Considered one of solely 9 administrators to win the Palme d’Or twice, Francis Ford Coppola took house his first 50 years in the past — again when the award was nonetheless known as the Grand Prix — for The Dialog.
A psychological thriller starring Gene Hackman as a morally conflicted surveillance professional in San Francisco, The Dialog couldn’t have been launched at a extra applicable time. Hitting U.S. theaters on April 7, 1974, the film requested pointed questions on energy, accountability and expertise — topics that had been high of the American thoughts for 2 years on account of the Watergate scandal. It was pure serendipity; Coppola had began writing the screenplay within the Nineteen Sixties. Simply 4 months after the movie’s launch, Richard Nixon would resign the presidency for his function within the notorious cover-up.
Within the intervening years, the movie has solely seen its cultural resonance improve. In 1995, it was chosen for preservation by the Nationwide Movie Registry for being “culturally, traditionally or aesthetically important,” whereas surveillance has turn into an on a regular basis component of American life.
Again in Could 1974, the movie acquired not solely the pageant’s high award however its Ecumenical Jury Prize, which “designates works of inventive high quality, movie testimonials to the depth of human feeling and its thriller, by human preoccupations, hopes and despairs.”
This yr, Coppola returned to Cannes with one other movie that appears to mine the preoccupations, hopes and despairs of people. Megalopolis, the director’s much-anticipated ardour undertaking, premiered in competitors and marks the second time Coppola has dedicated one of many business’s cardinal sins: utilizing his personal cash to make a film, this time to the tune of a reported $120 million.
The primary time he did that, he ended up taking house his second Palme d’Or, for Apocalypse Now, which break up the highest prize with Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum in 1979. Coppola spent $16 million of his personal cash on the Vietnam Battle drama, which now, like The Dialog, is an undisputed basic.