KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Sam Panico In his series, My Year of Flops, Nathan Rubin said, "It's telling that when a filmmaker succeeds in running his own studio, it's because he's learned to let his inner businessman veto his inner artiste. Coppola ran Zoetrope with his heart. It nearly destroyed him." One from the Heart wasn't just director Francis Ford Coppola's dream project. It was his way of saying to producers like Robert Evans, who Coppola famously warred with as he made The Godfather, "Hey. I don't need you. I can control costs and production and make a movie all on my own."Somehow, One from the Heart went from a personal love story to a $28 million dollar epic. It went from a movie to a Quixotic odyssey. Or was that 1979's Apocalypse Now, a film that went from Joseph Conrad cover version to a sprawling epic that nearly killed several of the people in its orbit? From typhoons to nervous breakdowns, actors getting replaced mid-production, Martin Sheen having a heart attack, Marlon Brando showing up out of shape and not ready to perform, Dennis Hopper high on drugs before disappearing for days in the jungle and so much more, the film was delayed and delayed and delayed. The director himself succinctly put it this way: "We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment and little by little, we went insane." Yet the movie that emerged was a classic.Now that Coppola was making a movie on his own terms, the odds were higher than they'd ever been before. The film had to be a winner with the public's hearts, minds and wallets.Coppola wanted to create something that he called Electric Cinema (I've also heard it called Live Cinema). There would be long takes, performances that felt like they belonged on the theater stage and cameras that would shoot from every angle to ensure coverage so that Coppola's editing team could craft magic from the wealth of available film. This technique - which involves modern video editing years before it was used or even feasible - isn't something that Coppola has given up on. He was part of what is said to be "an ambitious "Distant Vision" project as a "live cinema" experiment at his alma mater, the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television" in 2016 and published a book, Live Cinema and Its Techniques, in 2017.Roger Ebert stated in his January 1, 1982 review, "Everybody knows that Coppola used experimental video equipment to view and edit his movie, sealing himself into a trailer jammed with electronic gear* so that he could see on TV what the camera operator was seeing through the lens. Of course, the film itself was photographed on the same old celluloid that the movies have been using forever; Coppola used TV primarily as a device to speed up the process of viewing each shot and trying out various editing combinations." In short, Coppola did exactly what every modern production does today, particularly commercial shoots, using a more advanced version of the Video Assist that Jerry Lewis claimed to have invented (in truth, Jim Songer was the patent holder, read more in this fascinating article).What emerged is a film that is just as much theater as it is a movie as it is live TV. It begins and ends with a curtain. And what is in-between is a mix between heartfelt passion and pure cinematic gloss. Everything that can be neon will be - even the names of the cast and crew. Yet the story that is told is between two people and could happen to anyone.This isn't the real Las Vegas, though. This is the Vegas of movies, of dreams, of what Vegas feels like but can't be. It's a world where the music of Crystal Gayle and Tom Waits provide their voices, as the film becomes a musical. Kind of. Sort of.Hank (Frederic Forrest, The Rose, Apocalypse Now) and Frannie (Teri Garr, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Young Frankenstein) are a couple who've been together too long. Five years too long. They're sick of one another, they've left another one too many times and now, this is the end of their story.They spend their fifth anniversary with their dream lovers. Hank falls for Leila, who is youth and beauty and pure sex (it's no accident that Nastassja Kinski plays her). Frannie picks the dark, handsome and mysterious Ray (Raul Julia, who I really don't want to say is also in Street Fighter, but he was), a man who will give her what she always wanted: he will sing to her.It's not enough for Hank, who tracks down Frannie and tells her that he loves her, but she refuses his advances. He even follows her to the airport, where she is due for Bora Bora with her new lover, ready to leave reality behind for a life of idyllic passion. He tries to sing to her in his cracked voice but leaves in tears.Back in their broken home, he's lost, but she comes home to him, realizing that they are meant to be together.My question is, "Why?" The film never shows us why the real world is better than a dream. Would you choose a ramshackle house and a life of arguments over dancing with Julia or a neon sign graveyard with Kinski gyrating against a Technicolor sky? No. You wouldn't.That's my main issue with One from the Heart. Its heart seems in the wrong place, that these two mismatched souls belong together when the film repeatedly shows us that no, they belong with their fantasies.Another nod to the stage is that the film features understudies, including Rebecca De Mornay. I'd also be remiss if I didn't call out one of the best parts of the film - Harry Dean Stanton, who elevates every single piece of film he ever wandered into. Here, he's the owner of the neon graveyard.What amazes me is that Coppola would try to direct another musical, particularly after his work on 1968's Finian's Rainbow led many in Hollywood to brand him as someone who was hard to work with and hard to keep on budget. Again, I turn to the superior words of Nathan Rabin, who had this to say about the film: "As Coppola tells it on Finian's Rainbow's shockingly candid audio commentary, he was the wrong man for the job in every conceivable way. Coppola fancied himself a New Wave-style auteur. Warner Bros saw him as a cheap gun-for-hire."While One to the Heart was intended as a small follow-up to Apocalypse Now, obviously things didn't turn out that way. For Coppola, it meant going back to the studio system. Every movie he made for almost two decades - The Outsiders, The Godfather: Part III, Jack, The Rainmaker and even a return to working with Robert Evans (this one's a whole other tale in and out of itself) on The Cotton Club was all to pay back the debts from this film.Should you see it? You better after I wrote over 1,200 words about it! But seriously, the color palette of this film is something you won't see outside of Suspiria. It's a music video in an era where that art form was still growing. And it informs later works like Bram Stoker's Dracula, which is even more overt in its reference to the works of Mario Bava than simply loving his brighter color choices. And if you watch this on DVD, you even get the choice to simply watch the musical numbers, which may improve on the film for some.*Indeed, Coppola would direct a lot of the film from "The Silver Fish, a mobile HQ, fully equipped with a kitchenette, espresso machine and onboard Jacuzzi," which had a loudspeaker that he could issue orders from. Insane. And by insane, I mean brilliance.

