Watching the superb new two disc edition of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now Redux, I was struck by how influential Orson Welles seemed to be on Coppla’s movie.
The use of lap dissolves, the beams of light coming through slats, the incredible use of sound, which in the new 5.1 mix is simply astounding, and of course the supposed story that Coppola actually wanted Orson Welles to play Col. Kurtz before he decided on Marlon Brando.
With those thoughts in mind, here are some excerpts from Welles own 1939 screenplay for Heart Of Darkness. In retrospect, it’s too bad Coppola didn’t use Welles for Col. Kurtz, as he would have been able to speak some of the memorable lines he had written for himself 40 years earlier!
HEART OF DARKNESS 1939 – a Mercury Production for RKO-Radio Pictures.
Screenplay by Orson Welles, based on the novel by Joseph Conrad.
Proposed Cast:
Marlow……………..ORSON WELLES
Kurtz……………………………….??
Ernest Stitzer…….EVERETT SLOANE
Strunz…………….EDGAR BARRIER
Elsa Gruner…………..DITA PARLO
Carba de Arriaga…GEORGE COULOURIS
Schulman…………ERSKINE SANFORD
Eddie………………ROBERT COOTE
Frank Melchers……..GUS SCHILLING
Adalbert Butz……….NORMAN LLOYD
Blauer………………RAY COLLINS
de Terpitz……………JOHN EMERY
Doctor…………VLADIMIR SOKOLOFF
Meuss……………..FRANK READICK
Steersman……………JACK CARTER
****************************
ORSON WELLES ON HEART OF DARKNESS:
ORSON WELLES: …Heart of Darkness was a kind of parable of fascism. Remember that the time I was working on that was 1939-1940. War hadn’t started and fascism was the big issue of the time. It was a very clear parable.
PETER BOGDANOVICH: Is that what especially interested you?
ORSON WELLES: Part of it. The story is marvelously interesting, and it does have one thing which is in Kane and which is a thing I like very much in pictures: the search for the key to something. It’s a little bit like the plot of some of the best fairy stories.
PETER BOGDANOVICH: It’s in Mr. Arkadin, too.
ORSON WELLES: Yes, that’s right.
PETER BOGDANOVICH: You were going to play Marlow, and narrate it?
ORSON WELLES: Yes. So you’d see my reflection occasionally. There was some thought that I would play Kurtz as well, but I decided against that.
PETER BOGDANOVICH: Who would you have cast in the role?
ORSON WELLES: I hadn’t cast it really—the decision not to play Kurtz was made right at the end, just before the picture fell through. I felt I was a little too obvious for Kurtz and it should be a more romantic kind of personality, less of a heavy man—even a young heavy man. I think it should have been a more surprising person as Kurtz than I would have been.
***************************************
Mercury publicist Herbert Drake wrote this wildly hyperbolic synopsis to help sell Welles’s treatment for HEART OF DARKNESS to RKO executives, stressing typical Hollywood elements, including a love story that is practically non-existent in the script:
The story is of a man (Kurtz) and a girl (Elsa) in love. They are separated by his career at the moment and the girl is coming to find him. The man is exploiting the river as a trader and as an explorer and is the head-man of a whole company that is doing this in the name of a non-named foreign government. Girl goes to help rescue him, since he has gone beyond the point reached by any of his assistants and has been missing for some months. There is a hell of an adventure going up the river. The action takes place largely on board a rusty steam wheel paddle steamer and at the stations of the trading Co. along the shore. There is an unhappy ending which we won’t need to mention, man dies and the girl goes away, unfulfilled.
There are cannibals, shootings, petty bickering among the bureaucrats, native dances, fascinating light-colored native girl who has some connection with our hero. There is a jungle in flames and heavy storms of a spectacular nature… It all builds to a terrific climax.
(In a amusing aside, Welles script has some native cannibals say they prefer the taste of primitive men over the more civilized foreigners who have been encroaching on their terrain, claiming they are far more nourishing.)
