"I Love the Smell of Napalm in the Morning!"
Francis Ford Coppola’s original 1979 version of Apocalypse Now is a dark, sardonic, surrealistic yet mesmerizing reworking of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. Starring Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Fredric Forrest, Larry Fishbourne, and Dennis Hopper, Apocalypse Now trades Conrad’s African setting for the then-still largely unexplored (by Hollywood, anyway) jungles of Vietnam.
The film’s premise is deceptively simple. A hard-bitten, combat-weary Capt. Benjamin Willard (Sheen) is given a difficult (and highly classified) assignment: he is to travel up a long Vietnamese river on a Navy PBR (river patrol boat) to find the jungle outpost of Col. Walter Kurtz (Brando), a highly decorated and intelligent Special Forces officer who has gone "rogue" and utilizing what one senior officer describes as "unsound methods" to fight the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Willard is to locate Kurtz and "terminate (him) with extreme prejudice."
In what many viewers of this movie consider the classic centerpiece of Apocalypse Now, Willard and his uneasy Navy companions need the assistance of Lt. Col. Kilgore (Duvall) and his Air Cavalry unit’s helicopters to get past a too-shallow part of the river, or else the PBR will run aground.
Trouble is, as Kilgore (a "warrior-surfer") points out, "Charlie" controls the mouth of the river. Still, Kilgore agrees to escort Willard and his PBR for two reasons: he loves a good battle, and the location is ideal for surfing. (When one of his soldiers points out that the place is known as Charlie’s Point, Kilgore barks, "Charlie don’t surf!")
What follows is perhaps the iconic scene no other Vietnam War movie has been able to top: the early morning helicopter assault on Charlie’s Point. In a terrifying yet oddly exhilarating sequence, we see Kilgore’s Huey armada sweeping in on the seaside village with the morning sun behind them and Wagner’s "Ride of the Valkyries" blaring from their loudspeakers. It culminates with a devastating air strike on hidden gun positions which have shot down a chopper, prompting Kilgore to utter the hallmark line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning…it smells like victory."
Coppola’s film then progressively gets darker and more surreal the farther the PBR makes its way upriver for Willlard’s rendezvous with the mystery of Kurtz. The deeper the motley group goes into the jungle and the more distant they are from the "world," the weirder things get.
It is at this point when Willard begins to wonder: what made Kurtz turn his back on the tactics officially endorsed by the Army and the Pentagon? Why was he being sent to kill Kurtz? What made the generals and politicians who ran the war any better than Kurtz?
Apocalypse Now is famous for having been difficult to make and for being controversial. When the Pentagon refused to allow Coppola to use its aircraft and equipment, the Oscar-winning (The Godfather Parts I and II) director turned to the Philippine Army, which lent its Hueys and other "toys" to the production.
It’s also well known that Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack during filming. What is somewhat not widely known is that Apocalypse Now was once a project George Lucas was heavily involved in.
As one of Coppola’s co-founders of American Zoetrope, Lucas and Coppola’s collaborator John (Red Dawn) Milius came up with many of the ideas incorporated into the final film. According to Dale Pollock’s 1983 biography Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas, the concept of the journey to Kurtz via a boat was Lucas’.
Lucas had also wanted badly to direct Apocalypse Now, but when the production schedule dragged on and planning for Star Wars got underway, Coppola refused to wait till the science fiction film was finished to begin production of Apocalypse Now. He had set a release date for 1976, the Bicentennial year, and if Lucas went off to direct Star Wars, that date would be set back by a year. Coppola refused to budge, and Lucas went his separate way.
As it turned out, production problems, including a typhoon and Sheen’s illness, slowed down production anyway and the film was released in 1979. (If you look closely, though, you’ll see a visual homage to Coppola’s friend and protege: the intelligence officer played by Harrison Ford wears a name tag with the name Lucas on his fatigues jacket.)
