Best Shot: "One From the Heart"
Thursday, June 16, 2016 at 10:30PM This week's Hit Me With Your Best Shot was derailed by a very tough communal week and also a busy one for entirely different reasons for yours truly. But a few of our regular participants soldiered on. Please read their lovely pieces on this underappreciated Francis Ford Copoola curiousity from the early 80s. I think you can see a bit of it in the DNA of Moulin Rouge! if you need extra incentive to watch it on Amazon Prime.
Antagony & Ecstasy chose...
The film that was meant to be a quick cheapie designed to provide a financial shot in the arm to the fledgling American Zoetrope, but instead almost destroyed the company that Coppola had dreamed up as a sort of director-driven filmmaker's commune. It's one of the most idiosyncratic films of its era, overwhelmingly pleasurable despite being entirely unlikable and toxic in every possible way. I have no idea if it's a great film or a terrible one that could only have been made by a great talent. Frankly, I don't know that I care one way or the other: when all is said and done, we have the film itself, and I adore it even as it maddens me.
Sorta That Guy chose...
Apparently Coppola insisted that the whole thing be shot on a sound stage to make it feel more artificial, which he might have seen as a good thing, but...
Dancin' Dan on Film chose...
To call Francis Ford Coppola's One From the Heart "stylized" would be an understatement. To call it "artificial" would be even more of an understatement. It is, by a pretty good margin, the strangest American film I've ever seen, and were it not for Nobuhiko Obayashi's completely batshit insane House, it would be the absolute weirdest fucking film I've ever seen, period.
Next Tuesday June 21st
I promise we will get back on track with RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER'S THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT. Please watch it on any of these services and join us. It's shot by one of my all time favorite cinematographers, Michael Ballhaus. [Hulu | Amazon | Netflix | iTunes]
Reader Comments (5)
Yeah, I just didn't connect with the film at all. It was TOO artificial for me and when you say "musical" you kind expect one thing and this film was another. Too bad.
https://scopophiliacatthecinema.wordpress.com/2016/06/14/hmwybs-615-one-from-the-heart/
Frankly, after Orlando, I desperately need to rewatch Bitter Tears. I need something angry and gay as a fuck you to the right wing, both in America and in the UK.
Coppola's work in the 70s is so monumental that movies like this one or Peggy Sue are always going to be considered minor work, despite being beautifully shot. You can watch them over and over again.
Sorry, folks, anyone who finds this movie "too artificial" has a way too narrow a definition of a movie. I found this to be an incredible movie from beginning to end -- a visually stunning movie about real people and their real dreams and problems.
I really love the film in all its odd artificiality and the matchup of the voices of Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle is fantastic. I play the soundtrack all the time...