1981 Retrospective: Jessica Harper in "Pennies From Heaven"
Friday, April 24, 2020 at 10:49AM Please welcome new contributor Nick Taylor. He's been sharing insightful comments on his reader ballots for years so he now joins the team to talk about Supporting Actresses who weren't nominated to coincide with our upcoming Smackdown events.
The 54th Academy Awards celebrated an insular group for 1981. Only nine films were represented between all four acting categories. If you expand that circle to include the nominations for Picture, Director, and Screenplay it's only a whopping twelve films hogging forty above-the-line slots. Every Supporting Actress nominee (to be discussed soon) had a co-star recognized in a different category. But when you look to performances outside of the nominated shortlist, like Kate Reid in Atlantic City or Karen Allen in Raiders of the Lost Ark, it’s hard not to wonder why things shook out the way they did.
Or consider Jessica Harper’s perfectly controlled performance in Pennies From Heaven. Adapted from a 1978 British miniseries, Pennies follows song salesman Arthur Parker (Steve Martin, aces as a total cad), who views life through the rose-colored tint of the music he peddles but can’t see the damage he wrecks on others, and whose affair with lovelorn schoolteacher Eileen (Bernadette Peters, winning a Golden Globe for her delicate, nuanced turn) sends both their lives spiraling towards tragedy...
Strongly but divisively received by critics and rejected by audiences, the film still earned some awards play with Oscar nominations for Adapted Screenplay, Costumes, and Sound. Still, recognizing any of the film's central quartet would’ve resulted in richly deserved nominations.
Credit to the whole cast for attuning to Pennies’ unique blend of sincerity and irony, registering levels of emotional immediacy and suggestive withholding suitable to a realist drama and an extravagant musical in their expressions, postures, and line readings, in ‘30s and ‘80s cinematic grammars. But Jessica Harper, starring as Martin’s distant wife Joan, gives the best performance. Because Herbert Ross’ direction and Dennis Potter’s script are so thoughtfully and freshly imaginative, she isn’t burdened with rescuing her role from one-dimensionality, neither a cruel harpy or simpering victim. Nor is she stuck as a foil to Peters. Harper’s underplaying of Joan’s puritanical beliefs and unfussy hold of period behavior reads as a bone-deep filter on how she interacts with the world, allowing herself room to explore the character in earnest.
The film’s opening sequence lays out her marriage to Arthur in precise detail, as he circles her for a quick fuck before he starts his four-day selling route and asks for her permission to use their retirement money as collateral to open his own sheet-music store. She refuses him on both counts, but Harper adds real fondness and marital support to her dismissals. Joan believes in her husband’s ability as a salesman, and sincerely encourages him to pursue his dreams of buying a shop without indulging the risk using that money would allow. There’s something self-assured in her declarations of what a good, respectful person is, informing her expectations of her husband as well as her wifely duty to respond to his unpleasant appetites. Harper is able to negotiate the moments her character is bothered by Arthur’s behavior on principle and by his specific wants, sometimes delineating these responses and other times blending them together. By being such an astute observer/reactor, Harper ensures her responses will highlight different facets of Martin’s characterization while revealing Joan’s conceptions of her marriage, her husband, and herself.
Still, there’s a yawning chasm between Joan and Arthur, one Harper expertly shades with mundane annoyance, general disgust, and personal humiliation. As alien as Arthur’s outlook is, she’s rarely surprised or deceived by her husband, though she hasn’t become jaded towards his behavior or blunted her own feelings to cope. When Joan makes herself up to suit one of his sexual fantasies in a last-ditch effort to win him back, shame palpably registers on her face and body as he excitedly embraces her.
Harper's performance is also rich enough to leave open questions. Has Joan has played out this scenario with Arthur before? What emotion exactly is making her cry before she accuses him of having an affair? Is mentioning another woman a serious inquiry or something she’s only saying to make him stop nuzzling her?
All of this is contextualized by a deep, frightening hatred in Joan’s only solo musical number, “It’s A Sin To Tell A Lie”. Lacking the glamour of the film’s other songs, her anger is startling for how directly it’s staged and because Harper hasn’t indicated any resentment towards Arthur until now. Cutting off the number right before Joan strikes Arthur with a shot of her practically swallowed by her own bed, juxtaposes not just her emotional state but also a certain conception of morality and agency -- is the thought of leaving your husband less palatable than killing him?
Joan mostly recedes from Pennies following this scene, later reappearing to comfort Arthur after he comes home one night vowing he’s gonna be good (the one thing he does that catches her off guard), and to perform “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries” with him and Eileen, the unifying connection between them being that all their lives have gone to shit.
In her last scene Joan is interrogated by the police about her husband’s recent actions. She’s unfazed to hear he ran off with a prostitute yet too rarefied to report his perversions without mumbling, and nastily vindicated once she intuits that he’s wanted for a crime. Harper’s final shot, foregrounded in profile while a cop lays out the evidence pointing to Arthur being a vicious criminal over the phone, is enticingly ambiguous about what Joan is thinking. Is she imagining what her life might be after Arthur is arrested? Does she think he’s guilty? If she does, can we possibly blame her? Is she even absorbing this?
That Joan is so compelling yet so opaque in this moment is surely owed to the attention given by the filmmakers, but even more so to the layered, remarkably calibrated characterization Harper has provided throughout Pennies From Heaven. Sympathetic without courting self-pity, emotionally reactive yet never completely transparent, playing arguably the most debased of a humiliated lot and certainly the most grounded role within a dreamily provocative film, Harper meets these already demanding formal challenges and enriches them with an ease onscreen that belies how rare and creative her choices are, supporting Pennies in every way imaginable while achieving heights that are utterly her own.
Reader Comments (10)
Please help brazil
I love this! Everyone is special in this movie, but Jessica Harper is perfection. Beautifully written, Nick.
This film is one of my spouse's favorites so I've seen it many times. Harper is great in it, agreed. Very nicely written piece, Nick!
I'd have nominated her and Walken that year,interesting when a performance you've loved for years is also one others feel that way about.
Yes. It should have been Jessica or Kate Reid.
@Everyone - Thank you for all the nice words! I’m very glad I got to write this piece and am excited to keep this series going.
@markgordonuk - It’s such a lovely feeling, and one I’ve felt very strongly about this film and this performance in particular.
Marvelous piece! Not sure Harper would make my top 5 but she sure is terrific - and PENNIES FROM HEAVEN overall deserved so much more Oscar love.
Yes! Perfection! and Walken too! Gorgeous production design and costumes I must say...And Danny Daniel's choreography superb!
I had never even seen this film until Nick's strong suggestion last year. What a total gem it is. Would've been a richly deserving film for nominations across the board, including all four acting categories!
I love Harper, but have never warmed to "Pennies" even after repeated attempts. I'm probably a philistine, but I just can't help thinking how much more satisfying it would be if they were actually singing instead of lip-syncing. It's such a talented cast, why not use all the tools available?