Pennies From Heaven (Drama)
Director: Herbert Ross
Screenwriter: Dennis Potter
Key Cast: Steve Martin,Bernadette Peters,Jessica Harper
A glorious spectacle that was largely misunderstood in its day, MGM’s daring musical takes an unsentimental approach to Hollywood’s Golden Age and the pop-culture dream factory – as seen from the dawn of the Reagan era.
Sheet-music salesman Arthur (Steve Martin) dreams of living in the optimistic world of the songs he sells – a tough gig in Chicago in 1934. After Arthur’s wife, Joan (Jessica Harper, star of Dario Argento’s Suspiria, MIFF 2023), refuses to financially support his business, he seduces doe-eyed schoolteacher Eileen (Broadway legend Bernadette Peters), who in turn takes up with dapper pimp Tom (Christopher Walken). As Arthur and Eileen chase a limelit, lip-synced future together, harsh reality waits in the wings.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer were sure they had a blockbuster in this remake of Dennis Potter’s 1978 BBC miniseries of the same name, a deconstruction of the legendary studio’s own musicals of the past. A staggering budget was splashed on stunning Busby Berkeley and Fred Astaire homages, along with gorgeous sets re-enacting Edward Hopper paintings; while Martin, already a celebrated comedian taking on his first dramatic role, took tap-dancing lessons to keep up with former child hoofer Walken. Instead, it flopped at the box office, hard. The film's singular, often-cynical deconstruction of the musical may have been too much for audiences as morning famously broke in America, but its power has only grown over time.
“The most emotional movie musical I’ve ever seen … There was never a second when I wasn’t fascinated by what was happening on the screen.” – Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
This screening will be introduced by film critic Amy Nicholson (Los Angeles Times), who will host a panel discussion with critics Jake Wilson and Stephen A. Russell following the film.
Amy Nicholson is the film critic of the Los Angeles Times and the host of the podcast Unspooled. She is a current on-air voice at LAist and KCRW, and a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics. Her other credits include The New York Times, The Washington Post, Variety, Rolling Stone, MTV News and The Guardian. She has served on the juries for Berlin, Sundance and SXSW, as well as the FIPRESCI juries for Moscow, Cairo and Eurasia, among others. Amy holds a double B.A. in Film Studies and Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma as well as a Masters in Professional Writing from USC. Her first book, Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor, was published by Cahiers du Cinéma, and her second, Extra Girls, will be published by Simon & Schuster.
Jake Wilson is a Melbourne writer who has been a film critic for The Age since 2006. His reviews of new releases are currently syndicated to The Sydney Morning Herald and other Nine publications around Australia, while his longer essays on film and TV appear weekly in his own Substack newsletter Moving Targets. His monograph Mad Dog Morgan, on the 1976 bushranger film of the same name, was published in 2015 as part of the Australian Screen Classics series. He is among the curators for the seasonal Bulleke-Bek Brunswick Cinema, running this year on Sundays and Mondays till 20 July, and is currently also teaching courses on global cinema, Australian cinema and lifestyle journalism at the Australian College of the Arts (Collarts).
Stephen A. Russell is an award-winning freelance film journalist imported from Glasgow, Scotland. You can read his writing in the likes of The Age, The Saturday Paper, SBS, ABC, ScreenHub, Flicks, Time Out, The Big Issue and more, including his new Substack, Orion’s Shoulder. You can also hear him snort regularly on ABC Radio and occasionally JOY FM.