Classic Movie Review: 'One from the Heart'

One From the Heart (1982)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Written by Armyan Bernstein, Francis Ford Coppola

Starring Frederic Forrest, Teri Garr, Raul Julia, Nastassja Kinski, Lainie Kazan, Harry Dean Stanton

Release Date February 11th, 1982

Published February 13th, 2024

I owe massive debt of gratitude to filmmakers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. It's because of their love of movies that I had the chance to see Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart on the big screen. In late 2023, the team known for their script for A Quiet Place and their terrific horror movie, Haunt, returned to their home community, the Quad Cities, specifically Davenport, Iowa, to open The Last Picture House, an art house theater. Since then, they've brought modern Oscar contenders, short films and revivals like One from the Heart to the Quad Cities. And I cannot thank them enough for sharing their passion for movies. Because of Beck and Woods, and their brilliant bar manager, Alexa, I was able to discover a new additioon to my all time favorite movies, a shaggy dog fiasco of a musical from the 1980s.

The reputation of Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart is one of being a fiasco and a massive financial boondoggle. If One from the Heart is remembered at all, it's remembered as a fantastic failure, a risky, overwrought flop from a filmmaker mad with power and new technology. Roger Ebert related an anecdote in his mixed review of the film about how Coppola turned a $9 million dollar production into a $25 million dollar failure due to his desire to use the most modern technology of 1982 to achieve his intensely unique vision. Coppola has long been portrayed as a madman on the sets of his movies and One from the Heart is another film teeming with Coppola lore.

Financial failure and Coppola's ego aside, One from the Heart is a throwback to the big, blowsy, ballsy musicals of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, modernized with the kind of sex and nudity that the Hayes Code kept out of the movie business for so many years. The film stars Frederic Forrest as Hank, a layabout who has become too comfortable in his stagnating romance with Frannie (Teri Garr). She's certainly noticed and her restlessness versus his desire not to change is the fractious, contentious, romantic heart of One from the Heart. As Frannie strains against the confines of domesticity, Hank longs for things to be simple and home bound.

The breaking point for the couple arrives when Frannie meets an exciting and intriguing piano player named Ray. Ray is played by Raul Julia, a man who oozes sex and passion. Where Hank wants a life of simple domesticity, Ray wants to travel, make love on the beaches of Bora Bora, or dance the night away in clubs or, in one truly spectacular sequence, in the streets of Las Vegas. Here Frannie and Ray ignite a Strip long dance sequence filled with sweat, passion, and sex. It's a boldly chaotic dance staged like those elaborate stage musicals of Hollywood's past crossed with the sex and drug infused passion of the 70s and early 80s.

Meanwhile, Hank falls for a circus performer named Leila, played with ethereal beauty and quirk by Nastassja Kinski. As Ray and Frannie have a night of passion, Hank and Leila share a magical night of music and dance in, of all places, a junkyard in the desert, just at the edge of the Vegas Strip. Former neon icons of the Vegas sklyline rot in the ground surrounded by junk cars in giant stacks. The place has a strange beauty to it, as if the desert were providing a slow moving burial for these former icons of what the Vegas of this universe used to be while the new strip glitters in the distance. The magical, romantic unrealness of Hank and Leila's night of passion is a lovely abd kind of sad counterpoint to the heat generated between Ray and Frannie.

Kinsky could be one of the earliest iterations of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, writer Nathan Rabin's iconic conception, of the screenwriting trope of a woman who exists to save an often less than worthy man from being alone. Kinski infuses Leila with the desire to be more than just a fantasy but she also has the self awareness to see that she is just a fantasy for Hank who remains in love with Frannie. There is a gentle poignance to Kinski's performance that is beautifully communicated in her final line, a strange metaphor about 'spit on a griddle,' that somehow makes perfect sense in the context of the movie, the character, and Kinski's wonderfully brief performance.

