Very well executed

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I had been wanting to see this movie for years, but it never played on television and none of the video stores in my city got the special edition DVD when it came out. Today I found a copy of the movie for $3, and I brought it home and watched it. I tried to watch this movie without thinking of the bad reviews I had previously read, but it didn't take long for me to realize the critics were right. This isn't a very good movie. Yes, the look of the movie, totally constructed on sound- stages, looks fantastic. But the streets and buildings look so much like the real thing that one has to wonder why Coppola simply didn't shoot on the actual locations. It certainly would have been a lot cheaper. But there are additional problems that sink the movie. The two lead characters (played by Garr and Forrest) are really thin. We learn next to nothing about them, and the fact they can suddenly break up after five years of supposed happiness - and try to hook up with other people after hours from the breakup - doesn't make them people you can relate to or have sympathy with. Another big problem is with the Tom Waits songs. They ALL SOUND THE SAME! It gets tiring really quickly listening to one song after the other. The icing on the cake is the supposed happy ending, which feels just as phony as the lead characters and their relationship. With Coppola directing and co-writing the movie, most of the blame for this movie's failure has to fall on his shoulders. This project put him in heavy debt for years afterwards, which shows that there is some justice in this world.

One of the most unconventional musicals of all time "One From the Heart" is a criminally underrated film that needs to be rediscovered by all generations and by authentic film lovers out there. Francis Ford Coppola's extravagant and luxurious film is a imaginative tale of a true and down-to-earth love struggling to survive the flames of perfect but false love affairs. They've met on a nice 4th of July, they remained married for five years, but then while celebrating their fifth anniversary together, something died and they couldn't go on together. That's the story of Frannie (Teri Garr) and Hank (Frederick Forrest), a happy couple that after an little argument decides to break-up, finding comfort and love with other partners on the dreamy and magical Las Vegas. She goes out with a talented pianist/waiter named Ray (Raul Julia), a romantic Latin lover with lots of qualities; while Hank goes after Leila (Nastassja Kinski) an sexy dancer with lots of appeal. Both affairs look and sound perfect but will Hank and Frannie ever realize they really belong with each other and that this fantasies shouldn't been taken so seriously? Surprises, surprises... Elegant, beautiful and amazingly colorful with its neon lights shining and sparkling everywhere, all the time in a Las Vegas built on the American Zoetrope's sound stage, company that went to bankruptcy due to the enormous costs spent on this film, "One from the Heart" is a outstanding film, way above the average that never was placed in the place it should have been, among with the greatest works of art of all time. It was a financial and critical failure for Francis and the films he made until the 1990's were mostly for covering those costs (original budget planning was U$2 million, but the real money spent reach U$25 million which was a very high cost in the 1980's). But these are minor concerns. It's a film with lots of qualities, it gives us so much and the emotions it sets on us is priceless. His vision is absolutely perfect for the eyes. A visually stunning film and an orgasm to our eyes and senses that rare films can achieve. The dream-like Vegas comes to represent a fictionalization of love as something happy, colorful, never ending, love Hollywood style. Then we have to compare with our own love stories, our own perception of what love's like. Love is really like a endless magic where everything happens perfectly or it has some flaws, some danger and some unfortunate parts? Hank and Frannie story is more realistic if we have to compare with the romantic evenings they have with Ray and Leila, musical sequences made to look just like 1940's MGM musicals. Coppola couldn't go on filming these in the real Las Vegas, he had to present us a larger than life fantasy, dreams becoming true, and he succeed it (sadly, many didn't get that idea). Even not including huge superstars in the main roles, the casting is impeccable (which also includes Harry Dean Stanton and Lainie Kazan in funny roles as the main couple friends). Vittorio Storaro's innovative cinematography, Dean Tavoularis art-direction, the special effects used, Tom Waits & Crystal Gayle songs and the soundtrack, everything is perfectly put together. And best sequences are: the musical number involving Frannie and Ray dancing in the crowded Vegas; their fabulous tango; Leila's number to Hank on top of a tightrope; the ending, kind of corny, but acceptable. Everything is so phony, so unbelievable and that's the movie's point: it's an optic of what love should be, or perhaps that's the way love is seen for those who fell in love, that everything is or must be perfect. But if you think real love is just like the ones you see in the movies than you need to open your eyes better and see from another perspective. You need to see the difficulties, the twists and turns just like the ones Frannie and Hank had right in the first scenes where one complain about not standing each other anymore.The poor criticism this film got is the same one that killed "Heaven's Gate" years earlier, a big budget film for too little result, critics not even focused on the film's idea, although I think Coppola made something better with all the money spent and his career didn't sink so low like Cimino did. But I must say that this was only restricted to the U.S. and some other countries, since here "One from the Heart" is lauded as one of the greatest films directed by Francis, receiving impeccable and positive reviews, most of them so good to make me run to see this film. The wait was over, and it fulfilled my expectations and more. I loved it! 10/10

