For its upbeat tempo and optimistic spirit, “Pennies from Heaven” is subtly a fairly depressing song. Though the lyrics are intrinsically hopeful, the circumstances implied of the singer’s fantasy suggests a real sense of misery. It is in a way the perfect song of the Great Depression, and I’ve seen it multiple times underscoring that era and a diminishing of fortunes more broadly within it. The ultimate desperate fantasy of the financially insecure: that every time it rains there will be pennies from heaven -mere pennies. It is a beautiful song, but achingly bittersweet.
And its spirit is captured well in the 1981 movie of the same name -that feels a touch like something from the 1930s, but would have been positively cruel had it actually come in that era. Pennies from Heaven was written by Dennis Potter, a legend of British television drama, adapting his own highly successful and beloved serial of the same name for the BBC (the breakout project for Bob Hoskins incidentally). For a feature he switched out the London setting for Chicago, but kept the same basic conceit of a Depression melodrama centred on a down-and-out antihero whose mundane miseries are juxtaposed against lavish fantasy jukebox musical numbers of hits from the era. Successful stage and film director Herbert Ross was tapped to bring these to life, alongside a rather unconventional leading man.
Steve Martin plays Arthur Parker, a struggling salesman of sheet music whose business is on the verge of going under and who receives little encouragement from either his clients or his wife Joan (Jessica Harper) sitting on an inheritance she refuses to give him out of some bootstraps mentality she can’t honestly back up. It is the middle of the Depression and Arthur’s fortunes look bleak, yet he dreams of the excitement and glories of the songs he sells, imagining their welcome intrusion into his everyday life. He soon falls in love with a schoolteacher Eileen Everson (Bernadette Peters), embarking on an affair that will have long-lasting, dreary and awful consequences. But through it all at least they have their fantasy show-tunes.
Historically, this movie is a major anomaly in the career of Steve Martin. It is the only purely dramatic leading role he has ever played, and not just that it is an intensely melodramatic role in the vein of Old Hollywood -a downbeat character with dreams yet whose moral compass is often fairly corrupted. It’s the kind of character Bogart might have played in the 1940s. But Martin was just coming off of his breakthrough The Jerk; and already he had a desire to not be limited, to show more range and play a variety of parts. He’d been very impressed by the original miniseries and took to this movie with a lot of enthusiasm. And for a while it is a bit jarring to see Martin grapple with this kind of material, but then his best movies have always been ones that asked a little more of him than just laughs -Planes, Trains, and Automobiles of course, or even Father of the Bride. He’s capable of playing an acute sadness very well, and being a jerk of an entirely different kind. For his heavy lot in life, Arthur is not a purely sympathetic character, as he behaves coarsely towards his wife while actively pursuing an affair, then completely abandons his mistress when she is in dire need of his support. He gets Eileen pregnant just before Joan -suspicious of something going on- relents on providing his financial need, leaving Eileen behind as she loses her job and resorts to sex work. And he makes a number of rash decisions throughout the movie, including reigniting the affair after a considerable time has passed. He’s a rather toxic figure, but charismatic too through those musical sequences -which Martin takes to with aplomb. Ultimately it proves to be a very effective performance, so much so that it is a shame the movie’s failure at the box office taught Martin the same lesson that Charles Laughton got from Night of the Hunter -not to try that again and to stay in his lane.
Yet the best performance of the film belongs to Peters, reuniting with Martin -her boyfriend at the time- from The Jerk. Though in fairness it would be difficult not to get a scene -stealing performance out of an already acclaimed and iconic Broadway actress getting to perform intense choreography as a character frequently defined by a depth of melancholy circumstances. But it is not just a pity part, and Peters plays even the aspects of the character that seem the most dim and regressive -like her coming back to Arthur after all she went through by his abandonment- with an earnest sense of nuance. She rises above this material and matches it elsewhere. And she illustrates well the inspiration and intelligence that separates her from Joan in Arthur’s eyes -makes her a more exciting romantic prospect, even as one on the same social totem pole. Harper is good too, a touch colder than some of her other characters, but sympathetic ultimately in first her sadness than anger over her husband’s betrayal. And though she does hold certain cards in the relationship, her somewhat timid body language and especially in that scene of woeful confrontation late at night, indicates a subtly abusive power Arthur has over her. You can certainly not blame her for going after him in fury later. A small part worth acknowledging too though is the flamboyant bad boy pimp who Eileen takes up with -appearing in just a single though highly memorable scene, played by Christopher Walken. It’s honestly a shame because the character is so singular and bombastic and uniquely seductive, but also Walken expends so much energy in a sequence that has him dance around a nightclub gradually undressing for Eileen -a great subversion honestly that relieves the scene’s otherwise sombre connotations- and at the beginning at least we actually get to hear him sing a bit, the least graceful singer of the cast, and it’s great.
