One from the Heart (1982)
Universal DVD (region 4)
d. Francis Ford Coppola; pr. Gray Frederickson, Fred Roos; scr. Armyam Bernstein, Francis Ford Coppola; ph. Ronald Victor Garcia, Vittorio Storaro; m. Tom Waits; ed. Rudi Fehr, Anne Goursaud, Randy Roberts; cast. Frederic Forrest, Teri Garr, Raul Julia, Nastassja Kinski, Harry Dean Stanton, Lainie Kazan, Allen Garfield (107 mins)
Director Francis Ford Coppola entered the 1980s in a commanding position following the triumph of Apocalypse Now. Convinced of his stature as a genuine rival to the Hollywood studio system, he formed his own studio, Zoetrope, and put together a number of projects through which he intended to launch the studio as a major Hollywood player, a challenge to the establishment. Intended as a beacon for American independent film, Zoetrope was an ambitious undertaking and Coppola himself took on the task of directing what he assumed would be the studio’s first hit One from the Heart. Coppola was enamoured of the film as a stylistic almost non-narrative work that would revolutionize American filmmaking. Thus, he lavished much attention on the project and it soon spiralled way over budget. What started out at $12 million soon became $27 million and it seemed to all that Coppola was risking the studio’s future on this one film. Proud of his work, Coppola organized a screening of the final film for potential distributors but they considered it wholly uncommercial and declined. Finally, Columbia took up the challenge and released One from the Heart into cinemas. After terrible reviews, the film soon closed, making back only $2½ million. Coppola had gambled all on this one film and lost. Instead, he had to deal with his first and biggest flop. Thereafter, Zoetrope Studios was on the market.
The plot of One from the Heart such as it is, concerns a couple (Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr), unmarried but living together in Las Vegas. Their relationship is in trouble and after one argument too many they partially split. Forrest soon meets a younger aspiring showgirl (Nastassja Kinski) and Garr in turn falls for a singing waiter (Raul Julia) and plans to fly off to the islands with him. Forrest cannot go through with his intended relationship and so sets out to win Garr back. To find her, he must track her down with help from his friend (Harry Dean Stanton). He soon realizes that winning Garr back may take more desperate measures, and that he may have to resort to invading her hotel room and kidnapping her to prevent her from leaving. Finally, Forrest and Garr face a reckoning about their future together as opposed to the romantic dreams. In this synopsis One From the Heart sounds almost unbearably trite, hardly the revolutionary work that Coppola was proudly boasting about. However, what is interesting about the film is the extreme stylization that Coppola chose for it. Indeed, the film remains his most artificially stylized work to date and some consider the film to be his last great personal work before he lapsed into being a conventional hack for hire by the end of the decade, having suffered many flops. Despite the story and characters here, it is the film’s aesthetics that are most involving. read more