Rodrigo Amaro One of the most unconventional musicals of all time "One From the Heart" is a criminally underrated film that needs to be rediscovered by all generations and by authentic film lovers out there. Francis Ford Coppola's extravagant and luxurious film is a imaginative tale of a true and down-to-earth love struggling to survive the flames of perfect but false love affairs. They've met on a nice 4th of July, they remained married for five years, but then while celebrating their fifth anniversary together, something died and they couldn't go on together. That's the story of Frannie (Teri Garr) and Hank (Frederick Forrest), a happy couple that after an little argument decides to break-up, finding comfort and love with other partners on the dreamy and magical Las Vegas. She goes out with a talented pianist/waiter named Ray (Raul Julia), a romantic Latin lover with lots of qualities; while Hank goes after Leila (Nastassja Kinski) an sexy dancer with lots of appeal. Both affairs look and sound perfect but will Hank and Frannie ever realize they really belong with each other and that this fantasies shouldn't been taken so seriously? Surprises, surprises... Elegant, beautiful and amazingly colorful with its neon lights shining and sparkling everywhere, all the time in a Las Vegas built on the American Zoetrope's sound stage, company that went to bankruptcy due to the enormous costs spent on this film, "One from the Heart" is a outstanding film, way above the average that never was placed in the place it should have been, among with the greatest works of art of all time. It was a financial and critical failure for Francis and the films he made until the 1990's were mostly for covering those costs (original budget planning was U$2 million, but the real money spent reach U$25 million which was a very high cost in the 1980's). But these are minor concerns. It's a film with lots of qualities, it gives us so much and the emotions it sets on us is priceless. His vision is absolutely perfect for the eyes. A visually stunning film and an orgasm to our eyes and senses that rare films can achieve. The dream-like Vegas comes to represent a fictionalization of love as something happy, colorful, never ending, love Hollywood style. Then we have to compare with our own love stories, our own perception of what love's like. Love is really like a endless magic where everything happens perfectly or it has some flaws, some danger and some unfortunate parts? Hank and Frannie story is more realistic if we have to compare with the romantic evenings they have with Ray and Leila, musical sequences made to look just like 1940's MGM musicals. Coppola couldn't go on filming these in the real Las Vegas, he had to present us a larger than life fantasy, dreams becoming true, and he succeed it (sadly, many didn't get that idea). Even not including huge superstars in the main roles, the casting is impeccable (which also includes Harry Dean Stanton and Lainie Kazan in funny roles as the main couple friends). Vittorio Storaro's innovative cinematography, Dean Tavoularis art-direction, the special effects used, Tom Waits & Crystal Gayle songs and the soundtrack, everything is perfectly put together. And best sequences are: the musical number involving Frannie and Ray dancing in the crowded Vegas; their fabulous tango; Leila's number to Hank on top of a tightrope; the ending, kind of corny, but acceptable. Everything is so phony, so unbelievable and that's the movie's point: it's an optic of what love should be, or perhaps that's the way love is seen for those who fell in love, that everything is or must be perfect. But if you think real love is just like the ones you see in the movies than you need to open your eyes better and see from another perspective. You need to see the difficulties, the twists and turns just like the ones Frannie and Hank had right in the first scenes where one complain about not standing each other anymore.The poor criticism this film got is the same one that killed "Heaven's Gate" years earlier, a big budget film for too little result, critics not even focused on the film's idea, although I think Coppola made something better with all the money spent and his career didn't sink so low like Cimino did. But I must say that this was only restricted to the U.S. and some other countries, since here "One from the Heart" is lauded as one of the greatest films directed by Francis, receiving impeccable and positive reviews, most of them so good to make me run to see this film. The wait was over, and it fulfilled my expectations and more. I loved it! 10/10

