Teri Garr

Frederic Forrest

Raúl Juliá

Nastassja Kinski

Lainie Kazan

Harry Dean Stanton

Allen Garfield

Jeff Hamlin

Italia Coppola

Carmine Coppola

Edward Blackoff

James Dean

Rebecca De Mornay

Javier Grajeda

Cynthia Kania

Monica Scattini

Luana Anders

Judith Burnett

Ty Crowley

Michael David Eilert

Miranda Garrison

Ken Grant

Sandra Gray

Doctor Hayes

Michelle Johnston

Douglas Brian Martin

Lezlie Mogell

James Ridgley

Tom Waits

Cynthia Windham

Francis Ford Coppola

April Ferry

Conrad E. Palmisano

Rudi Fehr

Anne Goursaud

Randy Roberts

Jennifer Shull

Dean Tavoularis

Angelo P. Graham

Gary Fettis

Leslie McCarthy-Frankenheimer

Ruth Morley

Jeff Angell

Jene Fielder

Barbara Lorenz

Donald Heitzer

Ralph S. Singleton

Thomas E. Ackerman

Gray Frederickson

Fred Roos

Richard Beggs

Bob Alcivar

Arne Schmidt

Daniel Attias

Kenneth D. Collins

Kenny Ortega

Armyan Bernstein

John R. Leonetti

Vittorio Storaro

Ronald Víctor García

Robert Swarthe

Bernard Gersten

Mona Skager

Bones Howe

Mickey Hart

Bobby Vega

James J. Murakami

Alex Tavoularis

Dennis Gassner

James E. Webb

Chris McLaughlin

Jim Stuebe

Scott Thomas

James Austin

Leslie Shatz

Richard Burrow

Teresa Eckton

Vivien Hillgrove

Gene L. Gillette

Enrico Umetelli

Garrett Brown

Bill Hansard

Roger Montgomery

Mitch Dubin

Robert Moore

Alfredo Marchetti

Phillip R. Sarabia

James O. Blair

Daryl Smith

Donald Krafft

George Flaherty

Kathryn Campbell

Robert Eberlein

Greg Jein

Scott Squires

Hoyt Yeatman

Fred Iguchi

Tom Hollister

Robert Waddell

Susan Landau Finch

Elisabeth Leustig

Joanie Blum

Dean Skipworth

David Jonas

Joe Griffith

Rocco Gioffre

Jamie Anderson

Mark Freund

Thomas Klines

Keith Lundy

Mario Zavala

Peter Sorel

Morgan Renard

Tom Shaw Jr.

Richard Young

John J. Rutchland Jr.

Roger Dietz

Chris Lebenzon

Deborah Roberts

Kaja Fehr

Carrie Ellison

Drama

Romance

One from the Heart

American Zoetrope

United States of America

_**Coppola’s avant-garde musical with Teri Garr and Nastassja Kinski**_

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).

“One from the Heart” (1981) was Francis Ford Coppola’s follow-up to his incredible “Apocalypse Now” (1979). It’s a romantic musical shot entirely on a large sound stage (with one sequence done in the back lot) of Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios, a studio by artists for artists. It’s in the tradition of the outstanding “Moulin Rouge” (1952) and the precursor to the dynamic “Chicago” (2002), but it lacks the compelling story of the former and the electricity of the latter.
 
Coppola was excited about using experimental video equipment to view/edit the movie and it certainly looks good, but the story is simplistic, which no doubt was the point in order for the viewer to focus on the artistic visuals and pleasant lounge music (by Tom Waits featuring Crystal Gayle). Nevertheless, the story is dull and Forrest lacks the charm to play a leading man, although Raul is charismatic. On the female front, Garr looks great as she nears the end of her physical prime and this is perhaps the best film to view Nastassja’s beauty.

While the film has its partisans and is certainly worth checking out for the reasons noted, it flopped upon release and it took Coppola a decade to recover financially. But I respect Francis for his experimental drive. They can’t all be hits.

The movie runs 1 hour, 47 minutes.

GRADE: C

CinemaSerf

"Hank" (Fredric Forrest) and girlfriend "Frannie" (Terri Garr) seem to have one of those relationships that is on, then it's off, then it's on again. After five years of this, there's some love there, but there's also loads of restlessness and it's ultimately that which drives them apart. She hooks up with the swarthy "Ray" (Raul Julia) while he takes a shine to "Leila" (Nastassia Kinski). It's this latter relationship that proves the marginally more entertaining in this otherwise unremarkable drama. "Leila" works in a circus and is regularly performing death-defying feats in a big top that is clearly just an huge sound stage. There we hit on what makes this film a little more notable - it has all been filmed on a stage. It's very much presented as if it were a stage play, even down the lighting fades and the use of music to help get us from one scenario to the other. The production design and technical effects work well to create that image but they can't compensate for a really thin story that neither Garr nor Forrest really add very much too. A sort of five-year-itch romance that rarely raises a laugh and looks entirely fake from start to finish. Whilst I don't doubt that was the aim of Francis Ford Coppola it merely seems to serve his own ambitions to prove he can make something quite this faux-continuous and sterile, rather than aspire to actually engaging with the audience on any meaningful level. It's under-written and under-developed from a character perspective and try as I did, I just didn't much care for it - one way or the other.