Coppola Turns to Youth

Francis Ford Coppola’s first film in a decade is about an elderly character returned to youth by a lightning strike; indeed Youth Without Youth finds the director making the kind of "personal" film he wanted to at age 25. Having wallowed for 30 years in less than stellar projects, the Godfather filmmaker has made a small picture on his own dime—and it “betrays not a molecule of commercial calculation.”

Orson Welles should’ve been so lucky as to make wine, says Vanity Fair’s Bruce Handy: Because of the winery, his 21st-century counterpart—“no stranger to grandiosity, bunkum, overreach, self-immolation, and red ink”—is now fully self-financed. And he’s newly determined to do whatever work he pleases. Youth’s the “strangest mainstream movie” of the year, says Handy, its very imperfection a cause to celebrate a master’s return. (More Francis Ford Coppola stories.)