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DVD Pennies from Heaven (1978 British Miniseries)
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.
Potter's dark vision digs into British stoicism, sexual repression, the class system, and even the coming of fascism in Europe. But it is especially poignant on the subject of the divide between art and reality. Piers Haggard directs the long piece with deft transitions between songs and story. (It was shot partly on multi-camera video, partly on film.) The cast is fine, especially the extraordinary Cheryl Campbell, who imbues her character with keen intelligence and no small measure of perversity. Bob Hoskins triumphs in his star-making part, bringing a demonic energy to his small-time Cockney, nearly bursting his button-down vests with frustration and appetite. Pennies from Heaven was remade in 1981 for the big screen (with Steve Martin), an interesting, Potter-scripted adaptation; it's one of the reasons the original has been unavailable on home video for so long. --Robert Horton
Review(s): DVD Pennies from Heaven (1978 British Miniseries)
If you can't see talent here........you can't see talent.
Everything Bob Hoskins does is briliant and this is no exception. I have never seen the American movie because I knew no one could possibly play a part correctly after Bob Hoskins. I have waited 17 years (that was the first time I was even made aware of the BBC mini series) to see this and it was well worth the wait.
This is the version to have....
Don't waste your time on the Steve Martin movie version, which is a simplified, bowlderised version re-worked for 'American tastes'.
Watch this BBC mini-series which is a British television masterpiece. OK, it will not appeal to all, but if you fancy something completely original, superbly produced and performed,
and with a unique and very British 1930s atmosphere, this is for you ! This was the series that made Bob Hoskins a major star, and launched his movie career, and he is superb! Intelligent viewers will love it - idiots won't !
A Work Of Art
Comparing Bob Hoskins to Steve Martin as Arthur in 'Pennies From Heaven' is like comparing Champagne to Lemonade or Caviar to Cod's Roe. This production is atmospheric accuracy compared to Hollywood hyperbole. It is the original version of Dennis Potters masterpiece and everything about it soars miles above any television drama I've seen for years in terms of production values and pure entertainment. The casting, the acting, the choreography, the photography, the lighting, the dubbing, the editing and above all the directing of Piers Haggard represent a rare coming together of absolutely pure professionalism. It is a shining example of that elusive quality which helped to make the BBC the envy of the world in the 1970's.
It is long but you don't have to watch it all at one sitting. Treat yourself to a seven-course feast over a few days or weeks while Potter serves up this glorious vintage wine!
Related DVD's Pennies from Heaven (1978 British Miniseries)
The late Dennis Potter was a master at mining the popular songs of the 1930s and '40s for dramatic effect, but he never did it better than in this British miniseries starring the inestimable Michael Gambon. Gambon plays a mystery writer named Philip E. Marlow, who is suffering a torturous bout of psoriatic arthritis in a British hospital, where he is a victim of both his disease and the national health plan. Unable to move without pain, he escapes into his imagination, plotting out a murder tale in which he is both a big-band singer and a private eye. But Potter and director Jon Amiel also mix in flashbacks of Marlow's youth and his unhappy marriage to explain how the real Marlow reached this sorry pass. Flawlessly, intricately, kaleidoscopically assembled, the six one-hour episodes of... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Michael Gambon DVD Release Date: Released the 15 April 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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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... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Steve Martin - Bernadette Peters Director(s): Herbert Ross DVD Release Date: Released the 27 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The first two episodes of this BBC miniseries only hint at the delights to come. A lawsuit aimed at church reform in the town of Barchester forces a decent middle-aged clergyman (the august Donald Pleasence, best known in the U.S. for the Halloween movies) into a moral crisis and a conflict with his son-in-law, a pompous archdeacon (Nigel Hawthorne, The Madness of King George). The gracefully written and acted narrative shows glimpses of dry wit--but in episode 3, the arrival of a new bishop (Clive Swift, Keeping Up Appearances), his imperious wife (Geraldine McEwan, The Magdalene Sisters), and his devious chaplain (Alan Rickman, Truly Madly Deeply, the Harry Potter movies) launches The Barchester Chronicles into a satirical power... More Info about this DVD Director(s): David Giles (III) DVD Release Date: Released the 25 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Otto Preminger expanded his vision in the 1960s with a whole series of ambitious, expansive dramas with huge casts and big themes. Advise and Consent (1962), an examination of deal making, party politics, and congressional diplomacy in Washington's legislative halls (based on the novel by Allen Drury), is one of his best. Preminger broke the blacklist with his previous film, Exodus, and it rings through in this drama about a controversial nominee for secretary of state (a confident, stately Henry Fonda) accused of being a Communist. The nomination process becomes the center ring of the political circus, with fidgety accuser Burgess Meredith in the spotlight; devious, silver-tongued Charles Laughton cracking the whip as a southern senator with a grudge against Fonda; and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Henry Fonda DVD Release Date: Released the 10 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Some movies you just have to love. Oh, they may be well, even beautifully, made; wonderfully cast and stirringly acted; uplifting in theme and noble in motive. That's fine. In fact, that's great. For that, you admire them. But you love them because they are perfect distillations of a mood, of a moment in the history of filmmaking, of a breed of imagination that, like the best of fairy tales, transcends the tides of taste and empire, and certainly of political correctness.
Consider The Four Feathers, produced in England in 1939, at Alexander Korda's London Films studios, where a family of Hungarian expatriates aspired to exalt their newly adopted country, its history and traditions, and also to out-Hollywood Hollywood. With this film, they realized both ambitions, in spades.
