One From the Heart Blu-ray Review
Heartsick.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, December 4, 2012
Note: This film is currently available only in the box set
Francis Ford Coppola: 5-Film Collection.
Hollywood and its denizens are famous (perhaps even
infamous) for reinventing themselves, but there have
been few reboots as dramatic as the so-called New Hollywood that erupted in the late sixties and continued for another
decade or so, injecting the nearly moribund studio system with a dose of independent film spirit, somewhat akin to a
senior citizen deciding on a whim to smoke a joint or (heaven forfend) drop some acid (perhaps a perfect appropriate
metaphor, given certain proclivities during that time period). A lot of future icons burst into the mainstream during this
period, including several directors who would go on to legendary status. Among these are Martin Scorsese, Robert
Altman, George Lucas, and one man who perhaps best personifies that independent spirit, Francis Ford Coppola.
(Ironically, the most successful director of this "new" generation, Steven Spielberg, is considered to traditional to be
included in most lists of this movement.) Coppola earned his stripes in low budget fare like some Roger Corman
productions, but then after a couple of higher profile screenplay jobs (
This Property is Condemned, Is Paris Burning?
) rather incredibly (even to him) was offered the decidedly mainstream film version of
Finian's Rainbow, a
musical that had one of the longest gestational periods in the history of Broadway to Hollywood translations (the
Broadway version opened in 1947, and the film arrived in 1968). The film musical, much like the studio system itself,
was a dying art form in the late sixties, and
Finian's Rainbow, despite being one of the more ebullient film tuners
of its day, died a quick death at the boxoffice, and Coppola found himself returning to screenplay writing for 1970's
huge hit
Patton. In the meantime
Coppola had jettisoned his attempts to work solely in the existing studio system and had begun work on what would
eventually become American Zoetrope, his private production company which not only brought out a number of high
profile Coppola films, but two early films by one of Coppola's best friends, George Lucas (namely
THX 1138 and
American Graffiti). Once again irony was not about to let
Coppola be, and when he was hired to direct what was not especially a highly anticipated property, he turned
The Godfather into one of the most
legendary films of all time and cemented his place among the greatest directors of his generation.
Coppola had experienced some of his greatest triumphs by the time
One From the Heart was released in 1982,
including the first
Godfather sequel as well as
Apocalypse Now, but the market appeal seemed to be off the director by
the
dawn of the new
decade, and in fact this film is often cited as one of the death knells of the New Hollywood era. For someone who had
proven at such a young
age he was able to mount a rather credible musical,
One From the Heart often seems a strangely disjointed
affair,
one which flirts with
the traditional cinematic idea of what a musical should be without ever fully embracing the idiom. (It's interesting to
note
—no pun intended—
that fellow New Hollywood
auteur Martin Scorsese had attempted something vaguely similar, albeit much more
traditionally structured,
with his 1977
New York, New
York
. And another director at least tangentially associated with New Hollywood, Peter Bogdanovich, had tried his own
hand at fashioning a
pastiche musical of sorts with his disastrous
At Long Last Love in 1975.)
There are a number of ironies at work with regard to not just
One From the Heart, but also
vis a vis any
director from New Hollywood, like Scorsese or Bogdanovich, attempting to make a musical. Musicals had always been
the height of artificiality in cinematic terms (and even theatrically), with characters simply bursting into song on a
veritable whim. While there had been some attempt to "normalize" this conceit in such iconic films as
West Side
Story, the whole premise of a musical would seem to be absolutely antithetical to the often down and dirty
ethos of New Hollywood. In a sort of
double irony, Hollywood had begun to react to the realism
afforded by New Hollywood by tweaking some long held musical film tropes. In 1969's musical version of
Goodbye,
Mr. Chips, for instance, what is otherwise a resolutely old fashioned tuner sought to gussy up the proceedings by
having several songs "sung" as interior monologues the characters are experiencing, while montages or other "non
singing, non dancing" action played out on screen. Coppola seemed to take that approach to heart (no pun intended)
in
One From the Heart, for even in some of the copious pre-release material he participated in that is offered on
this Blu-ray as a supplement, he mentions repeatedly that
One From the Heart isn't "really" a musical (at least
in a traditional sense), but more like a story told through music.
