You have only to watch a few frames of Apocalypse Now, in either version, to realise you have caught a high point of American filmmaking. The lighting is wonderful, the editing precise and inventive. Individual shots are full of things to look at, large and small; you can feel the patient care behind every set-up. The actors, even the toughest, look frail and haunted, and the voice-over matches them: hard-boiled and shaky, as if the narrator of Double Indemnity had been bewildered by the jungle.

LRB 13 December 2001 | PDF Download