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One
From The Heart
(1982/Coppola/Fantoma DVD set)
Picture:
B- Sound: B- Extras: B Film: B
Back
in 1976, when Martin Scorsese shot New
York, New York
(reviewed elsewhere on this site), he wanted to produce the film in
the 1.33 X 1 frame. To his disappointment, the kind of sets this
required no longer existed, so he had to shoot the film in 1.66 X 1
instead. After the huge success of Apocalypse
Now
(1979), Francis Coppola decided to take $26 Million of his own 1981
money (so multiply that about four times as of this posting) so he
could build the sets that could accommodate 1.33 X 1 shooting and the
result was One
From The Heart.
Scorsese's
film was a great deconstruction of the Hollywood Musical, something
continued by Herbert Ross in his adaptation of Dennis Potter's
Pennies
From Heaven
(1981) with Steve Martin. Coppola wanted to deconstruct and reinvent
the idea of the Musical at the same time. To mix music and image in
a new way had already been done by Mike Nesmith in his fascinating
Elephant
Parts
(also reviewed elsewhere on this site) and some experimenting in a
non-Musical way had also taken place here and there. Though Musicals
were not as common, Grease
(1978, later issued in an amazing 4K edition since this review first
posted) had been a huge enough box office hit to encourage more such
films to be produced.
Here,
the film focuses on the dysfunctional relationship of a couple
(Frederic Forest, Teri Garr) that may have got on some critic's
nerves, and that even Coppola struggled with to show to best effect.
Either way, it is the impetus for their slow splitting off and
involvement with others. He lands up with a sexy dancer/singer
(Nastassia Kinski) and she a seductive, charismatic dancer (Raul
Julia) on the 4th Of July. Not enough is made of the situation, but
that is because Coppola is interested in doing a Musical that is only
sometimes traditional. Otherwise, it is that animal we now know of
as the soundtrack-driven non-musical, i.e., there is music that is
usually non-diegetic (the characters cannot hear it) forwarding the
narrative or (sadly more often) just filling in the dead space left
by a lack of screenplay substance. One
From The Heart
fares better than later such films in the script department.
Obviously,
in such a film that screams its artifice and has such amazing Dean
Tavoularis production design is not interested in doing the same old
storytelling. Character is sacrificed somewhat to bring this
dreamlike world to life. The form is often amazing enough to keep
the film going and this new 2003 cut works better than the original
1982 cut as Coppola has brought ht elements together better.
Listening to Gene Kelly 21 years late helped. Having more time to
think the dream through helped. Maybe some more adjustments could
help, but this is basically as good as it is going to get and many
elements seem to be more ahead of their time than even he could have
expected.
Tom
Waits, now also known as an actor, did the instrumental music and the
vocal songs either solo or in duets. Coppola heard a duet he did
with Bette Midler. She turned it down, and they got Crystal Gayle
instead. In a great twist of luck, Midler went on to do sappy films
for Disney, sappier records like the ever-obnoxious From A Distance
and the problematic semi-Musical For
The Boys.
That 1991 film was a bomb and a far cry from the moderate success of
Midler's The
Rose
(1979, with Forest of all people) when she still had a realism and
credibility as a vocalist. Miss Gayle on the other hand is still a
legend of Country Music who never sold out and has classics under her
belt like Don't
It Make My Brown Eyes Blue
and Talking
In Your Sleep.
That change allowed the film to dodge the MTV look and sound, which
enforces its otherworldliness, set in a Las Vegas that looks like a
recent shopping mall design. It is the thought-out, controlled
artifice of Hitchcock and quite an about-face from Coppola's previous
works to the time.
Coppola
hoped he had created a film so innovative and groundbreaking, that
the ''Academy Aperture'' 1.33 X 1 frame would make a comeback. That
was as bold as the film itself, which pulls on Coppola's amazing
range of cinematic literacy and innovative ideas about media in
general. However, the artifice might have just been too plastic for
some. The other major problem with this approach was that TV, which
was only just starting to go into decline, was 1.33 X 1 and MTV had
just arrived. 1982 happened to be the classical golden year of the
Music Video, with letterboxed videos a new novelty and almost unheard
of in the newly growing home video market.
On
the other hand, it is all the things that do work about the film that
make it hold up much better than you would expect. For one thing,
the look of the film was so visually above any Music Video due to the
extraordinary set construction, production design and brilliant
cinematography by Vittorio Storaro, A.S.C., A.I.C., that front and
foremost updated the Classical Hollywood studio look with uncanny
results. It looks like something from the early days of color film
production, yet is something new and fresh. The camera depth
achieved with forced perspective and intricate model and set design
still far exceeds anything digital can come close to and in some ways
will never touch. The film was pulled by Coppola after one week's
release, but the set work was immediately bought by The Ladd Company
for Ridley Scott's Blade
Runner,
which came out the same year with some more success. It still had
its problems, but slowly became a hit through home video, something
One
From The Heart
deserves now. Its influence on filmmaking is huge, but would not
have been the same without Coppola's film.
The
idea was to do something with the pace and feel of stage and live
television with the technology available at the time. In some cases,
he came up with some striking and stunning footage, which makes this
one of the best-looking films of its time. The most expensive Music
Videos still do not look or play as well, the decline of that form
notwithstanding. Scorsese turned to the film on some visual level
for his remarkable 1995 opus Casino,
and Stanley Kubrick may have even been responding to the film in his
final 1999 opus Eyes
Wide Shut.