The original Paramount Widescreen Collection DVD (not to be confused with the later issue of the longer Apocalypse Now Redux) is a barebones offering. Its single disc only has English subtitles, English and French audio tracks, the original theatrical trailer, a scene called “Destruction of Kurtz Compound” which has the only bit of director’s commentary by Coppola, and excerpts from the original theatrical program.
The film’s premise is deceptively simple. A hard-bitten, combat-weary Capt. Benjamin Willard (Sheen) is given a difficult (and highly classified) assignment: he is to travel up a long Vietnamese river on a Navy PBR (river patrol boat) to find the jungle outpost of Col. Walter Kurtz (Brando), a highly decorated and intelligent Special Forces officer who has gone "rogue" and utilizing what one senior officer describes as "unsound methods" to fight the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Willard is to locate Kurtz and "terminate (him) with extreme prejudice."
In what many viewers of this movie consider the classic centerpiece of Apocalypse Now, Willard and his uneasy Navy companions need the assistance of Lt. Col. Kilgore (Duvall) and his Air Cavalry unit’s helicopters to get past a too-shallow part of the river, or else the PBR will run aground.
Trouble is, as Kilgore (a "warrior-surfer") points out, "Charlie" controls the mouth of the river. Still, Kilgore agrees to escort Willard and his PBR for two reasons: he loves a good battle, and the location is ideal for surfing. (When one of his soldiers points out that the place is known as Charlie’s Point, Kilgore barks, "Charlie don’t surf!")
What follows is perhaps the iconic scene no other Vietnam War movie has been able to top: the early morning helicopter assault on Charlie’s Point. In a terrifying yet oddly exhilarating sequence, we see Kilgore’s Huey armada sweeping in on the seaside village with the morning sun behind them and Wagner’s "Ride of the Valkyries" blaring from their loudspeakers. It culminates with a devastating air strike on hidden gun positions which have shot down a chopper, prompting Kilgore to utter the hallmark line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning…it smells like victory."
Coppola’s film then progressively gets darker and more surreal the farther the PBR makes its way upriver for Willlard’s rendezvous with the mystery of Kurtz. The deeper the motley group goes into the jungle and the more distant they are from the "world," the weirder things get.
It is at this point when Willard begins to wonder: what made Kurtz turn his back on the tactics officially endorsed by the Army and the Pentagon? Why was he being sent to kill Kurtz? What made the generals and politicians who ran the war any better than Kurtz?
Apocalypse Now is famous for having been difficult to make and for being controversial. When the Pentagon refused to allow Coppola to use its aircraft and equipment, the Oscar-winning (The Godfather Parts I and II) director turned to the Philippine Army, which lent its Hueys and other "toys" to the production.
It’s also well known that Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack during filming. What is somewhat not widely known is that Apocalypse Now was once a project George Lucas was heavily involved in.
As one of Coppola’s co-founders of American Zoetrope, Lucas and Coppola’s collaborator John (Red Dawn) Milius came up with many of the ideas incorporated into the final film. According to Dale Pollock’s 1983 biography Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas, the concept of the journey to Kurtz via a boat was Lucas’.
Lucas had also wanted badly to direct Apocalypse Now, but when the production schedule dragged on and planning for Star Wars got underway, Coppola refused to wait till the science fiction film was finished to begin production of Apocalypse Now. He had set a release date for 1976, the Bicentennial year, and if Lucas went off to direct Star Wars, that date would be set back by a year. Coppola refused to budge, and Lucas went his separate way.
As it turned out, production problems, including a typhoon and Sheen’s illness, slowed down production anyway and the film was released in 1979. (If you look closely, though, you’ll see a visual homage to Coppola’s friend and protege: the intelligence officer played by Harrison Ford wears a name tag with the name Lucas on his fatigues jacket.)
The original Paramount Widescreen Collection DVD (not to be confused with the later issue of the longer Apocalypse Now Redux) is a barebones offering. Its single disc only has English subtitles, English and French audio tracks, the original theatrical trailer, a scene called “Destruction of Kurtz Compound” which has the only bit of director’s commentary by Coppola, and excerpts from the original theatrical program.
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