Godfather

March 15, 2004
Phillips throws down the gauntlet in his prologue: other books on the Academy Award–winning American director are mere biographies or filmographies or hopelessly out of date. Phillips asserts he has proven Coppola is a "genuine cinematic artist who is also a popular entertainer." But was this ever in dispute? Phillips has undeniably researched his subject with daunting thoroughness (he even contradicts the director's memory of his own films), categorizing and analyzing every film Coppola ever made, including his brief early forays into soft porn and his stint doing slasher flicks with Roger Corman. The author, who has written on film for three decades, interviews numerous colleagues of Coppola's as well as the director and his wife, Eleanor. He is expansive on the Godfather
trilogy and its importance to modern American cinema, explicates the genius of Apocalypse Now
and The Conversation
, delineates the genealogy of Coppola's work with George Lucas (Star Wars
) and Marlon Brando, and even explains how Coppola's bout with polio when he was 10 led to his interest in filmmaking. The book has such depth of information on the director's metier and auteurship, yet Phillips writes with smugness and doesn't quote Coppola enough. The insider tone Phillips sets in his prologue continues throughout, marring (and even undermining) an otherwise superb work of scholarship. This is certainly the definitive work on the director to date and scholars (and lovers) of film will revel in the details about Coppola's best work and hoard the trivia about his worst. 39 photos.

April 1, 2004
In the 1970s, director Francis Ford Coppola became an almost Orson Welles-like figure, the new reigning genius of the cinema, with his two classic Godfather films, The Conversation, and the decade-ending Apocalypse Now. And, like Welles, he is now considered somewhat of a genius manqu . Phillips (English, Loyola Univ. of Chicago) joins a bevy of writers who have previously analyzed Coppola's oeuvre. With the apparent close cooperation of the director, his family, and many other collaborators, he discusses each of Coppola's films in scrupulous detail. Understandably, Phillips devotes the lion's share of space to Coppola's most significant work (though his forays into soft porn and the poorly received Finian's Rainbow are also covered, for example). Phillips is sympathetic toward the director, perhaps too much at times, but his faults-including the massive ego that persuaded him he could do no wrong-are in evidence. This trait certainly contributed to Coppola's slow decline, even though he has made a few worthy films since his initial success. The author's access to knowledgeable people and his obviously painstaking research make this one of the most useful books to date about Coppola. Recommended for all cinema collections.-Roy Liebman, California State Univ., Los Angeles

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2004
Of the many brilliant young American directors in the 1970s, Coppola was perhaps the brightest. He received the greatest acclaim for " The Godfather" and its first sequel, but critics were equally impressed by the less popular " The Conversation." Since his 1982 debacle " One from the Heart" (whose failure cost him the independent studio he had set up), he has made mostly undistinguished films. Phillips depicts Coppola's career as a struggle to exist as an "artist in an industry," showing that the auteur theory has validity even within today's Hollywood system. He valiantly attempts to make this case by giving equal time to Coppola's less-celebrated efforts, arguing effectively for the underappreciated " Bram Stoker's Dracula" , which he maintains reinvented the horror film much as " The Godfather" had the gangster film, but less successfully for "gun for hire" jobs such as the John Grisham adaptation, " The Rainmaker" . Phillips relies heavily on previously published resources but makes good use of a lengthy interview with Coppola. Not definitive, but worthwhile. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)