What is also odd about
One From the Heart is how Coppola seeks to meld the extreme artificiality of the musical
idiom—something that Coppola doesn't just exploit, but actually
enlarges in terms of a patently "fake" looking
production design—with the "kitchen sink drama" story of lovers on the outs, the kind of quieter, more intimate story
that was often favored by the New Hollywood group. It's an often jarring juxtaposition that makes
One From the
Heart tonally (again, no pun intended) one of Coppola's strangest pieces, a sort of quasi-hallucinatory experience
that is interesting on an intellectual level but, again ironically, fails to speak to the heart.
In terms of plot, there's simply not much "there" there. Teri Garr plays Frannie, a frustrated store window decorator
(didn't Rhoda do that on
The Mary Tyler Moore Show?) who is aching for some excitement in her life as well as
her five year romance with Hank (Frederic Forrest). The two break up and seek relationships elsewhere, Frannie with
Ray (Raul Julia), a Vegas musician, and Hank with Leila (Nastassja Kinski), a circus worker (yes, a circus worker) passing
through Vegas with her show. That's basically the sum total of Coppola's expository powers in
One From the
Heart, and it's an awfully flimsy foundation on which to build something as substantial as the writer-director seems
to want to do with this weirdly "little" big film.
Coppola's choice of Tom Waits to handle the song score is endemic of what is fascinating, but also perhaps "wrong",
about
One From the Heart. Many a pop songwriter has tried their hand at crafting musicals and has flamed out
spectacularly, and while Waits had a perhaps easier time of it since his songs are used more or less as underscore or
commentary, there's still a disconnect between the kind of low scale glamour of Coppola's approach and the gritty,
almost "street", ambience of Waits' writing. As with so much else about
One From the Heart, there's something
intrinsically
interesting about the music, but nothing that actually deeply touches the emotions, something that
Coppola obviously wanted to achieve, and which he has been so aptly able to do in his other, non-singing non-dancing,
films.
One From the Heart Blu-ray, Video Quality
Something is very much awry with
One From the Heart's AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.34:1, though it isn't
clear yet whether this is
simply a flaw on my particular disc or not (my hunch is it isn't, unfortunately). It may look to the naked eye like the
screenshots accompanying
this review are at least at the acceptable level of image quality. However, if you download the screenshots and then
slightly enlarge them, you
will see what appears to be a very strange anomaly, parallel vertical lines running through the image that look almost
like very narrow banding,
although they're not related to color gradation whatsoever—they remain consistently through the image no matter
what's going on. On top of the "narrower" vertical lines are wider vertical areas that are slightly shaded with respect to
each other; in other words, there's a wider, darker swath next to a slightly lighter swath extending alternately across
the image. Two of our
most technically astute staff members have looked at the screenshots in some detail and feel this may be due to a
miscalibrated scanner, but my
initial contact with the Coppola organization (which has been very forthcoming and is investigating the issue, as is
Lionsgate reportedly) seems
to think that's impossible, as original co-cinematographer Vittorio Storaro was evidently involved in this transfer in some
capacity. I've personally
never seen
anything like it, and while the good news is it's not
that visible while watching the film in motion, once you've
become aware of it, you
start to notice the bizarre crosshatched pattern that shows up especially on lighter colored backgrounds as if someone
had thrown a mosquito
net over the proceedings. This is not a screencapture unit malfunction, as all of the screencaptures for the entire
Francis Ford Coppola: 5-Film Collection
set were done at
the
same time (not to mention countless other reviews done prior to these two), and this anomaly has only shown up with
One From the
Heart, and, not to state the
obvious, it can be seen while watching the film itself. (For a
really noticeable example, go to approximately
49:08 in the film, when Julia and Garr are in the smoky nightclub, and the camera pans past Julia, who is backlit.
Suddenly the entire frame is awash in vertical lines that make everything look pinstriped.) There are also some contrast
issues which have been endemic to
the film since its release
and which are reproduced here, with sometimes milky blacks. The overall image is relatively soft, befitting the original
theatrical appearance of
the film. If and when more information becomes available on the vertical "banding" issue, it will be posted in the review.
