At the risk of sounding somewhat grandiose, my response to questions of this sort is that there can always be such connections, since they need not be consious ones - conscious on the part of the director, that is. Perhaps parts of the aesthetic/sociological corpus permeate to those that are not directly tied to them through personal experience.
At least, that's my belief.
Still, if the concerned parites are somehow 'listening,' I've been reading a great deal about Vittorio Storaro lately, and I get the feeling that he had more of a conceptual role on A. Now than most D.O.P.'s . . . maybe if the answer isn't with reports on/about Coppola, it could be found from Storaro. I (somehow!) remember seeing this news footage before, and wouldn't be surprised if a cinematographer would peruse more of such stock to prepare than the director would.
>From: Sarah Barmak <
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>Reply-To: Film-Philosophy Salon <
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>To:
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>Subject: FW: Apocalypse now and German Propaganda
>Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 17:21:22 -0500
>
>Here's an interesting query that was posted to another film discussion
>list. I was hoping one of you might have the answer, since the other
>list seems to think there is no connection. -Sarah Barmak
>
> > From: "roel vande winkel" <
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> >
> > In June 1941 Nazi newsreels featured spectacular footage of the German
> > airborne capture of Crete. Images of German planes flying over Crete
>and
> > dropping paratroopers were musically accompanied by Wagner's 'Die
> > Walküre',
> > which served as the leitmotiv for the whole item. This was several
> > decades
> > before Coppola did the same thing in 'Apocalypse now'.
> >
> > I would like to find out whether Coppola knew about this newsreel
>(which
> > also exists in American archives) or just chose the music because he
> > also
> > linked an air assault with the Valkyres in Wagner's opera. Any
> > suggestions?
> >
> > Roel Vande Winkel, University of Ghent
> >
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> >
> >
> >