Those new wave filmmakers who revolutionised Hollywood during the 1970s were among the first generation of film geeks – people who got into the movies because they loved being at the movies. That's why, when people like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola started getting the cash and influence together to fund their own personal projects in the 1980s, they were liable to blow inordinate sums of money on homages to the cinema they had grown up on. It's odd, because these new wave directors and their work were in many ways the antithesis of classic Hollywood and its ways of doing things.In One for the Heart, writer-producer-director Coppola attempts homage to 1950s musicals like Singin' in the Rain and Guys and Dolls, swing-time romances in which city streets would be recreated in studios for that glitzily artificial look. However, rather than commission a score for the characters to sing, Coppola follows the trend of more recent Bob Fosse musicals, and One from the Heart's numbers are a non-diagetic commentary on the action. This is not a bad idea in itself, except that the music here is especially unmemorable and lacklustre. The songs sound like the end of a bad night out, with Tom Waits voice like the drawl of some predatory sex pest. This is not stuff you'll be singing on the way home.As a director Coppola seems to have mistaken the exaggerated look of the picture's influences for one of bluntness. Often the sets are drenched in coloured lighting, which sometimes changes within the shot, seemingly to highlight contrasts between the two leads and their environments. This and things like having the camera impossibly far back from the leads at their end of their first scene simply look obvious and overdone. On the other hand Coppola does at least display some musical sensitivity (as he did in the more conventional and very good Finian's Rainbow from 1968). The peak of the picture is during the extended music and dance sequence in the middle, in which Coppola shows incredible detail in the handling of the crowd, flashing various extras across the foreground in complement to the score.But there is little else one can say in One for the Heart's favour. The acting performances are mostly dull, and whenever they do broaden out a bit they verge on the silly. The story is hardly inspiring, and we never really sympathise with the characters because they are not made especially likable in the first place. The dialogue is lousy. Coppola had a great idea, but he did not follow it up with one single thought, and the picture works neither as a classic-style homage nor as an updated take on the genre. The musicals of old had a fairytale quality to them. This modern romantic drama, with its swearing, nudity and blazing rows, is mixed with the fake sets and ensemble dance routines like some bizarre and botched Frankenstein's monster. Coppola would now spend years trying to pay off his debts with routine features, and still has yet to rediscover the cinematic gold he struck in the 1970s, with which he had made his name and fortune.

As a fan of film with hundreds of DVDs in archive, no other captures my fascination like Coppela's One From The Heart. I have heard the critics weigh in on this work as missing the mark, massive waste of money, etc. Yet this herculean effort where the entire Las Vegas strip was recreated in an indoor set captures an ethereal quality that simply cannot be upgraded in my humble opinion. Achieving a subtle sense of lethargy and angst, the talent here *do capture what Francis was going for. At least, I would like to think so. The sometimes lonely but at all times dreamy setscape leads one into a place where you can feel the desert warmth emanating from the earth. You can sense the crispness in the air. And of course you wince at the realness of a relationship strained by the doldrums of everyday life as Frannie comes to grip with Hanks indiscretion while she dreams of getting a stamp in her passbook to anywhere but here. If you like love stories, you will not be able to help but fall for the cinematic magic Coppela weaves here into a blanket you can wrap up in for a couple of hours. For years I wondered what would be my favorite film of all time, were I ever pressed to make a choice, but notwithstanding the sweeping against-all-odds love story and adventure of Far And Away, or the raw testosterone-driven rocket-sled of First Blood, I would have to say that there really isn't any close second to One From The Heart, at least for me. What has been at times referred to as perhaps one of the most spectacular flops in Hollywood history, for me is truly the greatest triumph Hollywood has been fortunate enough to produce. I join the millions of fans of Pirates Of The Caribbean, Titanic and many other films that grace the top of the best selling status, but like The Big Easy, OFTH adds a flavor that, like food can be loved by one and loathed by the next, makes this something of a feast for the everyday romantic. I have been a life-long fan of Terri Garr, who turns in a great performance here, Kinski radiated as the mystical seductress and Raul Julia reminds us all here how charming an actor he really was, but Francis Ford Coppela steals this show by looking past the average film and creating a one of a kind trip down a high-desert lover's lane.