Very disappointing...

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

A critical box-office fiasco directed by Herbert Ross (THE GOODBYE GIRL 1977, California SUITE 1978), PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is a Depression-era musical, alternates between a harsh reality and the dreamlike musical numbers of fantasy, it stars Steve Martin as a Chicago sheet- music salesman Arthur Parker, who is frustrated with his frigid wife Joan (Harper) and the failing business and gets smitten with a young school teacher Eileen (Peters) at his first glance. The affair costs Eileen her job and she deign to become a street hustler while Arthur returns to Joan, but eventually the two reunite and decide to start a new life together, but who will expect, Arthur's one-time Good Samaritan deed to a homeless man who plays an accordion (Bagneris), will lead him to his doom as a scapegoat of a murder in this unjust, bleak world.The plot is a continuum of despondency and dissatisfaction, and overtly sexually aggressive, devoid of any limerent whitewashing to appease its viewers, Arthur, is a undisguised lustful husband from the very beginning and Eileen is not a shrinking violet either in that aspect (nudge nudge), in a frank manner, she confesses that she is grateful to Arthur that she is able to be liberated from her prudish facade.By sheer contrast, the imaginary sequences of dancing and lip-syncing with oldie tunes are glamorous to the hilt. The titular song is firstly mimed and danced by Bagneris in a showering of golden coins, and later poignantly used as an epilogue sung by Arthur with a noose nearby. A show-stopping Christopher Walken tap-dances in Cole Porter's LET'S MISBEHAVE is an incredible boon to remind us that he can be deadly charming and dangerous within the same take. Martin, in his second leading film role and long before his trademark white hair begin to sprout, excels in his burlesque deftness and dramatic expertise. The Broadway diva Bernadette Peters, extracts a profound ambivalence of good-girl-gone-bad transmogrification with her sultry body language and a baby-like poker face and last but not the least, Jessica Harper will be forever remembered for the lipsticks on her nipples.PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is the last hurrah of the musical genre which had reigned Hollywood over 60 years, its unconventional tact of juggling with reality and escapism is ahead of its time and Dennis Potter's pedestrian script cannot help it either, but in retrospect, it deserves a revitalisation of BluRay treatment, even just for the sake of those sumptuous and consummate dancing-and- singing parodies.

This film has so many good things in it and so much talent worked so very hard on it that it's just baffling to me that so much of it doesn't work. I love '30s and '40s musicals, and I saw this film in 1981, and I've seen it about 10 times more on DVD. I like a lot of it, but somehow it's just not a very good movie, and I still can't figure out why.The music is good. The musical numbers are creatively shot and well-executed; the Walken number alone took weeks to film. The sets, costumes, photography, and color are beautiful and give the film a real Depression feel. Clearly, no expense was spared. The actors give it their all. The re-creations of photos and paintings (including "Nighthawks" which is actually from WW2) are breathtaking. They must have been very hard to set up, light, and shoot. But, in keeping with the film's low-key style, they're not lingered on at all, and if you look away you can miss them.Is the problem Steve Martin? This choice caused some controversy in 1981. He lacked film experience and he might not have been the ideal choice, although it's hard to guess what other leading man could have done that vaudeville stuff in 1981. Martin, at least, doesn't obviously fall down on the job; the verdict is still out. But Peters, who even apart from this film seems to belong to the '30s, holds up her end of things. Maybe it's the script and the way the film is conceived. If the idea is to realize what these '30s drudges fantasize about-- and to do it in a '30s-musical style, as if they imagine themselves the heroes of musicals-- then there has to be something to the drudges that makes us care what they fantasize about. But there isn't enough to these people. They're drawn as thin types; yet the material is played very slowly, as if they were supposed to turn into real people at some point. They never do, and so by the end it all peters out (no pun intended). I also thought the subplot with the young girl was a maudlin absurdity, right out of a Mary Pickford tear-jerker. Perhaps the real problem can be traced back to the origins of the project. It plays almost like an English musical made in an American style, and it doesn't work very well. The humor in the book is too tedious, too black, and too obsessed with tit jokes to be American. And the musical numbers are too slick, loud, and overproduced to be English. The filmmakers couldn't find a way to make these two parts fit together. And so they are just jammed together over and over again. One is constantly aware of the bad fit. It just doesn't come together, but in the various parts there are still more than enough reasons to see it.