The latter would be in respect to the way woman are shown
realistically, something both filmmakers are known for, no matter
what the controversy. That is something worth pursuing at a later
date.
Though
the film tries to be the opposite of his more serious 1970s work,
that by no means indicates (or implicates) that this was a shallow,
unchallenging work, but that it was trying to challenge on a new
level of what could be produced, shown and what kind of new world
could be created. Oddly, unlike most films set in Vegas where the
city is made a character, this artificial version of it marginalizes
the city in so many ways. Add the endless (and usually endlessly
bad) digital work we see today and its Vegas become even more alien.
However, no mater what the problems, One
From The Heart
ultimately works much more often than not and deserves rediscovery
since his vision was more ahead of its time than he will ever get
credit for.
The
full frame 1.33 X 1 image was supervised by Storaro and except for
some minor noise in some of the blue areas, is one of the better such
presentations on DVD we have seen recently. Zoetrope did the DVD
transfer itself, and even transformed recently as the ZAP Studio for
DVD work, do some of the best work in the business. That brings us
to the sound, which is only here in lossy Dolby Digital, but like
Apocalypse
Now Redux
and The
Virgin Suicides,
One
From The Heart
has one of the best Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks we have heard to date.
I
still would have liked DTS, but with the commentary and isolated
Dolby 5.1 music track, the film's original sound has been updated to
a 5.1 mix itself. At its original best, the film was issued in 70mm
prints that centered the 1.33 X 1 image in the middle of the 2.20 X 1
70mm projection, something repeated on the D-VHS version of this
film, which did the centering in its 1.78 X 1 ratio. The 70mm prints
had 4.1 Dolby Magnetic Stereo tracks and though it seems a slight
step backwards after the still-stunning 5.1 on Apocalypse
Now
back in 1979 (one of the first films to ever offer such sound, the
first officially), the sound design is still unique and impressive,
enough that anyone with a home theater system will want to give this
one a spin. The upgrade to 5.1 made the 2003 theatrical re-release
and plays well here.
For
the record, the sound mix here comes from several soundmaster
sources. Waits work was on both a 1-inch 8-track master and 2-inch
24-track master, while the 6-track Dolby Magnetic master for the 70mm
copies were on a 35mm magnetic print was applied. As compared to
many films form the time, though not exactly a soundtrack that is
consistently impressive, it fares very well for its age. Another
problem with such remasters is that the music is sometimes more
obviously clean and clear than the dialogue and sound effects. The
Waits songs might be too good in that they seem intrusive and
annoying, but the rest of the sound is still very good for its age.
It is also unique in its approach and for a film that often relies on
dialogue, it has a unique design that is still interesting to hear
and enjoy today.
Extras
include a pullout essay by David Thomson, a big supporter of the
film, inside the DVD case. This also has a statement by Coppola.
There is an exceptional audio commentary by Coppola himself on DVD 1,
then more on DVD 2. This includes the original 1982 trailer, the
2003 reissue trailer, stills gallery, two text essays on the film
from the time of production, a brief video clip after the DVD
Credits, videotaped rehearsals, deleted scenes, six alternate songs
for the film by Tom Waits, press conference at the studio that is one
of four pieces in the ''Found Objects'' section and four
documentaries. They are The Electronic Cinema (at 9 minutes), The
Dream Studio (28 minutes), a 14-minute piece on Waits music and an
original 24 minutes-long Making Of on the film.
It
is worth adding that the alternate version of Little
Boy Blue
worked better than the final version. Some of the Original Domestic
Release Opening Sequence was also impressive. As for the critics,
they were out to destroy this film from day one. Having been so
successful in their frenzied attack on and destruction of Michael
Cimino's Heaven's
Gate
(1980) and certain political interest's intent to destroy creative
filmmakers in general, One
From The Heart
or anything else that did not seem infantilized, airheaded and
''safe'' was attacked with the most poisonous venom.
There
is an occurrence that happened once before that mirrors what happened
to Coppola and the collapse of his Zoetrope Studios. Jacques Tati
decided to go all out and invest a large chunk of his money to make a
70mm Comedy called Playtime in 1967. He also had a bunch of
expensive sets built and this ''Tatiworld'' or ''Tatiland'' would,
like Zoetrope, serve as a place filmmakers could come and make new
films and be creative. Like Coppola, Tati watched his film bomb and
himself also go into bankruptcy. Tati's sets were also dismantled,
but his film was even more brilliant than One
From The Heart
and too has been recently restored. In both cases, each man struck
out on his own and took the greatest risk of their careers. Both
suffered the worse and Tati only shot one more film and two more
features, so Coppola survived a bit better, even if some have
criticized his Hollywood-for hire works.
Finishing
the extras here, you can see that the media turned the production so
much into a Coppola show where they were rooting for him to fail,
that anything the film had to offer was lost. The film stands up on
its own as soon as you start watching it and get into the
relationships and issues the film delves into. Now that digital is
catching up with Coppola, who has left United Artists and is no
longer going to work for the studios, he says he still wants to make
his epic Megaopolis.
We can only hope it is as ahead of its time as One
From The Heart
often turned out to be and if it should be his last film (and
certainly his last epic) that it further vindicates both One
From The Heart
and the legacy of one of the most important filmmakers of all time.
For
more on the restoration and 4K upgrade of the film, try this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/16440/Foghat:+Slow+Ride+Live+In+Concert+(1999/Blu-r
-
Nicholas Sheffo