Reports state that Welles and co-writer John Houseman reworked the original narrative to focus on a fictional fascist dictator. He also wanted to make a movie of it, but this ultimately didn’t happen. No less a figure than Orson Welles had a great interest in the book, producing a radio adaptation in 1938. Conrad died of a heart attack in 1924, so didn’t get to see what happened to his acclaimed story.

Naturally there was interest from producers, who wanted to make Heart of Darkness into a motion picture. In its 2011 review of the book, The Guardian notes that Heart of Darkness is partly “an invaluable historical document” which looks into the “horrific human consequences of the imperial powers’ scramble for Africa”. With Belgium exploiting the territory for its resources, the story examines colonial conquest, civilization vs so-called savagery and how these two areas overlap. This map of the Belgian Congo was published as late as 1930. As Conrad entered the world, “Russia effectively controlled Poland.”

Put as simply as possible, the latter territory was “one-third of its size before being divided between the three great powers”. As described by CliffsNotes, Ukraine and Poland have a long and tangled history.

He was raised against a backdrop of social and political turmoil. Conrad’s mother was named Ewa Bobrowska but sadly there doesn’t seem to be much information about what she did. His father Apollo worked as a writer and activist. Who was Conrad? How did he come to write the novella? And just how did it wind up as a Vietnam War movie…? Joseph Conradīorn in the city of Berdychiv, northern Ukraine in 1857, Conrad’s actual birth name was Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad forms just one part of the author’s bibliography, yet remains arguably his best known work. However, the inspiration for Coppola’s epic was a 19th century novella that wasn’t set in Vietnam but Africa. The movie’s dialogue, from “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” to “the horror, the horror” have long passed into popular culture.

Director Francis Ford Coppola led his cast, crew and ultimately the audience on a cinematic journey like no other. If any film sums up the experiences of the Vietnam War, it’s Apocalypse Now.

Nostromo 1904