Great Film overall

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A critical box-office fiasco directed by Herbert Ross (THE GOODBYE GIRL 1977, California SUITE 1978), PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is a Depression-era musical, alternates between a harsh reality and the dreamlike musical numbers of fantasy, it stars Steve Martin as a Chicago sheet- music salesman Arthur Parker, who is frustrated with his frigid wife Joan (Harper) and the failing business and gets smitten with a young school teacher Eileen (Peters) at his first glance. The affair costs Eileen her job and she deign to become a street hustler while Arthur returns to Joan, but eventually the two reunite and decide to start a new life together, but who will expect, Arthur's one-time Good Samaritan deed to a homeless man who plays an accordion (Bagneris), will lead him to his doom as a scapegoat of a murder in this unjust, bleak world.The plot is a continuum of despondency and dissatisfaction, and overtly sexually aggressive, devoid of any limerent whitewashing to appease its viewers, Arthur, is a undisguised lustful husband from the very beginning and Eileen is not a shrinking violet either in that aspect (nudge nudge), in a frank manner, she confesses that she is grateful to Arthur that she is able to be liberated from her prudish facade.By sheer contrast, the imaginary sequences of dancing and lip-syncing with oldie tunes are glamorous to the hilt. The titular song is firstly mimed and danced by Bagneris in a showering of golden coins, and later poignantly used as an epilogue sung by Arthur with a noose nearby. A show-stopping Christopher Walken tap-dances in Cole Porter's LET'S MISBEHAVE is an incredible boon to remind us that he can be deadly charming and dangerous within the same take. Martin, in his second leading film role and long before his trademark white hair begin to sprout, excels in his burlesque deftness and dramatic expertise. The Broadway diva Bernadette Peters, extracts a profound ambivalence of good-girl-gone-bad transmogrification with her sultry body language and a baby-like poker face and last but not the least, Jessica Harper will be forever remembered for the lipsticks on her nipples.PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is the last hurrah of the musical genre which had reigned Hollywood over 60 years, its unconventional tact of juggling with reality and escapism is ahead of its time and Dennis Potter's pedestrian script cannot help it either, but in retrospect, it deserves a revitalisation of BluRay treatment, even just for the sake of those sumptuous and consummate dancing-and- singing parodies.

