One from the Heart

This film is infused with cool jazz music, but after the first hour you get tired of it and wish they would increase the tempo. It feels sad and depressing, no mean feat given the thousands of watts of lighting that Coppola throws at the elaborate sets.

I was looking forward to this one a lot. I really wanted to like it.

I'm somewhat surprised at the number of negative reviews for "One From the Heart," and in particular those from people who had seen the film when it was initially released and have, for some reason, gone back to see the film again on DVD. If said persons were so dissatisfied with the film the first time around, then why would they bother with a second screening?

It's popular not to like Coppola after Apocalypse Now. Everyone claiming that the Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now are brilliant, yet everything else is "An example of an egomaniac not having objectivity.

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.

One from the Heart is from American Zoetrope, a studio created by Francis Coppola. A creative studio by artists for artists.

Those new wave filmmakers who revolutionised Hollywood during the 1970s were among the first generation of film geeks – people who got into the movies because they loved being at the movies. That's why, when people like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola started getting the cash and influence together to fund their own personal projects in the 1980s, they were liable to blow inordinate sums of money on homages to the cinema they had grown up on.

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.

A couple who's been living together for five years in Las Vegas has a tiff (Teri Garr & Frederic Forrest). As they grieve their heartbreak, they flirt with alternative lovers on July 4th (Raul Julia & Nastassja Kinski).