Heavy-going, off-putting Depression-era musical (set to old recordings of the 1930s) is quite elaborate and usually looks good, but is filled with ciphers. Steve Martin, in a fair dramatic acting turn, plays a sex-obsessed sheet-music salesman in Chicago with no conscience who cheats on his frigid wife with a schoolteacher, later becoming involved in a murder investigation. Unfortunately for Martin, this character is such a crude, lascivious lout, we don't really care about his fate or whether or not his teacher-girlfriend (now a prostitute) leaves him. Jessica Harper (as the cold-fish wife) is every married man's nightmare: the bride-turned-shrew; Bernadette Peters is somewhat more sympathetic as the lover, and gets to utilize her natural Kewpie doll-ness to fantastic effect in the musical numbers. But, for the most part, "Pennies From Heaven" is peopled with low-lifes. The extravagant showstoppers, fantasy sequences designed like mini Busby Berkeley movies, are breathlessly intricate and exciting to watch, but they provide little emotional subtext for what's happening in the real world (I don't know if original creator Dennis Potter meant it or not, but the material plays like "Up the Sandbox" with music). Herbert Ross directed with a heavy hand, though he does get some fine moments from his cast, especially Christopher Walken as a hoofing pimp. An expensive remake of a British mini-series starring Bob Hoskins, the movie ultimately feels a bit claustrophobic and sluggish, and has an unsatisfying wrap-up to its reedy-thin plot. **1/2 from ****

I recall when this came out, the reviews stated and restated that this experimental movie was not an easy viewing, but after more than 25 years, it still took me a few numbers to adjust to the weird concept and to the grim plot. I can't say this movie doesn't have major problems but... wow. The numbers are cut against the bleakest storyline ever in a musical, with unflinching darkness highlighted. It confronts the usual jaded viewpoint and problematics of the 1970-80s musical from as the others of the time do (All that Jazz, One from the Heart and at that point the play Chicago) but also Singin in the Rain gets eyed for some influence.I don't mind that this is a dark trip with lowlifes and losers, but I don't understand it's larger point. The idea that the songs allow escape for the character just doesn't seem good enough for an experimental work. After the treat of each number, a viewer has to take the bitter medicine of the storyline.Another problem is the insertion of the numbers, which as they have for two previous 2 decades, suffer from unsuredness over which part of a script they replace (monologue, dialog, thoughts, dreams/fantasies, narration, plot summaries, etc) which had become the chief problem of the genre. (i.e. Attempting to address the usual complaint of unreality musicals, in "On a Clear Day you Can See Forever" some songs are only heard as the internal thoughts of Daisy. Nothing on the screen even suggests a musical number. Lips don't even mouth the lyrics. & Cabaret only allows it's numbers to be performed in a nightclub. etc.) Less satisfying: 1) Why do the characters look through the 4th wall at the camera in the musical numbers?, ...and 2) Why do women's voices come out of mens mouths and vice-versa?But in constructing this pastiche, many participants hidden expertise' are awesomely revealed. Danny Daniels choreography is routinely excellent. Steve Martins dancing is very precise. It's inconceivable that he hadn't danced before. The dance numbers had the real potential of being junky, simplified versions of the old ones. But the creators have rigorously studied what was good about the source movies fifty years earlier, and these hold their own; some of the most joyful production numbers ever put on film. Some numbers feature seemingly endless rows of dancers, all in perfect precision. It's a fr**king joy to behold. This must have taken enormous planning. The numbers "Yes, yes" "Love is good for anything that ails you" are just unbelievably jubilant.Steve Martin is really handsome here. He's convicning as both a heel and a debonaire. In his 2nd film he's already showing more range than, say the pathetic Mike Myers, who turns every character into another opportunity to do a "funny" (unfunny) Scottish accent. Making matters worse for Myers is that on his new press junket for Shrek 3 he's clearly contracted some disease where he can't stop being entertaining. Each new feeble attempt at humor makes you clench your butt. It's really creepy. Donald O'Connor was the last to contract this. Both are unbearable.