Coppola and Eliade: Youth without Youth

Coppola’s first film in ten years is an adaptation of the famous novel Youth Without Youth by Mircea Eliade.

Eliade is a famous historian of religion and scholar post ww2 but he was a keen fascist in the 30’s and early 40’s coming up with the Romanian Iron Guard’s slogan Long Live Death. Eliade pamphleted favorably for Legionare’s Corneliu Codreanu and many other Iron Guard leaders and was imprisoned for it. He later was Romanian Embassador to England then Portugal and wrote in favor of Portugese fascist Salazar, meeting the leader in cordial circumstances. Post war he went to France to hang with the ex fascist Romanian set that included such greats as EM Cioran and Georges Dumezil.

See here for more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade

Coppola is a deep cinematic thinker, in his best work, tackling transcendental right wing ideas in both The Godfather Trilogy and Apocalypse Now. What he makes of The Eliade novel, I for one will be very interested to find out. It looks like a long overdue return to form for the master.

See Trailer: