Able Gance’s 7 hour epic Napoleon (1927) employed split screen projection, superimposition, location shooting, super-close up…. All unheard of at the time. But

Able Gance’s 7 hour epic Napoleon (1927) employed split screen projection, superimposition, location shooting, super-close up…. All unheard of at the time. But the advantage he had was that cinema was not yet ‘invented’. That would not happen till Hollywood streamlined production and (importantly) consumption. This was effectively Fords assembly-line ethos applied to art. In contrast, Gance believed cinema has the same potential for depth as literature. Coppola has always had a desire to re-invent cinema. He tried and failed with the digital production techniques of ‘One From the Heart’, though much of what he introduced presaged techniques that are common nowadays. With Megopolis he seems to be trying to re-invent the form. I believe that is a folly. The form of Cinema is now pretty much fixed in stone. Reinventing it would likely be as successful as reinventing the chair. You might produce something that ‘works’. But people would be unlikely to accept it.