While Welles is changing the locale and adding characters and moving the girl from Europe to the river, he is in no way violating Conrad. His feeling is that his treatment of Heart of Darkness is completely in the Conrad spirit and represents what the author would desire done in a film if he were alive today.
Story appeal: Welles and the girl… Mr Welles is a handsome young man as you know, and we feel that it is important in advertising that he is a broad, muscular, tanned, and handsome leading man… we feel that once we get them in the theatre they will go away completely and satisfied by the film even though it is not exactly in the boy-meets-girl tradition.
The theory of the story is two moderns who have a hell of an adventure in the dark places of the earth. The idea is more or less that this is the God-damnedest relation between a man and a woman ever put on the screen. It is definitely not “love in the Tropics”. Everyone and everything is just a little bit off normal, just a little bit oblique – all this being the result of the strange nature of their work – that is, operating as explorers in surroundings not healthy for a white man.
An important selling angle – not only the stars and the story but the AUDIENCE play a part in this film. It will be a definite experience, a completely unprecedented experience for the audience since it will see a story told in an entirely different way…
As Welles develops his method, we will be able to talk about it, but it is still somewhat in the experimental stage so he doesn’t wish to mention it until we can find a convenient formula to express its meaning. (This of course, was to be using the camera to tell the story completely from Marlow’s point of view).
***************************************
HEART OF DARKNESS
November 30, 1939
In this excerpt Marlow approaches the Kurtz compound deep in the Jungle:
EXTERIOR LAKE AND TEMPLE — MOONLIGHT — FOG
CAMERA MOVES toward the temple as the canoe glides toward it, HOLDING on it, ANGLING from below until the canoe nears its base. CAMERA finally comes close to a ladder which extends up to floor of temple. Now, indicating that Marlow is climbing the ladder, CAMERA TRAVELS UPWARDS. We catch in the background the texture of the water and light, as well as the pattern of the pilings under the temple. As CAMERA MOVES UPWARDS, it TILTS UP to a SHOT of the temple ceiling, showing it is covered with skulls. Then CAMERA PANS DOWN off the ceiling and we
FEATURE WIPE TO:
INTERIOR TEMPLE — MOONLIGHT — (MINIATURE)
CONTINUATION OF PAN DOWN from skull-covered ceiling to a LONG SHOT of the temple. The skull-and-bone decoration is carried throughout the interior. The place is dark, the source of light coming from the moon which shines in through the open front. At the far end of the structure, we discern a throne on a platform, and seated on the throne, the figure of a man — KURTZ. CAMERA TRUCKS FORWARD as MARLOW starts walking toward the throne, and we:
DISSOLVE OUT
INTERIOR TEMPLE – MOONLIGHT – (SET)
CAMERA is now much closer to KURTZ on the throne and is still MOVING FORWARD, MARLOW having covered the long walk from front of temple in the dissolve. KURTZ is more distinct, and as we near him CAMERA TILTS UP SLIGHTLY to indicate that he is on a higher level than MARLOW. We end up in a MEDIUM CLOSE-UP of KURTZ.
KURTZ
Have you a cigarette?
He reaches out for the cigarette. His hand goes below frame of camera. He brings his hand back with the cigarette in it and puts the cigarette into his mouth.
KURTZ
Light it for me.
CAMERA MOVES FORWARD and UPWARD into EXTREME CLOSE-UP of KURTZ’s face. There is the flare of a match as MARLOW lights the cigarette.
KURTZ
I’m dying… (He looks keenly into lens of camera, straight into Marlow’s eyes)
You’re American. What’s your name?
MARLOW’S VOICE
Marlow.
KURTZ
I’m Kurtz. You look like me – a little…
On the words “a little” CAMERA MOVES BACK SLIGHTLY and lowers a trifle from the extreme close-up of KURTZ’s face, indicating that MARLOW has stepped down and back. KURTZ settles back on his throne.
KURTZ
(looking straight at Marlow)
The image of God — I can use you…
**********************************
Later at the compound KURTZ orders the execution of some natives he deems to be traitors
KURTZ
Yes, that wasn’t anarchy—it was law.
MARLOW’S VOICE
Whose law?
