MovieChat Forums > Pennies from Heaven (1982) Discussion > I've got a theory about this movie

I've got a theory about this movie

posted 20 years ago by Wokel
11 replies | jump to latest

I think this is one of the best movies of the 1980s. I have not seen the original or any other of Dennis Potter's work. I'm in the middle of "The Singing Detective" right now, and I dislike it. I would be finishing it, but the second disc is still in the mail. (I'm watching it through Netflix).

I've found that Potter fans are harshly divided on this movie. Half include it with "Singing Detective" and the original miniseries as Potter-esque work and the other think that it totally destroyed the tone of the original.

My theory is that the miniseries likes its characters. The movie loathes them. (Much like it is with the not-great-but-profoundly-misunderstood "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" film). I think that its difficult for people to grasp onto the idea of a movie that loathes its characters. Potter's TV work was like an angry howl. There was something behind the crying. Not here, it's too black to even be pessimistic.

The movie is shallower then what I have seen of "Singing Detective" but it's also profoundly more challenging and experentially terrifying.

It's funny, the two styles are so different that your preference is likely to be flavored by the one that you saw first.

[–] 20 years ago

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[–] Wokel 20 years ago

Having recently finished the "Singing Detective" miniseries, I think that I could argue that that film offers very much a reassuring and redemptive view of the world. That people can heal.

So that not only explains why mainstream audiences didn't like the film, but why some Potter fans didn't like it either.

[–] ijones-9 19 years ago

I loved this movie as well...one of the most original offerings to hit the big screen during the 1980's, but it was basically a musical, a genre that was dead during this decade so nobody really noticed it.

[–] LoengardDS 18 years ago

Exactly. People who like musicals hated this movie because it was dark, disturbing and pessimistic. People who like dark, disturbing, pessimistic movies hated it because it was a musical. No wonder it did poorly at the box office.

I love musicals and tap dancing but I also love dark, complex, multi-layered dramas and this movie had it all. Steve Martin's best work. I wonder what it would have been like if they had given Christopher Walken the lead....

[–] CannibalisticCouchPotato 18 years ago

by LoengardDS

Exactly. People who like musicals hated this movie because it was dark, disturbing and pessimistic. People who like dark, disturbing, pessimistic movies hated it because it was a musical. No wonder it did poorly at the box office.

I love musicals and tap dancing but I also love dark, complex, multi-layered dramas and this movie had it all. Steve Martin's best work. I wonder what it would have been like if they had given Christopher Walken the lead....
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I like few musicals but I love both the origional PFH miniseries and the U.S. movie.

When I first saw the Martin Movie I liked it for it's darkness but the more I watch it the more the humour and musical numbers really shine through the gloom. I think I partly came more to this way of looking at the movie after seeing the origional miniseries in wich the stiff strange musical numbers done to scratchy recordings more clearly just added to the darkness rather than releaving it.

I have a friend who always choses to see the movie as hopeful and the ending that shows Peters and Martin dancing off happily at the end in a straight forward way and not as cynical or sarcastic.

After giving it some thought I decided that her point of view is perfectly valid. More and more she seems wise, it's so easy to be cynical.

She mostly choses to see the good in people and situations, I didn't understand when I first met her that it was a choice and not blindness.

Later,

Cannib'

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] Haverchuck_Is_King 18 years ago

I love this movie and I think you are right that it is one of the best movies of the 1980s. At very least it is one of the most overlooked. I think it was a big departure for Steve Martin and most of the people who would be the audience for his films were expecting something else to be his follow up to The Jerk. They wanted more of "the wild and crazy guy" and this is what he offered up instead. I remember at the time it came out my friends said to avoid seeing it because he didn't do anything funny.

[–] ajax1025-1 18 years ago

I looked up PENNIES FROM HEAVEN tonight, 2-20-07, becasue it was on TCM. I remember seeing this when I was a little kid. It came out when I was 10 years old. I had just discovered that you could actually go INSIDE to see a movie. Up until then, we always went to the drive-in. (I know, that sounds crazy, but it was a small town, ROSEBUR, OREGON)....
Anyhow, I remember waiting for STEVE MARTIN to do something funny, but he never really did. I saw it again tonight on TCM and remembered how much I LOVED BERNADETTE PETERS when I was 10.

SHe was only 33 when they made this movie, now she, and I, are a bit older.
Overall, it was neat to see one of the first INSIDE movies I ever went to go see again.

[–] PotassiumMan 17 years ago

I haven't seen this movie in 20 years. Yet, it's still pretty alive in my memory. I once had a dream that I was homeless and could hear another homeless person start singing a ballad. It reminded me a lot of the bleakness of this movie.

[–] TheArchKookPetulia 17 years ago

i'm not sure i agree that the movie hates its characters although it certainly is darker than the miniseries. i think the major difference between the miniseries and the movie is the stance the filmmakers take towards the role of music in these people's lives. i think the miniseries is much more enamored with the idea of music as an escape and with musicals being a saviour in a time of depression. i like the miniseries but i love the film because i agree with its much more pessimistic stance. i think that although potter worked on both, the director made all the difference. i think that ross is really arguing that these people shouldn't be looking to musicals to save them and that the hollywood dream factory sold everyone on an impossible dream at a time of great suffering. the musical numbers in the miniseries were much more organic; it seemed natural that these people were breaking into song at any moment. in the film there is such a difference between the plot points and the musical numbers. if you really study the faces during the songs you'll see that there's something almost grotqesque and desperate about the way these people are performing. this isn't them, it'll never be their life and no matter how hard they try this imagination will never save them. their lives just keep getting worse the deeper they delve into their fantasies.

[–] 17 years ago

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