there are few film musicals the caliber of Herbert Ross's 'Pennies From Heaven'. and that is is of considerable debate in the film community. many critics felt it was somewhat failed dramatically and didn't live up to the BBC series it proceeded. even one of the immortals of film musicals, Fred Astaire, denounced it's morbid tone as "depressing" and said the film had nothing to do with the spirit of 30's film musicals.well. what does Fred Astaire know about filmmaking anyway? or history for that matter? even if he was there. Astaire is a dancer and a actor. not a screenwriter. not every good piece of filmmaking requires a happy ending or optimistic outlook. and as for the 1930's, well, it was the great American depression of the twentieth century, need i say more? you can imagine it was pretty bleak for a lot of Americans.the tragedy, bleakness,and even, sexual repression of that time period, are what the study and analysis that this remarkable film delves into. it also uses a style and process of juxtaposition that is the best example i can think of ever, in almost any form of art outside of music, which is a little harder for me to grasp. juxtaposition is a rather basic concept in art, but it can seem unoriginal or contrived when used without any real meaning or reason.in 'Pennies From Heaven', juxtaposition is utilized and explored to it's fullest potential. we often see the dreary hopelessness and ruin of the main characters lives as opposed to how the iconic images of the time perceived life and reality. in the movies, especially musicals like 'Gay Divorcée' or 'Top Hat', life was anti-septic and glamorous and protagonist were most often millionaires or heiresses. the only poor people you ever saw were black people as servants and bellhops, and they were always, clean and chipper and ready to serve. a total irony and unreality considering so many people were on hard times and even the middle class was trying to make ends meet day to day. it must have been very surreal to people to see the reality Hollywood perceived for them and then go home and have to deal with the hard truth. not just about society, but about themselves as opposed to the fictionalized stereotypes they were constantly exposed to.much of the juxtaposition in 'Pennies' is downright ruthless. the main characters often imagine their way out of life's hard realities by seeing themselves as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers types in a movie musical. the cynicism of this perspective is only undermined by a often whimsical sense of humour, which is at times unexpected and oddball quaint. the film's humour is evident in scenes like the one where the children in Bernadette Peter's elementary school class transform from ordinary, unremarkable and drab, into immaculate, child musical prodigies playing instruments, and dancing on white pianos wearing white tuxedos. the musical number where Steve Martin imagines success over his failure is equally humorous and farcical.the film is also kept from being too downbeat because of praiseworthy performances by Martin and Peters. it's impossible to feel too dreary about performances that are this good with dramatic depth as well as energetic vitality. Martin and Peters give, in my opinion, some of the most memorable performances in cinema. as memorable as any immortal legend in film musicals of the past because aside from dancing, and some singing (mostly lip synced), there is more required of them dramatically than the musical actors from the old time-golden age. Martin and Peters are classic examples of brilliant performances egregiously overlooked by the Oscars.Christopher Walken, who can dance up the weather, and 'Phantom of the Paradise' star Jessica Harper also give some vivid supporting performances. Harper's performance, as Martin's judgmental and withholding wife, is especially complicated because of it's frustrating unlikability. Harper also has a hilarious moment where she imagines attacking Steve Martin with a pair of scissors after feeling violated sexually. classic as to how 'Pennies' is both peculiar, funny and depressingly hopeless and drab simultaneously.the fact that 'Pennies' elicits a variety of emotional responses and deals with contrasting moods, is so much of why juxtaposition was possibly the only approach to bring off it's complex insights into society and the human condition. which are profoundly obvious and affecting.the cinema style is so original as well as is the off the wall screenplay that reads like something straight out of Lars Von Trier and has a ending similar to the film noir classic 'Detour'.i hope i'm being fair here. it's been decades since i've seen the BBC mini series and i just watched this film the other night. i don't know if it stands up to the BBC film because i can't remember a thing about that version except that it had Bob Hoskins. i'd have to believe, however, a film that appears this good, must be able to stand on it's own merits.musicals aren't always the stuff and making of good cinema. often the musical moments themselves can drag down the timing and try viewer Patience. not so with this movie. every moment, including it's musical ones, is pure cinema and worthy as a example of cinema style and form.

What really got to me, while watching this great retro-musical, was this thought: why is it that the Anglo-American film-world manages to recycle the old musical classics again and again (right up to DANCER IN THE DARK and MOULIN ROUGE) while in Germany, for example, no self-respecting modern film maker would EVER dream of referring to any old German music film operetta? Sad. It explains why all those fantastic Hollywood musicals are alive and well, and present with the general audience. And why German operetta is all but forgotten. Sad indeed. - Perhaps one day German filmmakers will come up with something as wonderful as PENNIES FROM HEAVEN... it made me smile all the way through those Busby Berkely inspired numbers. And think of Sondheim's ASSASSINS at the very end.

Heavy-going, off-putting Depression-era musical (set to old recordings of the 1930s) is quite elaborate and usually looks good, but is filled with ciphers. Steve Martin, in a fair dramatic acting turn, plays a sex-obsessed sheet-music salesman in Chicago with no conscience who cheats on his frigid wife with a schoolteacher, later becoming involved in a murder investigation. Unfortunately for Martin, this character is such a crude, lascivious lout, we don't really care about his fate or whether or not his teacher-girlfriend (now a prostitute) leaves him. Jessica Harper (as the cold-fish wife) is every married man's nightmare: the bride-turned-shrew; Bernadette Peters is somewhat more sympathetic as the lover, and gets to utilize her natural Kewpie doll-ness to fantastic effect in the musical numbers. But, for the most part, "Pennies From Heaven" is peopled with low-lifes. The extravagant showstoppers, fantasy sequences designed like mini Busby Berkeley movies, are breathlessly intricate and exciting to watch, but they provide little emotional subtext for what's happening in the real world (I don't know if original creator Dennis Potter meant it or not, but the material plays like "Up the Sandbox" with music). Herbert Ross directed with a heavy hand, though he does get some fine moments from his cast, especially Christopher Walken as a hoofing pimp. An expensive remake of a British mini-series starring Bob Hoskins, the movie ultimately feels a bit claustrophobic and sluggish, and has an unsatisfying wrap-up to its reedy-thin plot. **1/2 from ****