Pennies from Heaven (1981)

That was an excellent one.

Powerful

One of my all time favorites.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Steve Martin plays a disaffected traveling sheet music salesman. His wife is frigid and he wants more out of life. Soon he sees a pretty lady (Bernadette Peters), he is instantly smitten...though he has no idea who she even is. Can he win her or can his wife manage to be the woman he wants?I love old 1930s musicals, so you'd think I'd be the perfect person to watch "Pennies From Heaven". However, there were three major things that prevented me from falling in love with the film. First, when they weren't singing, the plot was so incredibly depressing and awful. Second, seeing modern actors dancing and lip syncing to old 1930s tunes is interesting...but soon loses its novelty and becomes a bit tiresome. Third, although the film is set in the mid-1930s, the cursing and crude language took me out of the experience. As a result, I had a hard time even finishing this film and I guess I am just the oddball who didn't appreciate the picture.

. . . rampage as a human wrecking ball versus females throughout PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (1981) and NOT echo the words of his wife Joanie (Jessica Harper), who tells the cops toward the end of this tawdry tale, "they need to cut it off and bury it" before this serial heart-breaker is strung up. While Arthur (played by Steve Martin) is not exactly Ted Bundy, he wants Joanie to go about her daily chores Panty-less, with red lipstick smeared "on the points of my bosom," to use her words. Maybe YOU can imagine even kinkier things that a spouse might request, but the story for the 1981 version of PENNIES FROM HEAVEN takes place in 1934 Chicago, where such perversions must have been virtually unknown. After what Arthur is shown doing to crush the dreams and futures of Joanie, as well as virgin school teacher Eileen (Bernadette Peters) and no doubt lots more "low hanging fruit," no woman will give a hoot if Arthur is partially "not guilty" in the Blind Girl's demise that finally ends his sordid career, or whether Stockholm Syndrome-addled Eileen may still care a trifle for Arthur in some dark nook of her heart. Though a bartender, some cops, and Eileen's school principle (when he's not wielding a mean ruler) might be nice guys overall, they're just bit players here. PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is populated primarily by a stuttering psycho killer, leering itinerant salesmen, a tap-dancing pimp (Christopher Walken), and Arthur the Fatal Phallus. Though Art the Jerk morphs into Fred Astaire in one of this flick's dream better sequences, he has no redeeming qualities in real life. He simply brings to mind that old Clint Eastwood phrase, "Hang 'em high!"

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.

This is a really ambitious film, but it's a failure. As many here have noted, it's a feature length film of a 7 hour British miniseries. Despite both being written (at least officially) by Dennis Potter, the brilliant TV writer, the movie feels essentially like a greatest hits package, taking the highlights of the miniseries, and making a film out of it. It plays almost like a 108 minute trailer. American moviegoers were majorly confused about it when it came out (it was a notorious bomb in its day), probably due to the use of pre-existing recordings mixed in with a dark, depressing story.There are some excellent things about it. It has great cinematography in it, the production design is eye boggling, and the film, despite the rushed atmosphere, manages to capture the mood and tone of the miniseries quite well. Martin, Peters, and Walken are good in their roles, but their British counterparts are better. Herbert Ross does the best he can here, and while the film is very ambitious and isn't a complete disaster, it's still not as good as the miniseries. Condensing a 7 hour TV film into a 2 hour one is never a good thing.