12 Times A Director Went On An INSANE Streak Of Great Movies

7. Francis Ford Coppola: Four Films From 1972-1979

The Streak: The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather: Part II, Apocalypse Now

Francis Ford Coppola was unstoppable for the entirety of the 1970s. He essentially defined the era with his brand of New Hollywood crime films, establishing an aesthetic sensibility that is still synonymous with the medium’s golden period decades later.

He kicked it off with The Godfather in 1972, crafting one of the best American epics ever made like it was nothing. Bear in mind the movie he worked on before that was The Rain People, an ok, low-key drama about a pregnant woman skipping town. To say it was a big step up would be putting it lightly.

Not content to rest on his laurels, he moved from The Godfather to The Conversation, a paranoia thriller propped up by the always-captivating Gene Hackman. He essentially defined two different sub-genres in the space of two years.

Then, in the same year as The Conversation, he also released The Godfather Part 2, a film arguably better than the defining original. He took some well deserved time off from there (he's only human after all), and came back five years later to round out the '70s with Apocalypse Now, making all other Vietnam films redundant in the process.

Other directors on this list took their time between releases, but Coppola essentially didn’t stop churning out masterpieces for an entire decade.

[JB]