In the Flashback series our writer Dag Sødtholt is shedding light on interesting and perhaps a bit overlooked films. The presentations will vary in scope. Since they are meant to inspire the reader to seek out the films, the articles and the accompanying images will avoid spoilers. Currently there is a special focus on 1980s films.
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The hero of the brilliant, darkly poetic Pennies from Heaven (Herbert Ross, 1981) is fantastically arrogant, loutish, self-centred, self-pitying and pathetic. In a world struggling to get by in the American Great Depression of the 1930s, he is played by Steve Martin as totally captive of his dreams and desires.
In a study of exploitative human behaviour, his neediness takes him on an inexorable downward spiral, in the process tearing down two equally needy women: Jessica Harper as the ultimate down-trodden, anxious, frigid wife and Bernadette Peters, in the most stunning performance of them all, with a wonderfully vulnerable, squeaky voice, as a mousy, prim schoolteacher sliding down the social ladder in record time. Elisa Krupka is unforgettable too in a minuscule but central role as a blind woman. Oh, and Christopher Walken performs a marvellously tacky song-and-dance number.
This musical written by Dennis Potter takes place in a shadowy dream world brought to sordid life by some serious Gordon Willis pictorial magic. The film is exquisitely lit throughout, for example enhancing Harper’s face, tortured and petrified with fear. The mood when Peters tells Martin she is pregnant is calmly electrifying and devastating, and the use of distancing long shot as she is fired from her teacher job is heartbreaking. The musical numbers, many of them inspired by legendary 1930s film musical choreographer Busby Berkeley, are inventively and sumptuously staged.
I felt completely drained after having finished this masterpiece, which has become somewhat overshadowed by the British TV series from the same material and whose reputation was also hurt by the film’s box office failure.
Unfortunately Pennies from Heaven has never taken the leap from DVD to Blu-ray. It can also be streamed from several platforms.
The loutish hero is dissatisfied with his uninspiring wife, so instead he dreams himself into a world of music where the actor is miming to well-known songs from the period.
He decides he has time for a quick one, a gambit that is forcefully repulsed.
Scenes are very expressively and delicately lit, as when she later humiliates herself to make him stay after she suspects he has another woman…
…Harper’s face is neediness incarnated…
…in exquisite, heartbreaking Gordon Willis portraits.
But also she can dream, and sing, where her innermost urges come to light.
Another marvellous, dimly lit scene where the police have arrived to inquire about her husband…
…she is mortified…
…excluded from the world, lost in her anxiety in this brilliant shot.
To give a flavour of the dance numbers: the hero dreams about opening a music store and goes to the bank, meeting a sceptical representative…
…one of the film’s many stylised compositions, here signalling an intermediate step between the realism of the previous shot and the next…
…where suddenly the bank representative is extremely forthcoming…
…a number in Busby Berkeley‘s spirit starts…
…breathtaking patterns unfold on top of an enormous coin…
…dazzling use of reflections…
…dizzying visual patterns just with simple changes…
…to top off this financial fantasy, a gigantic bill is raised…
…crowning the hero.
Suddenly, back to reality, as the hero is on the road, a travelling salesman in sheet music…
…the film is as good with minimalism as with opulence.
The hero has picked up an accordion player, impressively played by Vernel Bagneris, who is nothing more than a tramp, and even when doing a good deed, our man cannot help being arrogant and contemptuous as the hungry man wolfs down his donated food…
…suddenly the wall is removed and the accordion man leaves to perform a dance-and-music number in the rain.
Later, some movie magic with an elegant wipe as we segue into a scene with the hero on his way to meet a new flame.
It was “love” at first sight as he met her, a customer in a music store…
…and he immediately starts to idealise and fantasise about her, making her pop up in various postures, before she embarks upon a dance number on the counter.
She is swept off her feet by the dashing hero, and Peters is utterly sweet with her shy smile.
Ironic and playful use of the symbol of love.
She too can dream…
…leading her class in an extravagant number.
Crashing back to reality: expressive use of long shot as she is let go from her position after it is discovered that she has bad morals…
…the long shot policy is continued to the end of the scene.
Peters too gets the Gordon Willis shadow treatment.
One of the most striking shots of the film…
…introducing the blind woman with the chiselled face.
The location will be important later on, watched over by an ominous advertisement for the Carole Lombard film Love Before Breakfast, with a demonic black eye.
The principal characters indulge in a deliriously happy number.
At one point Martin and Peters imitate an Astaire & Rogers musical…
…before they step into the film themselves.
Christopher Walken turns up too…
…as a fantastically sleazy pimp, but with a depraved charm…
…and is the star of an extraordinarily tacky number.
Many shots are modelled after famous Edward Hopper paintings…
…with a special Ross-Willis absurd twist utilising this enormous object.
