[3.9]
A strange, mostly-forgotten, almost-great musical that was meant to be Steve Martin’s non-comedy debut, PENNIES FROM HEAVEN has some great cinematography and an interesting premise, but it’s clumsy handling of tone leads it to fall flat. It doesn’t help that Reagan-era audiences probably weren’t looking for a Depression-era nostalgia piece when going to the latest Steve Martin vehicle. This is certainly an instance when casting expectations played a crucial factor. Even viewed with hindsight, it’s hard to fully accept Martin in this role. He’s not playing it as comedy, but too many of his familiar mannerisms are there to forget we are watching Steve Martin. Unlike other comedians (namely, Robin Williams), Martin can’t shift his comedic pathos into tragedy/horror. Sheet-music salesman Arthur Parker is an interesting character, and could have been played a number of ways. He’s lascivious, selfish, sometimes cruel, but also a hopeless romantic and dreamer. He’s a fascinating contradiction, but Martin only plays each element by itself, never fully incorporating Parker’s contradictions into a fully-formed character. One can’t help but wonder how much better Bob Hoskins would have been in this role (he played the character in the original British play that this is based on).
Bernadette Peters is pretty good as Eileen, the innocent schoolteacher who becomes smitten with Parker and seems naively taken by his lies. She gets a fantastic dance number set to “Love is Good for Anything that Ails You”, with all the students in her class dressed in white tap-dancing on top of their desks (which have now become white mini pianos). But when she becomes pregnant and fired from her job, she transforms quickly into a full-blown, sex-crazed prostitute. The problem with this abrupt character arc lies in both the script and direction, but Peters’ performance also doesn’t allow enough nuance for us to accept this later version of Eileen as the same woman from before, just gone bad. Similarly, Jessica Harper seems stuck in the role of Joan, Parker’s wife. She’s initially portrayed as a bit cold and aloof, but later her aggression is shown during a fantasy sequence in which she imagines stabbing her husband with scissors. Yet, Joan is also shown attempting to appease Parker’s sexual proclivities (namely, putting lipstick on her nipples), while also urging the police to give him the electric chair. There’s a complex character lying there under that mass of contradictory behavior, but Harper doesn’t pull it off. Chrisopher Walken might actually have the juiciest role here. In his single scene as Tom the pimp, Walken gives us one of the movie’s best dance numbers (thanks to the great choreography and Walken’s professional dance skills, set to the song “Let’s Misbehave”), while also teasing us with his sweet-natured come-ons to Eileen, before revealing himself to be a violent wolf.
The production design and choreography are a big highlight here, helping to enliven the old period piece music that the film uses. The unique attempt at inserting actual 1930’s music, with the actors merely lip-synching along to the original recordings, is a fun concept that actually ends up working much of the time. It almost feels like a musical history lesson too, exposing how much of the content of the songs during this dark time were devoted to letting go of your troubles, focusing on love and fun. The buoyant tunes and lyrics serve as an escape, and the movie uses that literally, contrasting the dull-hued reality with the candy-colored fantasies of our characters’ imaginations. Unfortunately, director Herbert Ross doesn’t go far enough in his depiction of his characters or setting. Despite showing poverty, murder, and prostitution, this still feels very much like a “Hollywood” production of the Depression. It’s hard to fully engage with the plot, because much of the emotion rests surface-level (it wouldn’t be until DANCER IN THE DARK that the promise of a fantasy-vs-reality Musical Tragedy was fully realized). Besides the film’s tepid tone, much of the failure here lies with Martin’s performance. The problem is Martin’s definition of drama is toning down the character’s more wild traits. Perhaps he was afraid of going too far, but how much more fascinating a performance if we had seen Parker as more salacious, more scheming. Martin’s Parker ends up being too flat, too put-upon. His character arc peters out, and even when he is shown at the gallows (shades again of von Trier’s later film), it’s hard to feel much of anything toward him. Sadly, I wanted to like this movie more for what it strives to be than for what it actually is.
burning retina 