Ahead of its release on MUBI, we explore how hints of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis can be seen in a number of the filmmaker’s past classics. Some see cinema as a form of theatre, and others see it as a form of circus. The great American filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola sits very much in the latter camp, having across nearly seven decades produced a litany of cinematic spectacles custom-primed to scintillate and delight. From his canonical classics of the 1970s, his chic style exercises of the 1980s, and his idiosyncratic studio epics of the 1990s, to the more personal, moody, experimental works of the new millennium, Coppola is the type of ringmaster who needs to feel that he himself is being satisfied artistically before he can think about how these works will connect to a broader audience. His most recent offering, the long-gestating passion project Megalopolis, was, until its spectacular unveiling at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the subject of much cinephile speculation and back-channel gossip. What will it be? What will it look like? Does this great filmmaker still have the juice to disrupt the norms of classical film production as he has done so many times in the past? Megalopolis, about a grand city on the precipice of decline and the architect who built it, is one-hundred percent pure Coppola, accept no substitutes, even if it looks, sounds, and feels like nothing else we’ve seen before or since. Here, in anticipation of the film being available to stream on MUBI, we’ve taken a peek back at some of Coppola’s back catalogue in search of some clues as to the exact provenance of this head-spinning cine-monument. 1. The Godfather – The mythosFollowing his vital internship at the hands of Roger Corman, this for-hire project for Paramount Pictures was the film that put Coppola not just on the map, but gave him direct access to the Hollywood throne room. Though the story is notable for its juicy character turns and memorable dialogue, it also depicts age-old power structures at the point where they are beginning to calcify and creak, which is one of the many themes of Megalopolis.2. The Conversation – The conspiracyCelebrity architect and innovator, Caesar Catalina, played by Adam Driver in Megalopolis, feels like he could be a distant relation of maestro sound-recordist and snoop, Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), from Coppola’s 1974 masterpiece, The Conversation. Professionally, both men sit at the apex of their field, but are eventually undone by a surfeit of pride and their inability to ignore or rebuff a conspiracy against them. 3. Apocalypse Now – The epic productionEven if you haven’t seen Apocalypse Now (1979), you probably know that it was an absolute nightmare to make, with sudden heart attacks, monsoons destroying the set, a prima donna acting legend and production being constantly stalled by the needs of a nearby civil war. Yet in the end, Coppola made the ultimate Vietnam war film his way, by hook or by crook, and that same moxie, that same passion, that same desire to push things to the bounds of reason (and beyond) is visible in the making of Megalopolis. 4. One from the Heart – The lavish formOne of those famous flops you hear about that’s actually a rather wonderful picture that was rejected for the “sin” of trying something a bit different. In hi-fi shops, there’s usually a copy of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’, or Dire Straits’ ‘Brothers in Arms’ on hand to test out the full range of the audio equipment, and One from the Heart feels like it could be the cinematic equivalent of that. Just as Megalopolis seeks to depict a glittering nighttime metropolis in a way few had seen before, so did this hugely underrated romance nearly 45 years ago, rolling out every formal trick in the book and even inventing a few new ones along the way for effect. And while we’re talking style, see also 1983’s Rumblefish, another film that took shit for daring to be different. 5. Tucker: The Man and His Dream – The folly of the great American innovatorsLest we forget this charming Coppola deep cut from the tail-end of the 1980s, a true-life tale of the independent industrialist attempting to go bumper-to-bumper with the big three American car manufacturers. It’s notable for the fact that there’s more than a hint of autobiography in the mix too. When writing about Megalopolis, many were quick to draw the sly parallels between the tainted dreamer and out-of-time visionary, Caesar Catalina, and the film’s own system-smashing writer-director. 6. Bram Stoker’s Dracula – The cinephile passionThis is a film in which Coppola throws everything and the kitchen sink at the screen – and that’s just the first five minutes. Opulent is an adjective that only barely covers the alchemical wonder that is 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula – Coppola’s first sizable box office hit in a long while. The lineage between this and Megaloplis is probably the most pronounced on this list, with both films benefit from their maker’s more-is-more attitude towards visual and thematic bombast. 7. Tetro – Back to indie rootsEven when he was making films for pennies in his early days, Coppola still managed to parlay any logistical drawbacks into visual and tonal grandiloquence. 2009’s Tetro, starring Vincent Gallo and Alden Ehrenreich, saw the showman finally choose to tamp things down a little bit and create a monochrome mood piece which marked a return to his more personal and personalised form of filmmaking. And in the mysterious, elusive title character, the film maintains an abiding interest (carried straight through to Megalopolis) of male loners finding themselves tragically out-of-synch with their surroundings. 8. Twixt – The remixable aspect of cinemaIf Tetro was a return to the prestige arthouse filmmaking of yore, then Twixt was Coppola announcing that he could still make movies like a hopped-up twentysomething if he wanted to. This 2011 horror-hybrid can be seen as the trial run for Megalopolis, in that it takes a fairly conventional plotline (here, a gothic-tinged whodunnit) but abjectly refuses to allow this thing to play out in a conventional way. With its epic digressions, its ornate set pieces and more characters than could fit into your average football stadium, Megalopolis is a paragon of filmmaking that is not made to fit cosily inside a box and to be stacked neatly up against its cinematic kin.Megalopolis by Francis Ford Coppola is available to stream on MUBI now with 30 days free here. The post Re-anticipating Megalopolis first appeared on Little White Lies.