The Directors: Francis Ford Coppola
Sky Arts

Season five of Sky Arts’ documentary series on famous film directors (episode one, 2 July) kicks off with an hour on the great Francis Ford Coppola (pictured), now aged 81. The documentary ends in 1992, shortly after the release of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in which Gary Oldman played a creepy but flamboyantly dressed vampire. But why end then, when Coppola was only just over 50?

The answer seems to be that it was pretty well all over for Coppola film-wise: he hasn’t produced much work since the early 1990s and most of it has fallen beneath the critical radar. In recent years, he has spent more time building a lucrative range of businesses under his own name (or to be absolutely accurate the Francis Ford Coppola Presents lifestyle brand), including a Californian vineyard, several resorts, restaurants and even magazines.
But what an amazing run he had as a movie director: by the age of 40 he had written and directed, among others, The Godfather (1 and 2), The Conversation and Apocalypse Now and been nominated for 12 Academy Awards, winning six (he won two more for The Godfather: Part III in 1991).