You can't talk about the history of American cinema without mentioning Francis Ford Coppola. Arriving in Hollywood right as the industry was losing money, he was lucky enough to hit his artistic stride when the studios decided to take a chance on young filmmakers with strong visionary voices. Coppola is one of the greatest of his generation, the New Hollywood movement of American filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, John Milihus, Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas.
Updated May 23, 2023: If you're a fan of the acclaimed director and his remarkable body of work, you'll be happy to know this list was updated with additional content and titles.
Coppola's run in the 70s is unmatched with Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now. Coppola firmly cemented his name in American film history throughout his career and is one of the most well-respected filmmakers in the industry. At 84, the director is showing no signs of slowing down as he recently sold his winery to fund his next project, Megalopolis, which features an all-star cast including Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Aubrey Plaza, Laurence Fishburn, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Jon Voight. With that in mind, here is a look at the best films from the illustrious Francis Ford Coppola.
15 The Godfather, Part III
In the third and final installment of the acclaimed Godfather trilogy, The Godfather, Part III, Al Pacino's Michael Corleone returns in a film that seems like it delivers more in the department of nostalgia than originality. Although it is disappointing compared to perhaps two of the greatest movie ever made, it still received seven Oscar Nominations, including Coppola's 13th and 14th nominations for Best Director and Best Picture and Andy Garcia for Best Supporting Actor.
Coppola recently released a recut version titled The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone to coincide with the film's 30th anniversary. Reviews for this cut were more favorable than the theatrical release.
14 The Rainmaker
The Rainmaker is an intense and nuanced courtroom drama with some big names; Danny Devito, Clair Danes, Jon Voight, and Matt Damon, who stars as Rudy Baylor. Rudy is a young lawyer who takes on a problematic once-in-a-lifetime lawsuit against a powerful insurance corporation. As expected, the film is masterfully directed and a leading courtroom drama example. Each character is captivating, and with the ideological and uncompromising Rudy leading the charge, it is impossible not to see this case through.
13 The Rain People
Shirley Knight leads as housewife Natalie Ravenna in this female-driven road trip movie, The Rain People. Natalie discovers she is pregnant and tired of her marriage, so she decides to drive across the country all by herself to find some meaning in everything and discover what she really wants. She meets various lost souls on her journey, including a hitchhiker and a washed-up and brain-damaged college football player.
Things take a turn when she meets police officer Gordon (Robert Duvall) that her endeavor is maybe more dangerous than she thinks. The film is an explicit 'finding yourself' story that manages to be just as entertaining as thought-provoking.
12 You're a Big Boy Now
You're A Big Boy Now is a romantic comedy starring Peter Kastner as Bernard Chanticleer, a 19-year-old with overbearing parents who desperately want to escape from under them. To do so, he decides to live in a room at a boarding house, where he falls for two women and has to choose between the two. This expertly directed film is what earned Coppola his Master's from UCLA. As one of his earliest films, it is easy to see the makings of a cinematic genius.
11 Peggy Sue Got Married
Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage teamed up to star in Coppola's critically-lauded fantasy dramedy Peggy Sue Got Married, which tells the wondrous story of an unhappy woman on the brink of divorce who gets a second chance to reshape her life when she faints at her high school reunion and awakens back in 1960. Peggy Sue is able to alter her future by reliving her past decisions and making different choices, but throughout the process, she comes to enlightening realizations about herself and those around her.
For the honest and thought-provoking dramedy, the revered director cast two of his relatives for the film: nephew Nicolas Cage as lead Charlie and daughter Sofia as Peggy Sue's sister Nancy; Cage would later reveal he did not want to play the role but ultimately agreed to take it as long as he could make the character over-the-top. Peggy Sue Got Married went on to become a critical and commercial success, earning three Academy Award nominations and establishing itself as a knockout nostalgia-fueled flick.
10 Tetro
Easily the best of Coppola's underrated 21st-century films and funded with his own money, Tetro strikes a peculiar balance of artistic experimentation (his closest film to Fellini) and heartfelt narrative. Partly inspired by his own life, Coppola cast Vincent Gallo as the titular Tetro, the self-destructive, highly combustible writer who fled to Buenos Aires to escape his abusive family. But real inspiration and tensions strike because his estranged brother Benny (played by Alden Ennerhich, who Coppola is partly responsible for discovering) comes to find him, opening up the past in a sloppy and ugly fashion.
While it doesn't quite reach the heights of his early masterpieces, the intimacy of the setting and gorgeous, old-school black-and-white cinematography was a welcome foray for Coppola that put him back into cinema's good graces.
9 The Cotton Club
When The Cotton Club wrapped filming, the final cut had been taken away from Coppola, dampening his original vision of giving voice to the Black artists who performed in prohibition-era clubs, shifting the focus to the gangsters behind the scenes. Radically recut into the excellent The Cotton Club: Encore, Coppola delivers his original vision of the politicization of Black art and also shows an insightful portrayal of inauthentic Hollywood.
