Pennies from Heaven (1981)

. . . 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.

This film has so many good things in it and so much talent worked so very hard on it that it's just baffling to me that so much of it doesn't work. I love '30s and '40s musicals, and I saw this film in 1981, and I've seen it about 10 times more on DVD. I like a lot of it, but somehow it's just not a very good movie, and I still can't figure out why.The music is good. The musical numbers are creatively shot and well-executed; the Walken number alone took weeks to film. The sets, costumes, photography, and color are beautiful and give the film a real Depression feel. Clearly, no expense was spared. The actors give it their all. The re-creations of photos and paintings (including "Nighthawks" which is actually from WW2) are breathtaking. They must have been very hard to set up, light, and shoot. But, in keeping with the film's low-key style, they're not lingered on at all, and if you look away you can miss them.Is the problem Steve Martin? This choice caused some controversy in 1981. He lacked film experience and he might not have been the ideal choice, although it's hard to guess what other leading man could have done that vaudeville stuff in 1981. Martin, at least, doesn't obviously fall down on the job; the verdict is still out. But Peters, who even apart from this film seems to belong to the '30s, holds up her end of things. Maybe it's the script and the way the film is conceived. If the idea is to realize what these '30s drudges fantasize about-- and to do it in a '30s-musical style, as if they imagine themselves the heroes of musicals-- then there has to be something to the drudges that makes us care what they fantasize about. But there isn't enough to these people. They're drawn as thin types; yet the material is played very slowly, as if they were supposed to turn into real people at some point. They never do, and so by the end it all peters out (no pun intended). I also thought the subplot with the young girl was a maudlin absurdity, right out of a Mary Pickford tear-jerker. Perhaps the real problem can be traced back to the origins of the project. It plays almost like an English musical made in an American style, and it doesn't work very well. The humor in the book is too tedious, too black, and too obsessed with tit jokes to be American. And the musical numbers are too slick, loud, and overproduced to be English. The filmmakers couldn't find a way to make these two parts fit together. And so they are just jammed together over and over again. One is constantly aware of the bad fit. It just doesn't come together, but in the various parts there are still more than enough reasons to see it.