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DVD Pennies From Heaven
Steve Martin plays Arthur, a '30s-era traveling sheet-music salesman whose marriage is bleak and who embarks on a fateful affair with a teacher (an amazing Bernadette Peters). Arthur's dreary world is juxtaposed with Busby Berkeley-styled musical production numbers that showcase Martin's and Peters's versatility. Arthur's world is desperate, sad, and only the more so when directly compared to the musical numbers. But it does work and it is affecting.
This dark, yet simultaneously ebullient film written by Dennis Potter is capable of presenting such polar-opposite visuals and emotion. Until this film, Martin was best known for his comedic albums, and for 1979's The Jerk. In other words, Pennies' disappointing box office can be accredited to audiences' inability to accept a dark Martin in the early 1980s. If Martin's dancing ability comes as a surprise, an even greater revelation is Christopher Walken in a sexy stripping tap-dancing number. Bob Hoskins played Arthur in the 1978 British miniseries of the same name. --N.F. Mendoza
I was a dancer when this film came out. I'd always been a Chris Walken fan but had no desire to see this film until one of my fellow dance classmates gushed "You've got to see Pennies from Heaven! Chris Walken does a tap dance on top of a bar!!!"
What I found when I saw the movie was a very down story starring Steve Martin (not known for this type of role at the time) and Bernadette Peters. It was set in the 1930's, I believe and had all the atmosphere of the Great Depression and the resultant despair and desperation. The story did not captivate but neither was it awful. Martin and Peters were good in a story that remained pretty dark from beginning to end. Seeing this movie when one is in a good mood doesn't hurt.
But Chris Walken was incredible - the best part of the film for me, by far (hence the 4 stars)! There's not too much film featuring Walken the dancer and so this is a gem. If you're not aware of Walken playing anything but the quirky characters he's become famous for, this film will show that the man is a multi-faceted entertainer.
Question and Answer
Don't make mistakes, I love this film. But after some thought, I found the reason why the central thesis of "Pennies From Heaven" (or at least of a superficial interpretation of it) is false. The movie show us that the Depression was very different form the musical fantasy people saw in theathers at the time. What is asking us to do? To reject fantasy and embrace reality; or to know how to differentiate between them? The opposition between drama and splendor gives "Pennies From Heaven" its edge, but if its question is about the validity of fantasy for broken times, the answer is not cynism.
Many years ago, Preston Sturges asked the same question in "Sullivan Travels", and the answer was clear: if people are broken and don't have hope, at least give them laugh. I don't think they're becoming less aware of their situation if they laugh, and I don't think comedies or musicals are simply circus for the masses. All those wonderful films by Lubitsch, Sturges, and later Capra and Tashlin not only entertained the population (yes!, masterpieces were not relegated to art houses!) but also made think.
Totally Original
The audience was not ready for this movie.
Steve Martin is an exceptionally intelligent, articulate individual who refuses to take himself seriously.
However, his honest puzzlement about human misery is exemplified in this film. He does not know why we had to suffer so much in the 1930s and, moreover, why the relatively young entertainment industry decided that the misery would become a personal mission of organized denial.
Things are as bad as you might think they are, so we will simply think differently.
At the time, socialists crticized any effort to divert attention from unending and honest fixation on the abundant misery. However, their agenda was to bring down a capitalistic system they'd already concluded was morally wrong and, oh yeah, ineffective, too.
Martin's movie mixes a utilitarian view with a meditation on the role of the entertainer which, he knows, he is. Ain't it awful that Hollywood distracted us from how bad the depression was?
Martin insists that we work this calculus out for ourselves. If Hollywood made us forget about our obligation for social revolution, your political point of view dictates whether that was good or bad. One thing he makes clear here, though: who we are today was made back then.
Or, as Frank Zappa said, "Do you love it? Do you hate it? There it is, the way you made it..."
