Upon step­ping into the hal­lowed Cri­te­ri­on Clos­et, stocked with hun­dreds of that cinephile video label’s most interesting releas­es, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la speaks of a direc­tor who “believed in a movie he need­ed to make, and used his whole for­tune, as a result of the financ­ing sys­tem of the time would­n’t finance it. And it got here out and it was a giant flop, and he died kind of pen­ni­much less, not actual­iz­ing that this movie he put each­factor up for” would “be con­sid­ered immediately the mas­ter­piece that we con­sid­er it.” The auteur in ques­tion is Jacques Tati, and the movie is Play­time, although one imag­ines that Cop­po­la’s personal latest expe­ri­ence with Mega­lopo­lis was­n’t so very removed from his thoughts.

“I feel he’s the one movie­mak­er, oth­er than current com­pa­ny, who took a giant hunk of what wealth he had earned in his life and put it as much as make a movie that no person else would make,” Cop­po­la con­tin­ues. However whenever you try this, “usu­al­ly it with­stands the take a look at of time.”

His lengthy profession has afford­ed him many a les­son within the unex­pect­ed turns a pic­ture’s after­life can take. Take Rum­ble Fish, his sec­ond S. E. Hin­ton adap­ta­tion of 1983 after The Out­siders. He intend­ed it as “an artwork movie for teenagers,” however “the children at the moment did­n’t whole­ly get it immediately, and I believed it was a really huge fail­ure and was very upset about it, as a result of I kind of beloved the movie.”

Solely lat­er did Cop­po­la learn how influ­en­tial this appear­ing dud had been in Latin Amer­i­ca, the place younger peo­ple “went to this one the­ater to see this bizarre film known as Rum­ble Fish, which they’d no concept what it was, however it some­how struck them, and it impressed a complete gen­er­a­tion to grow to be movie­mak­ers and nov­el­ists.” However he’d nev­er have been in a posi­tion to make it — to say noth­ing of The God­fa­ther, The Con­ver­sa­tion, and Apoc­a­lypse Now — if he had­n’t heed­ed the phrases of Dance, Girl, Dance direc­tor Dorothy Arzn­er, who hap­pened to be his direct­ing trainer at UCLA. Doubt­ful about his poten­tial to grow to be a movie­mak­er, he declared his inten­tion to give up attempt­ing. To which Arzn­er reply­ed: “I’ve been round, and I do know you’ll make it.” Certainly, Cop­po­la made it within the films — and, extra impor­tant­ly, he con­tin­ues mak­ing films immediately.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Four-Decade-Strug­gle to Make Mega­lopo­lis

Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Films: The God­fa­ther, Apoc­a­lypse Now & More

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Mar­tin Scors­ese Names His Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Wes Ander­son Vis­its a Paris Video Store and High­lights the Films He Loves: Kuro­sawa, Truf­faut, Buñuel & More

The Cult of the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion: The Com­pa­ny Ded­i­cat­ed to Gath­er­ing & Dis­trib­ut­ing the Great­est Films from Around the World

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly often known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.