VENICE – Francis Ford Coppola strolled onto the stage at the opening ceremony of the Venice Film Festival Wednesday evening to thunderous applause – an expression of gratitude from the crowd inside the Sala Grande for the simple fact of his being there.

The 86-year-old directing legend had given cinephiles a scare earlier in August when local media outlets in Rome reported he had been admitted to a hospital after a long-scheduled heart operation. The reports, which his representative denied, asserted that something had gone amiss, but Coppola went out of his way to calm fans’ fears. “Da Dada (what my kids call me) is fine,” he wrote on Instagram.

Da Dada sure looked like it. Just two weeks later, he showed up in Venice looking chipper and terrific. He had first surprised festivalgoers Tu

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