Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married Is a Forgotten Masterpiece

As the 1991 documentary film Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse makes painfully clear, the production of the epic 1979 Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now nearly destroyed the life of its director, Francis Ford Coppola, who was never quite the same afterward. Apocalypse Now marked the end of the golden period of the director’s career. Following Apocalypse Now, Coppola seemingly became more interested in breaking new technological ground and defying Hollywood conventions than creating characters and telling stories.

The failure of Coppola’s experimental 1982 musical romantic fantasy film One from the Heart, which cost $26 million and grossed less than $1 million at the box office, bankrupted his production company, Zoetrope Studios, and left the filmmaker, who personally funded the film, deeply in debt.

Coppola was inspired to direct the 1986 fantasy comedy-drama Peggy Sue Got Married, which represents his best film since Apocalypse Now, not out of an abiding love of the material but because he needed the job to pay down his debt. Moreover, the controversial filmmaker was only hired to direct Peggy Sue Got Married after Jonathan Demme and Penny Marshall turned down the assignment. However, despite the mercenary agenda he brought to his direction of Peggy Sue Got Married, the film proved that Coppola, when provided with a brilliant lead performance and a good script, was still capable of making cinematic magic.

Peggy Sue Got Married Is a Uniquely Timeless Classic

Peggy Sue Got Married stars Kathleen Turner as the film’s titular protagonist, a 43-year-old woman in 1985 who, as the film opens, is poised to attend her 25-year high school reunion, which Peggy Sue is hesitant about due to the possibility of seeing her estranged husband and former high school sweetheart, Charlie, whom she intends to divorce.

After agreeing to attend the reunion at her daughter’s urging, she becomes agitated when Charlie, played by Nicolas Cage, barrels into the reunion, in which Peggy Sue is named the reunion’s queen. While being crowned, she faints. When she awakens, it’s 1960, and she is back in her senior year of high school.

In contrast to the 1985 time travel film Back to the Future, in which Michael J. Fox’s teenage Marty McFly character meets his parents as teenagers after being sent back in time to 1955, Peggy Sue reenters her 1960 teenage body with her adult mind. While Marty’s on a quest to bring his parents together, Peggy’s on a journey of self-discovery, in which she explores the past while knowing the future. Moreover, unlike young Marty, she has had 25 years to ponder her teenage existence.

By focusing on the universal human desire to revisit the past, especially for the purpose of reuniting with people who are now gone, Peggy Sue Got Married becomes an emotional viewing experience. Moreover, as the film deals with how one’s perception of the past evolves over time, Coppola’s film, which is now nearly 40 years old, is much more fascinating than it was when it was released in 1986.

Kathleen Turner Deserved an Oscar For Peggy Sue Got Married

Kathleen Turner, who was 32 when Peggy Sue Got Married was released, didn’t rely on makeup and special effects to play a teenager in the film. Instead of trying to look like a teenager in the movie, which operates on the principle that Peggy Sue appears as a woman to the viewer but as a teenager to the film’s other characters, Turner becomes a teenager through a lightness of body and spirit. Her eyes sparkle and widen. She speaks more hurriedly. When she flops down on her bed, she projects the elasticity of a teenage girl for whom this is a daily ritual.

It’s a marvelous physical performance. However, one of the most impressive aspects of Turner’s performance in Peggy Sue Got Married is the interesting choices that Turner makes with her performance, specifically in terms of how she interacts with the other characters in 1960. How is Peggy Sue supposed to react to receiving a phone call from her dead grandmother or seeing the boy whom she will marry and then decide to divorce in the future?

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Turner, who received her first and only Academy Award nomination for this performance, approaches these extraordinary situations and others with the understanding that while Peggy Sue knows the future, her family and friends believe she’s the same teenager from 1960. Moreover, while Turner revels in the chance to say things that previously went unsaid in the past, there is also sadness in the knowledge that nothing she does and says amid her time warp will affect her adult life, or so she thinks.

Francis Ford Coppola Needed Peggy Sue Got Married

The success of Peggy Sue Got Married, which grossed over $41 million at the domestic box office and received three Academy Award nominations, reignited Francis Ford Coppola’s career by restoring his commercial credibility and professional reputation. Moreover, the film proved that the director didn’t need to wield absolute control in order to make a great film.

Following Peggy Sue Got Married, between 1987 and 1990, Coppola directed the films Gardens of Stone, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, and The Godfather Part III, the third and final installment in The Godfather trilogy, which received seven Academy Award nominations. Moreover, the box office success of The Godfather Part III enabled the filmmaker to emerge from his financial crisis, without which Coppola likely never would have directed Peggy Sue Got Married, Coppola’s most overlooked masterpiece. Peggy Sue Got Married is available to rent on Prime Video, iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.