I am making the movie sound far more conventional than it is. I assure you dear reader, One from the Heart is not the movie you imagine. The film is sloppy, sweaty, desperate and chaotic. It's wildly experimental in style and tone. Coppola chose to make his Las Vegas musical entirely on a massive soundstage with big, obviously fake sets. There is little attempt to hide the fakery, you can see the ceiling in many scenes. The faked fronts of casinos, the streets that stop on a dime for a big musical number, and that magical, beautiful old movie trope of streets that are somehow always wet, even in the desert of Las Vegas.

It's Hollywood magic infused with the crazed madman vision of a director who is putting his entire heart into making his movie. Coppola has a reputation as a rogue and a maverick and that is evident in One from the Heart in the most unexpected of ways. Where movies like The Godfather 1 and 2 became Coppola's vision, or Apocalypse Now became the movie that Coppola wanted it to be, One from the Heart was made without a studio intervening. This is entirely Coppola's vision. Coppola took the weird obsessions from deep in his soul and made them into a movie and I love that.

It is extraordinarily clear to me that Coppola was delighting in using the tools of filmmaking while making One from the Heart. It's clear that Coppola is experimenting with everything, sets, costumes, lighting, everything is new and fresh and testing the boundaries of what the tools of filmmaking are capable of. All the while, he's applying these tools to indulge in his love for Jazz music, old Hollywood stage musicals, song and dance routines, and sex, lots of sex. One from the Heart is Coppola rending his id on the big screen in ways that no one probably should. He's standing metaphorically naked upon the stage to show us what he loves about movies and the various obsessions he has in everyday life, and I love him for that.

Coppola's grand ambitions poignantly exceed his grasp in One from the Heart but damn if he doesn't infuse every frame with effort and passion. The movie is a mess, it's chaos, the look is fake, the performances are quirky beyond words, there is very little that is familiar about One from the Heart in terms of the kinds of safe, digestible mainstream filmmaking we see in movie theaters across the country every week. The angles are all off. Stuff that might feel familiar is rendered foreign by Coppola's desire to hop in a sandbox and play with all of the toys of movie making. Few filmmakers have ever given their inner self such a public rendering on the big screen and God bless Coppola for bearing his soul on screen.

It's Coppola lore that he stayed in a trailer and tried to cut One from the Heart live as his actors working on stage. He was attempting to do what live television did back in the 50s but on a grander scale for the big screen. It took the legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro to finally convince Coppola to abandon his live editing approach to One from the Heart as it was comproming the lighting and staging that Coppola was demanding of his cast and crew. It was highly ambitious but ultimately a waste of time, money and effort. That said, I'm proud of him for trying. I'm happy Francis Ford Coppola made One from the Heart.

Watching the newly restored roadshow re-release of One from the Heart I was exhilerated by the ambition. I adored the obvious passion of the project. I loved the choices, the odd angles, the energetic staging and even the strange, elaborate soundstage. The stagebound aspects of One from the Heart add a layer of unreality, a magical quality that renders One from the Heart like a fabulous dream and an old Hollywood style that recalls the work of Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, but trashier and modern for the for times, the drug and money obsessed 1980s. From that perspective, One from the Heart may be sloppy and the happy ending deeply unearned, but it remains charmingly ambitious, maddeningly overwrought and undeniably entertaining for all of the wild and crazy issues that plague and infuse it with life beyond the big screen.

From having never seen it, to now being one of my favorite movies of all time, One from the Heart is a must-see and a must-own. I have to have One from the Heart in my collection. I also need the Tom Waits/Crystal Gayle Jazz soundtrack and a poster of Teri Garr and Raul Julia in a passionate embrace. That last one is me going quid pro quo with Coppola. If he's going to share the things that turn him on in his movie, I can throw a little too much honesty into this review and admit that Garr and Julia, far, far more than Garr and Fredric Forrest, were so electric, so crazy horny, that I became a little obsessed with the two of them and their incredible scenes together.

Find my archive of more than 20 years and nearly 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. Find my modern review archive on my Vocal Profile, linked here. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean. Follow the archive blog on Twitter at SeanattheMovies. Listen to me talk about movies on the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. If you have enjoyed what you have read, consider subscribing to my writing here on Vocal. If you'd like to support my writing, you can do so by making a monthly pledge or by leaving a one time tip. Thanks!