Starring Gregory Hines as a dancer who can't hang out in the club and Richard Gere as a musician who wants to be an actor, both navigate the criminal underworld. Coppola shows his deft hand at creating another strikingly modern crime epic. The film also features a deep supporting cast of Laurence Fishburne, James Remar, Tom Waits, Nicolas Cage, and Bob Hoskins, all operating behind the scenes of the smoky clubs.
8 The Outsiders
When Coppola set out to make The Outsiders, he had one mission: discover the next crop of young American talent. Well, he passed with flying colors. The Outsiders introduced the world to Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane, C. Thomas Howell, and Ralph Macchio before they became stars.
Following the youth gang culture of the acclaimed Young Adult novel from S.E. Hinton of the same name, Coppola directs the young ensemble as they navigate the poverty of the lower class and violence from the rich kids, all in a glowing throwback 1950s artifice. All of this while never losing the heart of the source material.
7 Bram Stoker's Dracula
Coppola's first foray into horror was Bram Stoker's Dracula, a gothically costumed, operatic horror romance film covered in blood, flesh, and artifice. It features the likes of Gary Oldman as the titular monster who falls for the beautiful Mina Murray (Winona Ryder).
The horror develops into a beautiful and elegant ride into utter camp, where monsters, beasts, and men can only display their true affection through violence. While the ensemble features big names, Hopkins steals the show as the famed monster hunter Van Helsing.
6 Tucker: The Man and His Dream
Tucker: The Man and His Dream is a gorgeous ode to the ambitions of American car manufacturing legend Preston Tucker (Jeff Bridges) as he battles the evil machinations of America's most powerful corporations and their ties to politics. Coppola keeps the material and narrative light as it chronicles parts of Tucker's life, from his time developing military vehicles to his revolutionary car concept, the "Tucker Torpedo," that pits him up against the three titans of the car industry.
With his right-hand man Abe Karatz (Martin Landau, who was Oscar-nominated) leading him through the fray, we sadly see how ill-fated his dreams are and how most that challenge the system are doomed to fail. The cinematography from Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now) is also gorgeous and reminiscent of his work on The Conformist.
5 The Conversation
While taking a break from wrapping The Godfather Part II, Coppola decided to make yet another masterpiece in its wings. Featuring a quietly subdued, paranoid performance from the great Gene Hackman as Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who believes he's caught in the middle of a government conspiracy.
The Conversation detours from a thriller into a depressing character study that seemingly manifests in the middle of the Watergate scandal, as Caul is terrified of what's to come to a young couple he's been tailing. A reflection of the times that are reminiscent of other taut conspiracy thrillers of the 70s, but also one that has aged with unfortunate beauty because of mass government distrust. Coppola executed a low-key film with profundity.
4 Rumble Fish
The closest Coppola has come to touching the wavelengths of the French New Wave, Rumble Fish is constructed as a heightened, fever-pitch noir set against the S.E Hinton playground of violent youth culture. Featuring star-making performances from the young ensemble of Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, and Mickey Rourke, Rumble Fish sings because Coppola seemingly threw the playbook out the window, and it exists as the perfect response to The Outsiders, floating on the opposite end of the spectrum stylistically.
3 Godfather Part II
If The Godfather gave us the hopes of Michael Corleone taking his family business into its next phase, The Godfather: Part II sees that idealism turned to tragedy. Featuring the heartbreaking arc of Fredo (John Cazale), The Godfather sequel finds other members of the family turning against Michael's quench for power and his crushing blows to family loyalty.
Godfather Part II remains the quintessential sequel because it showcases the development of thematic material and how quickly things can turn for the worst. Part II also awarded Robert De Niro an Oscar (like Brando) for his portrayal of the young Don Vito Corleone as he takes his family from the streets to the throne. Godfather Part II remains one of the greatest sequels ever made and is another indelible piece of mafia fiction.
2 Apocalypse Now
One of, if not the greatest War films ever made, Apocalypse Now saw Francis Ford Coppola on the brink of collapse. Nearly bankrupting himself to get the film made while also plunging himself and the film's crew into the heart of the jungle, what emerged became a seminal piece of American cinema and history.
The young Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent on a top-secret mission to assassinate the violent and murderous Walter E. Kurtz (another iconic Marlon Brando performance), who went AWOL to the furthest stretches of the Vietnamese villages. Apocalypse Now is a war film like no other, a hallucinatory nightmare right into the heart of darkness.
1 The Godfather
Every other crime epic ever made will live in The Godfather's shadow. It's perhaps one of the most influential and most artful pieces of pop cinema ever to touch the big screen, a perfect mafia film about power and corruption in America's model of becoming your boss and how capitalism pits us all against each other, even families. A king (Marlon Brando) finds his three sons, Michael (Al Pacino), Sonita (James Caan), and Fredo (John Cazale), all vying for their father's throne as the future of the business closes in on him.
Everything about the film became iconic, from the characters' arcs, the music, the dialogue, and Gordon Willis' god-level cinematography of the dimly lit halls in which the powerful do business. The Godfather will forever stand the test of time because of the genius levels of artistry being executed on every level.