Tout l'or du ciel

Man, did I love the musical numbers in this film.....but hated the story. I wound up taping just the music segments out of this film and making myself a neat little half-hour video of fantastic song-and-dance numbers.

The dance numbers are 1920s-1930s material except you get 1980s color and special-effects (and loose sexual mores). Actually, these are more like put- ons of those routines, including Busby Berkeley extravaganzas. Added to the routines are humor. I just laughed out loud at the absurdity of them, which included having the actors lip-sync to the old-time singers.

The dance routines are all totally different and very entertaining, from the opening bank skit, to the kids in the classroom to Christopher Walken's striptease to Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters imitating Astaire & Rogers. The dancing is good and the songs are great: catchy and fun.

Story-wise, Martin ("Arthur Parker") plays a boorish, profane, lying and just plain unlikeable character. Are we supposed to root for him? Maybe we are to root for Peters, who plays "Lulu," the school teacher-turned- prostitute (sounds like real-life these days with all the female teacher sex scandals). Hey, I like Martin in a lot of films. He can be a very entertaining guy, but the character he plays in here.....well, you can have him and this very cynical and depressing story. No thanks.

It's no surprise to me it bombed at the box office. Too bad, because with a more appealing story a lot more people would have been treated to the great musical numbers in this movie.

It's 1934 Chicago. Sheet music salesman Arthur Parker (Steve Martin) can't get any love from his wife Joan (Jessica Harper) both in the bedroom and in the bank book. She wants to keep her inheritance for a rainy day but he wants to use it for his business. He befriends penniless hitchhiking Accordion Man. He falls for school teacher Eileen (Bernadette Peters) and they have a short affair as he lies to her about being a widow telling her to "take the pain away". His wife Joan entices him back with sex and money. Eileen is fired for being pregnant out of wedlock. Arthur meets a blind girl calling her beautiful. Later the Accordion Man rapes her and kills her. A desperate Eileen falls into the arms of Tom the pimp (Christopher Walken).

This is a sad depressing movie juxtaposed by the bright shiny surreal song and dance show. The story is such a downer. Arthur is a horrible person. Eileen is an innocent that is destroyed. There is a horrible crime. Yet this is a fantasy with dance reminiscent of the 30s except darker. It's a very odd mix and is almost experimental in its nature. It's definitely not a comedy.

I am glad I don't live in Frostbite Falls because I might shiver at the thought of such a complex and clever film as PENNIES FROM HEAVEN. Made with a massive 1980 budget of $22 million and all of it up there on the screen, this genuine masterwork is one of the great unappreciated and misunderstood films of its day. The biggest hurdle the film could not overcome (then) was the casting of comedy stars in Art Deco darkness. Steve Martin had just scored a bullseye in the wild comedy THE JERK. For mainstream audiences to even then turn around and slightly embrace the sad loneliness of PENNIES' aching melancholy is impossible. PENNIES' failed and was consigned to misfire history. Today in 2005 this film deserves to stand with CHICAGO or even MOULIN ROUGE in its sly dark new century crowd pleaser theatrics. It is a film for this century and if audiences today have the chance to appreciate and applaud it's brilliant creative slant and dramatic spectacle, it will be a success. Possibly in the same ironic fantasy manner of THE PIRATE or YOLANDA AND THE THIEF, or LADY IN THE DARK of the 40s, ITS ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER from 1955, maybe THE BOYFRIEND of the 70s and even the original 1988 HAIRSPRAY by John Waters, PENNIES' belongs to that rare style of musical spectacle: the emotional fantasy with a dark satire core. Truly great.

An Americanized adaptation of the six-part 1978 British miniseries, underrated director Herbert Ross' brilliant PENNIES FROM HEAVEN was a huge commercial flop in US when originally released. Audiences of 1981 did not seem to understand the concept of a depression-era musical, where the actors lip-synch to original recording from the in 1930s in elaborate fantasies that are far removed from the actual world in which they inhabit. Though extremely unconventional, this device is absolutely heart-wrenching as the dreariness of the real world breaks away to the brightly-colored, perpetually optimistic fantasy land that only lives in the lyrics of popular songs. It is the eternal agony of the dreamer that is expressed; the cold reality that leaves us destined to reach for the sky, but doomed to walk the earth.

This leaves the film's cast with a difficult task, as they must not only contend with their dramatic art, but also be well versed in a variety of demanding dances and highly disciplined choreography. Comedian Steve Martin is far from the first choice to portray the downtrodden protagonist in any film, but the actor acquits himself expertly in both the film's demanding dance and drama. Mousy Jessica Harper delves into her eternally repressed character so deeply that one is never certain where one stops and the other begins; a triumph of form for any thespian. Renowned dancer Vernel Bagneris is mesmerizing as the film's most ambiguous character, and his density-defying dance to Arthur Tracy's heartbreaking rendition of the title song is one of my favorite moments in any film.

Even more impressive is tough guy actor Christopher Walken's then-unexpected prowess on the dance floor, as he delivers a riotously funny and surprisingly sexy striptease to Irving Aaronson's "Let's Misbehave." In this sequence, Walken pulls off the difficult hat trick of satisfying both seasoned viewers and film neophytes, while still managing to leave both groups wanting more. Best of all, however, is the lovely Bernadette Peters in a superb, Golden Globe award-winning performance. Never before has Peters' slightly tarnished Kewpie-doll personae been better utilized, and the actress' transformation from repressed schoolmarm to hardened prostitute feels both stunningly and horrifyingly real.

Herbert Ross and his creative team manage to bind all of the pieces together into one seamless collage of lost hope, forced optimism, and never-ending desperation. Gordon Willis' cinematography is never less than completely awe-inspiring, and the combined efforts of top-drawer art and set direction and Bob Mackie's seemingly authentic period costumes helps cement the look and feel of desolate decade that the film represents. Over all films in every genre, PENNIES FROM HEAVEN would be a likely contender to receive my vote for the single most underrated film masterpiece of the last twenty years. It exudes all of the contradictory joy and heartbreak that the movies offer, and serves it all up in one stunning presentation.

When Herb Ross opened "Pennies From Heaven" during Christmas of 1981 it met with harsh press and public indifference. Many concluded the musical was dead.

But "Pennies," like Bob Fosse's "All That Jazz" released two years before, is a key transitional work that juxtaposed the cynicism of the '70s to the exhilaration and escapist fantasy of its buoyant Depression era score.

Steve Martin ran the risk of alienating his fan base by trading in the "Wild and Crazy" guy for the brooding, unfaithful Arthur Parker. But he's a revelation. And what a dancer!

It was no surprise when audiences stayed away.

By all means watch it today, particularly on the new widescreen DVD release. You'll walk away with a greater appreciation of Christopher Walken, Bernadette Peters and especially Steve Martin.

It makes it so much harder to watch this major talent wasting himself in such tripe as "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "Bringing Down the House."