KURTZ
My law. They were traitors to the state.
MARLOW’S VOICE
Your state?
KURTZ
You’re a foreigner, Marlow. Understand that our nation has no borders. Humanity depends on our race. Outside, there are ten thousand savages. Until I came, the most primitive of mankind.
MARLOW’S VOICE
And now?
KURTZ
Now they are enlightened, the tribes unified in the service of their leader.
MARLOW’S VOICE
Who pretends to be God.
KURTZ
The leader, the strong voice of authority, is the highest expression of our culture. The fulfillment of a superior race. I tell you, God is made in the image of man.
**********************************
In this excerpt, we are aboard the tramp steamer as it heads downriver as Kurtz lies dying onboard…
KURTZ
I’m a whole nation’s long, golden dream. And to you — a miserable wretch you once caught, grubbing for ivory in the bush, crazy with disease, who died on you in captivity.
MARLOW’S VOICE
You’re more than that.
KURTZ
Or less?
MARLOW’S VOICE
Or worse.
KURTZ
Or worse…
MARLOW’S VOICE
How do you know you’re going to die?
KURTZ
What I’ve had is fatal – it’s called power…
Do you understand that? I think so…
MARLOW’S VOICE
You said I never would.
KURTZ
You’ll never understand Kurtz — the statue in the public park. And there’ll be one — a big one in very bad taste, and on this day, every year, they’ll make speeches and lay wreaths at my stone feet. And then the young men will go off and get drunk singing a song about me. No, you’ll never understand that. Not what they make of me. But you can see what I’ve made of myself.
MARLOW’S VOICE
You said you ran away. I don’t understand that.
KURTZ
I was afraid. — Understand this much. — Everything I’ve done up here has been done according to the method of my Government. — Everything. There’s a man now in Europe trying to do what I’ve done in the jungle. He will fail. In his madness he thinks he can’t fail — but he will. A brute can rule only brutes. Remember the meek, the meek. — I’m a great man, Marlow — really great – greater than great men before me — I know the strength of the enemy — its terrible weakness. The meek — you and the rest of the millions — the poor in spirit. I hate you — but I know you for my betters — without knowing why you are except that yours is the Kingdom of Heaven, except that you shall inherit the earth. Don’t mistake me. I haven’t gone moral on my death bed. I’m above morality. No, I’ve climbed higher than other men and seen farther. I’m the first absolute dictator. The first complete success. I’ve known what the others try to get. I’ve gotten it in the one place in the world where it could be got. I’m the man on top — the one man. All the rest are six feet underground where I buried them. That’s the game. Bury the rest of them alive. Stay on top yourself. I won the game, but the winner loses too. He’s all alone and he goes mad.
There is a flash of lightning, followed by a clap of thunder.
KURTZ
That’s why I ran away. I ran from the face of darkness, and then as I started back down the river I saw that there was darkness there, too, and failure. So I hid in the charnel house where you found me, and then I ran again. Madness is better than defeat. Down the river is the light of reason, showing still behind the darkness, marking the evil, marking the shape of the original lie. I sound moral again. I’m not. I’m just practical. I know when to die.
Lightning and thunder.
KURTZ
I thought the time had come for me. The sun was low over the world, and my shadow was long, it would cover everything. I know now it’s not long enough. No man’s is long enough. The strong die with their dream. I am the first to die awake.
Lightning and thunder.
KURTZ
Our shadows are dark like night, and where they fall the jungle grows again. But the sun always goes down. Mine did. And the world has a darker shadow darker than mine. I’m going to die before daybreak — I’m afraid to live. The dawn might find me a very little man.
(Kurtz has shifted his gaze. Now he is staring, not towards camera lens, but beyond it, his eyes very wide).
MARLOW’S VOICE
Kurtz! – Kurtz!
Lightning and thunder.
MARLOW’S VOICE
What are you looking at?
KURTZ
The horror! – The horror!
***********************************
FIRST STATION – KURTZ’s FUNERAL PROCESSION
Ivory bearers and KURTZ himself, borne on the litter, in ABSOLUTE SILHOUETTE.