A great movie; if you think it is flawed, it may be because your expectations going in could be examined more carefully. Definitely don't go if you want to forget about the Depression.
Dennis Potter's astonishing six-part miniseries remains one of the edgiest, most audacious things ever conceived for television. The story tells of one Arthur Parker (Bob Hoskins), a sheet-music salesman in 1930s England. Beaten down by economic hard times and the sexual indifference of his proper wife (Gemma Craven), Arthur cannot understand why his life can't be like the beautiful songs he loves. On a sales trip through the Forest of Dean, he meets a virginal rural woman (Cheryl Campbell) he suspects may be his ideal. Ruination follows. Punctuating virtually every scene is a vintage pop song--lip-synched and sometimes danced out by the characters. This startling innovation makes the contrast between Arthur's brutish life and his bourgeois dreams even more dramatic.
This is one of the best parodies of the '40s hardboiled detective genre, with a very clever conceit: weaving the plot and production design around memorable movie clips (The Killers, The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, White Heat, This Gun for Hire, Sorry, Wrong Number, Notorious). Steve Martin plays the cool Rigby Reardon, who tries solving an incomprehensible mystery with the assistance of Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Burt Lancaster, Fred MacMurray, Ingrid Bergman, and Ray Milland, among others. It's all silly hokum with Rachel Ward as the pretty moll and director-cowriter Carl Reiner as the nefarious villain. Miklos Rozsa takes us back to yesteryear with his lush score, and, fittingly, Edith Head handles the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Steve Martin - Rachel Ward Director(s): Carl Reiner DVD Release Date: Released the 16 March 1999 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Martin Scorsese took a daring turn from the mean streets that made his reputation in the early '70s with New York, New York, his homage to the big-band era. And what an homage it is: the dazzling production design by Boris Leven continues to impress over the film's nearly three-hour length. And there's no denying the anthemic appeal of Kander and Ebb's title song, belted with winning bravado by costar Liza Minnelli in a showstopping finale. But as valiantly as Minnelli and Robert De Niro try, they can't elevate the shaky plot beyond its two-dimensional construct. It purports to be a Star Is Born-like tragedy of colliding careers, but too often it feels like inadvertently eavesdropping on a marriage counselor's most truculent clients. (There are times you want ... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Liza Minnelli - Robert De Niro Director(s): Martin Scorsese DVD Release Date: Released the 08 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The Band Wagon (1953) marked the culmination of a series of near-autobiographical pictures Fred Astaire made for MGM following his return from premature retirement in the late '40s. Astaire plays Tony Hunter, a fading film star (his big hit: Flying Down to Panama) who decides to return to his former glory, the Broadway stage. (In 1931, Astaire had starred on Broadway with sister Adele in The Band Wagon, a revue that lent some of its songs to this film.) His playwright-songwriter friends (Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant) hook him up with Broadway's hottest director, Jeffrey Cordova (a nicely hammy Jack Buchanan), who proves that the "new" theater traditions can be an awkward fit with the old. Hunter also finds himself at odds with his prima ballerina leading lady (Cyd... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Fred Astaire - Cyd Charisse Director(s): Vincente Minnelli DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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"100% All Talking! 100% All Singing! 100% All Dancing!" If the math is slightly off, the now-legendary ad campaign for The Broadway Melody can be excused. After all, sound had just come in, and a full-scale musical film was still a novelty. This tuneful 1929 production became a smash hit and won the Best Picture Academy Award® in the second Oscar® ceremony. The story is a creaky tale of two sisters bringing their act to Broadway, but the fun is in the Roaring Twenties lingo and the showbiz melodrama. This is an era when a gal could become the toast of Broadway by standing, motionless, on a stage pedestal ("Those guys aren't gonna pay 10 bucks to look at your face--this is Broadway!"). The tunes include the standard "You Were Meant for Me"; most of the dramatic... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Anita Page - Bessie Love Director(s): Harry Beaumont DVD Release Date: Released the 01 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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