One From The Heart (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 in his MGM set), 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 (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) 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 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 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.
- Nicholas Sheffo
