearly an hour to the original length of the movie, will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on the French Riviera in May, it was announced Monday.
Coppola said in a statement issued by the festival that the new three-hour, 17-minute version did not merely re-integrate scenes left out of the original release, but had been completely re-edited using original material.
“The result is a film that is 53 minutes longer, and whose theme emerges more clearly. It is a more disturbing, sometimes funnier and more romantic film, whose historical perspective has become more forceful,” Coppola said.
Festival president Gilles Jacob said Coppola would attend the screening, though the exact date had not been set.
“It seems to me important, 21 years after marking the history of cinema, and just one year after the first visit of an American president to Vietnam, to show that this work has lost none of its force or disturbing impact,” Jacob said.
Then-President Clinton made a landmark trip to Vietnam in November.
The new film includes greater detail involving Martin Sheen's character and members of his gunboat crew during their journey upriver, as well as more footage of Marlon Brando, said producer Kim Aubry.
The re-edited movie also adds a “French plantation” sequence featuring the late Christian Marquand and Aurore Clement that had been left out of the original film, Aubry said.
The soundtrack, updated to incorporate the additional footage, has been completely restored and converted to digital format, and the entire film has been reprinted using a dye-transfer process that vastly improves color reproduction, Aubry said.
Joining Coppola in re-cutting the film was Walter Murch, one of the original editors who also shared an Oscar for best sound on the movie. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who won an Oscar for his photography, oversaw reprinting of the film.
Aubry said Coppola's San Francisco-based production company, American Zoetrope, is seeking an American distributor to re-release the movie and is in “serious discussions” with several outlets.
The film originally was released in the United States by United Artists. Paramount Home Entertainment has the rights to home video distribution in North America, Aubry said.
Based on the Joseph Conrad novel “Heart of Darkness,” the 1979 film stars Sheen as a special agent sent into Cambodia on a secret mission to kill a renegade officer played by Brando.
Production of the original movie, much of it shot in the Philippines, was dogged by trouble from the start. An earthquake destroyed $1 million worth of sets and delayed filming, prompting insiders to dub it “Apocalypse Later.” The role of Captain Willard put such intense pressure on Sheen that he suffered a heart attack during filming.
The original budget of $12 million more than doubled, forcing Coppola to mortgage his California home to complete the film, which won the prestigious Golden Palm award in Cannes in 1979.
This year's Cannes festival runs from May 9 to 20.
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