Francis Ford Coppola Picks His Favorite Criterion Movies & Gives Advice to Filmmakers

Upon step­ping into the hal­lowed Cri­te­ri­on Clos­et, stocked with hun­dreds of that cinephile video label’s finest releas­es, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la speaks of a direc­tor who “believed in a film he want­ed to make, and used his entire for­tune, because the financ­ing sys­tem of the time would­n’t finance it. And it came out and it was a big flop, and he died sort of pen­ni­less, not real­iz­ing that this film he put every­thing up for” would “be con­sid­ered today the mas­ter­piece that we con­sid­er it.” The auteur in ques­tion is Jacques Tati, and the film is Play­time, though one imag­ines that Cop­po­la’s own recent expe­ri­ence with Mega­lopo­lis was­n’t so very far from his mind.

“I think he’s the only film­mak­er, oth­er than present com­pa­ny, who took a big hunk of what wealth he had earned in his life and put it up to make a film that nobody else would make,” Cop­po­la con­tin­ues. But when you do that, “usu­al­ly it with­stands the test of time.”

His long career has afford­ed him many a les­son in 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 art film for kids,” but “the kids at that time did­n’t total­ly get it right away, and I thought it was a very big fail­ure and was very upset about it, because I sort of loved the film.”

Only lat­er did Cop­po­la find out how influ­en­tial this seem­ing dud had been in Latin Amer­i­ca, where young peo­ple “went to this one the­ater to see this weird movie called Rum­ble Fish, which they had no idea what it was, but it some­how struck them, and it inspired a whole gen­er­a­tion to become film­mak­ers and nov­el­ists.” But 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 words of Dance, Girl, Dance direc­tor Dorothy Arzn­er, who hap­pened to be his direct­ing teacher at UCLA. Doubt­ful about his poten­tial to become a film­mak­er, he declared his inten­tion to quit try­ing. To which Arzn­er respond­ed: “I’ve been around, and I know you’ll make it.” Indeed, Cop­po­la made it in the movies — and, more impor­tant­ly, he con­tin­ues mak­ing movies today.

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.