PARIS (Reuters) - Director Francis Ford Coppola went to hell and back 22 years ago to get his cult Vietnam War epic "Apocalypse Now" to the screens.

Now, his sanity fully restored, Coppola is returning this week to the Cannes Film Festival, where the classic war movie made its triumphant premiere, to unveil a longer version that he says is truer to his original vision.

"Apocalypse Now Redux" restores 53 minutes of action originally left on the cutting-room floor, adding flesh to the nightmarish tale of U.S. Army Capt. Ben Willard, dispatched deep into the jungle to kill rogue Green Beret Col. Walter Kurtz.

"The themes emerge more clearly and the film is funnier, sexier, more romantic, more political and more bizarre, with historical perspective," Coppola said this year when the project was announced.

The film, starring Marlon Brando as the despotic Kurtz and Martin Sheen as the loner Willard, blew audiences away with its psychedelic delirium. Even though it was incomplete, it won the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or.

THE HORROR, THE HORROR

"Apocalypse Now" is a bleak film, loosely based on Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart Of Darkness."

"I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn't even know it yet," Willard says as he starts his pursuit of Kurtz. "The horror, the horror," rasps Kurtz before he dies.

In later years, the cast and crew would talk about the shoot of "Apocalypse Now" in the Philippines in similar vein. Coppola expected to finish work in a single 14-week stint, but everything that could go wrong did and in the end it took three tours of duty and 238 days of shooting to complete the job.

Accounts of the filming describe typhoons washing away whole sets, rampant adultery, a prodigious intake of drugs, a constant turnover of technicians and mutinies under the rains. To make matters worse, Sheen suffered a heart attack midway through, Brando showed up late and totally unprepared for his role, while Coppola himself became increasingly manic.

"We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane." Coppola said of the legendary shoot.

When he finally returned to civilization, he had around 250 hours of footage and needed 18 months to cut it down to size. Many sequences were ditched and soon became some of the most talked-about "lost scenes" in Hollywood folklore.

FRENCH COLONIALS AND LOST BUNNIES

The most eagerly awaited insert is the strange French plantation interlude, just after the death of teenage conscript Clean. The patrol boat taking Willard into Cambodia runs into a fog-bound quay, leading him to the homestead of a group of colonial French who rail over dinner against their miserable lot and argue about the origins of the war.

Willard then shares an opium pipe and a bed with the lady of the house, before plowing on to meet his nadir.

The other revived material is perhaps more compelling, such as a scene when Willard's men come across a helicopter full of stranded Playboy bunnies and trade them fuel for sex and one when Willard steals the surfboard of megalomaniac Lt. Col. Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, adding a rare note of humor.

But fans hoping to see more of Brando may be disappointed. Coppola has added only one new scene involving the disturbed Kurtz and decided to leave a 45-minute monologue in the can.

Now that sounds good!



45 MINUTES?!! Uh, I'm not disappointed.  Kurtz was the biggest disappointment of the whole movie.  Everyone calls Brando such a genius but his performance in Apocalypse was probably the weakest thing about the movie.  Too bad, because I thought Kurtz was such a fascinating and profound character.  I wonder if the 45 minute monologue is on a script somewhere.

leaving Kurtz out would be more true to Conrad. In the book we only hear about Kurtz through others--that he was a leading humanitarian and so on, much like we here about Col. Kurtz through his military bio. In heart of darkness once Kurtz is actually found he's near death and doesn't say much but the famous coda, "the horror, the horror".

Kurtz is more powerful for being a bit more mysterious.

I am a big fan of this movie. I saw the movie in a Humanities class that concentrated on Vietnam war films. It was one of my favorite classes. We also watched the documentry called i believe "Hearts of darkness" or "Hearts and Minds" I cant remember which but it talked about some of the scenes that did not make it into movie. it would be neat to see some of those scenes in the movie.


Six

Brando stunk.  From the part he first appears a great movie goes downhill.  The reason Brando was always filmed in the shadowy light was because he was so fat, and flabbies like that don't make credible Special Forces colonels.   If they added the new stuff and left all of Brando on the cutting room floor (OK, we'll let him say "the horror . . . the horror"), the movie would be vastly improved.

I never saw the original Apoc. now.
Hmmm....two SF officers hunting each other down .........interesting

Sigman:

Never saw Apocalypse Now?
BACK! Back I say!
Back to the video store today.

Yea,I hear its good.

and to think I have decided to rent other movies
{usually ends up a stupid movie} instead,
last time I got "dead men walking",another vietnam war movie instead.And that movie was stupid.





]

I wish Coppola would leave it as it is.  It is a true epic and classic and should not be screwed with.  Making Willard into a opium puffing idiot will not improve the movie nor will making the crew into basically blackmailing rapists (beyond the dope users they already are).  I think all this will do is dilute the message and change the total grain of the film.  If they added more firfights or bombing scenes or another "village taking" scene then I would be all for it.  But adding drug using and sex assaults wont make it better in my opinion.

Try to find the classic short "Porklips Now" as a followup to the film.  I found it years ago as a segment on "Hardware Wars".  You'll laugh so hard you'll lose your lunch.

2 AR's Up

Mike the Movie Critic

Why screw with a Classic? Everyone knows the French are decadent, so adding a scene where they sit in some old rubber plantation where amazingly they didn't hear the news about DienBienPhu smoking opium and offering the wife to the weary traveller would not add anything to the movie and would really detract from it.



Still screwing with a Classic, but this shit could actually be funny! Still, Apocolypse Now was not a comedy. Neither was being there, but a little comedic relief sometimes was helpful. Hmmmm Have to think about this. If Cappola releases "Redux", will have to rent it, and maybe do my own edit for my own use (technology is wonderful, ain't it?)

I’m with Gun Toter on this one.

Changing a classic move, especially one as profound as A.N. is a travesty and
done for money rather anything artistic.

On the other hand, adding more film to a purely entertainment move like Aliens
doesn’t normally damage the original sensation.  The extended Aliens turned out
OK, but the revamped Star Wars was a total flop.

What would everyone think if Vincent Gagho, risen from the dead, decided that
“Stary Stary Night” need a little revamp?

Or AC/DC was to re-released “Back in Black” as “Back in Aquamarine”.

Some how it just wouldn’t be right, well it’s the same with a good movie.

RK      

Whoa! Hitting pretty close to home here pal! And you're absolutely right! Back in Aquamarine? Say what?[;)]

Well, what about Cheap Trick touring again?  [:D]

He's not changing it. He changed it when he took all that shit (your complaining about) out :D

AH YES, 'PORKLIPS NOW' a truely funny flick. one of the best spoofs of a 'serious' movie i have ever seen. where could i find that?

Brando+shaved head+black pajamas=UNCLE FESTER!

He is changing it, even the ending is different if they include blowing up the set at
the end.

Perhaps he should ad all 250 hours of film, maybe that would be the original.
After watching all that, you’d probably run off into the jungle and start your own
society.

So called "French" Colons (Colonists) were about as french as south africans are english or americans -english for that matter..The colonists mostly..Corsicans were the planters..rubber tree variety...Only met a couple when I was there and a lot of them were allied with the cong..why wouldnt they be they were every bit as vietnamese after 200 years of occupation as the south vietnamese..south vietnam wasnt very populated until french engineers built canals drainied the delta and made rice planting viable...the only french colon i got closed to had several .556 nato rounds through him a large supply of opium and a gun catalog..... movies....LOL

A lot of talk about not changing a classic.

I know for a fact that there are at least two versions of the movie out there, maybe more.

The original release and a version that I think was billed as the "directors cut", which was released a couple of years after the original.

I've seen both, but can't find the second version on video.