Comparative Analysis of Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness

Comparing and Contrasting Joseph Conrad 's Heart of Darkness

and Francis Ford Coppola 's Apocalypse Now

Introduction

Since the dawn of American cinema history , Hollywood has turned to works of fiction as source material for films . It has been said that film and fiction have both fed at the same breast . This is a striking way of observing how often novels are transformed into the big screen considering the affinities between film and fiction . Along this line this looks at the relationship between fiction and film . More specifically , this compares and

contrasts Joseph Conrad 's novel Heart of Darkness (1902 ) and Francis Ford Coppola 's Film Apocalypse Now (1979 . In comparing and contrasting these two popular works , it is important first to briefly analyze the nature of film and fiction as two distinct media

It must be emphasized that , generally , cinema has more in common with novel than with any other form of literature . Both a film and a novel depend more on and narration than on dialogue . theless in emphasizing the close relationship between film and fiction , one must acknowledge that they still remain two different media of expression For one , a film , as a product of the commercial cinema , must appeal to a mass audience , whereas a novel appeals only to a segment of the population . In addition , filmgoers watch a movie for about two hours on the average , whereas it is unlikely to finish reading a novel in two hours

In comparing and contrasting a novel and its film version , one must take into account the issue of compression , which becomes an important factor in making a motion picture based on a novel , since the novelist can take as many pages as he or she likes to develop plot and characters , whereas the scriptwriter has only a couple of hours of screen time at most . Often , the screenwriter handles this problem by selecting what he or she considers to be the key sections of the novel and to develop them in his or her script to their full dramatic potential , rather than to try to present , survey-fashion , all of the events of the novel . Here , the film version of a novel is the interpretation of the screenwriter and the director of that particular novel

Comparison and Contrast

In attempting to compare and contrast Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now , one must consider the development of the script from its inception to its final form . In the spring of 1975 Coppola told an interviewer that his next film would deal with the Vietnam War . As a starting point for his screenplay , he noted that he had selected a six-year-old scenario written by John Milius , based on Conrad 's Heart of Darkness The script had updated the story to the Vietnam War and turned Kurtz from an ivory trader into a Green Beret officer who defects from the American army and sets up his own army across the Cambodian b where he proceeds to conduct his...