jzappa Most general accounts of Francis Ford Coppola's work have identified recurrent familial themes, while visually he has come to be understood as something of a guru of the extravagant. However, neither of these positions is entirely sustainable across an oeuvre that on closer inspection discloses considerable formal and thematic scope. If Coppola had by the close of the 1970s figured, understandably enough, that his career was blessed, this, his next venture, would bring about a very hasty and categorical fall from grace. Initially conceived as a modest antidote to the excesses of Apocalypse Now, the project ballooned into an experiment of gargantuan, tragic proportions that subsequently marked an immediate shift in his career to more modest productions.This Oscar-nominated Vegas-set semi-musical, which led to Coppola's bankruptcy, is an intriguing production but not a good film. From Coppola, the inspired mastermind of The Conversation, Apocalypse Now and the Godfather films, it's a foremost letdown. A movie's innovative technical process is indeterminate. Movies make or break as per the substance of their material. The most miserable thing about this lavish exercise in style is that it has none. It's a tango of elegant and byzantine camera movements filling wonderful sets, and the characters get completely misplaced in the thick. There's never a second in this film when I'm concerned about what's happening to the people in it, and but one moment, a cameo by Allen Goorwitz as a furious coffee shop owner, when I feel that an actor's artlessness successfully slips past Coppola's suffocating panache and into the audience.The raconteur of The Godfather turns into a pure technician here. There are unsettling congruences between Coppola's fanatical command of this film and the character of Harry Caul, the wiretapper in Coppola's The Conversation, who cared solely about technical outcomes and declined to let himself consider human ones. Movies are innumerable different things, but most of the best ones are about and for people, and this unmistakably hallucinatory and dreamlike piece of filmmaking takes little notice of the difficulties of the human spirit. Certainly, it appears virtually on the lookout against the actors who inhabit its painstakingly designed scenes. They're scarcely ever permitted to lead. They're figures in a larger blueprint, one that ebbs them, that views them as part of the furnishings. They aren't offered many close-ups. They're frequently suffused in loud red glimmering or overpowering blues and greens. They're positioned before off-puttingly glitzy sets or adrift shoddily stage-managed hordes. And occasionally they're interrupted at the heart of a sentiment because the uncompromisingly planned camera has affairs elsewhere.I've forgotten, indeed, to mention the players, or who they play. That's not so much of an omission talking about a film like this. The two leads, the sexier-than-ever Teri Garr and the forgettable-as-ever Frederic Forrest occupy a Las Vegas of regret, languor, and glitzy lights. For a short time, they spring from their monotonous lives and meet new lovers, Raul Julia and Natassja Kinski, who string them along with flights of the imagination. In effect, Coppola's telling the simple story of a break-up but with the hyper-romantic lusciousness of the emotions we feel in those times, which is cool, until it becomes an unmotivated, auto-pilot story upstaged by its own, well, stages.There are trivial amusements in this movie. One is Harry Dean Stanton's phone-in as a sleazy junkyard owner, while Coppola defies showing us Stanton's most valuable instrument, his telling eyes. Kinski, as a circus tightrope walker, has a pretty decent blip on the radar when she explains "to make a circus girl disappear, all you have to do is blink." Garr is endearing, but her role makes her unrewardingly submissive, and Forrest is more or less transparent here, playing such a nonentity. Ho hum.

raymond-15 What a lot of work went into a big time musical that just did not pay off. The recreation of Las Vegas in the big sound studios was well done with the brassy atmosphere and flashing lights giving us a riot of sound and colour. It's good to be experimental with the effects but sometimes it's better not to go too far. I found the singing voices superimposed on the airport noises were annoying to say the least. A lot of the images too are superimposed. A little might be acceptable but too much is bewildering.The theme of the film is summed up in the song "You don't know what you've got till you've lost it". A couple of lovers argue over nothing, break up, and go their own way seeking new partners. A vindictive act to teach each other a lesson.The beginning of the film and the end are the best parts with very little substance in between.Like the acting the songs were not particularly impressive and I really did not like the characters The failure of the film at the box office is not surprising. May be those reviewers who gave high recommendations saw themselves in the devastating break up between the lovers.I really cannot find very much to praise except perhaps the development of the atmosphere both visual and sound. All in all it's a costly experiment that went wrong and did not attract me in the least and I dare say many others.