The reason that stands out is because the songs of the movie are almost entirely lip-synced as a stylistic choice. And the first couple times it happens it is quite bizarre, Arthur going about his ordinary routine only to start mouthing along to the voice of Bing Crosby or Arthur Tracy, whilst performing appropriate choreography. You do get used to the format though, and in fact it really adds to the veneer of the fantasy that another (presumably better) voice would replace the singer’s own. It widens the gap between these ordinary lives and their grandiose perceptions -the contrast is the key to allowing these sequences to work, even when the songs are more melancholy in nature. It’s a really well-articulated device, and Ross perfectly encapsulates the intentional ironic sensationalism. The musical sequences could come from a whole other movie, they are so sparkling, energetic, rich, and flamboyant. His history on musicals like the 1969 Goodbye Mr. Chips and Funny Lady really shows through (and afterwards he would of course direct Footloose), and the cast rise to the occasion superbly. Criminal though it may be to take away Peters’ voice she is a stupendous presence in a show-tune, and Martin’s comic physicality is translated excellently. Several of the song sequences are just beautiful pieces in their own right, to the point it doesn’t matter the people on-screen aren’t doing the singing: “Love is Good for Anything That Ails You” -which Peters performs with a full classroom backing her up, “Yes, Yes!” in full chorus at the bank, Walken’s show-stopping bit “Let’s Misbehave”, “Pennies from Heaven” itself obviously -sung to Arthur by an accordion-playing tramp (Vernel Bagneris), who ultimately plays a dark though critical part in Arthur’s fate- and perhaps the most stylistically thrilling “Let’s Face the Music and Dance”, which Arthur and Eileen perform via stepping into the opulent black-and-white aesthetics of the Astaire-Rogers movie Follow the Fleet from which it originated. The blunt yet captivating precipice of that core theme: Arthur and Eileen metaphorically escaping into a vivid, classy, appealing world they can’t hope to come close to really touching.
It is all drawn very sharply, both these visions and the realities that Arthur, Eileen, and Joan exist within. The movie is shot by the legendary Gordon Willis, the man who basically set the standard for the visual aesthetics of New Hollywood. And you can definitely see his work from the Godfather films present in the scenes of Arthur and Eileen’s lives -that amber lighting casting in relief their miseries. But he challenges himself quite potently for the musical scenes. Clearly, his best work is in "Let's Face the Music and Dance", which replicates not only the monochrome but the texture of a 1930s Hollywood musical. It is the real aesthetic climax of the piece and Willis makes it look superb. The production in general is excellent, the costuming, the stage-like practical sets -the film often feels like a Broadway musical. In a couple instances a famous image from the era is recreated, like Edward Hopper's “Nighthawks” and the artful allusion is appropriate. One of those kinds of movies you can't help wishing wasn't uncommon anymore.
Some tonal juxtapositions don't mesh as well as others, or feel overly cynical -the choice of who sings the title song among them. And there are scenes where the movie loses sight of Arthur's bad actions in the framing of him as a down-and-out underdog, even though he's not by any stretch the most poorly-off character in the movie. However, the movie's fate for him is fitting, even more so is the song and attitude that accompanies it. Fred Astaire derided the film for its 'vulgarity' and not understanding the 1930s as an 'innocent age'. Astaire of course, isolated by wealth and fame from the hardest effects of the Great Depression, was talking out of his ass. Pennies from Heaven, in all of its musical fantasy glory, represented the reality of the Depression for a majority of ordinary Americans, scrounging by for the mere pennies from heaven that so rarely came their way via Astaire and his ilk (a harsh condemnation of trickle-down economics at the start of the Reagan years -this movie was amazing!). An escape into fantasy is deeply appealing to everyone struggling, today as much as in the 1930s. Up to the very end, this movie illustrates that beautifully. Songs are like that, aren't they?
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