Hacker Cinema
One from the Heart
1982 · Film · 99 min
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
In a dazzling, dreamlike Las Vegas, longtime couple Hank and Frannie break up on their fifth anniversary and each pursue the fantasy of new love over one neon-soaked night—he with a free-spirited acrobat, she with a seductive musician. But as illusion and reality blur, both must decide whether passion or devotion truly defines the heart.
3 negative1 neutralfrom 4 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
4 comments on Hacker News
Able Gance’s 7 hour epic Napoleon (1927) employed split screen projection, superimposition, location shooting, super-close up…. All unheard of at the time. But the advantage he had was that cinema was not yet ‘invented’. That would not happen till Hollywood streamlined production and (importantly) consumption. This was effectively Fords assembly-line ethos applied to art. In contrast, Gance believed cinema has the same potential for depth as literature.
Coppola has always had a desire to re-invent cinema. He tried and failed with the digital production techniques of ‘One From the Heart’, though much of what he introduced presaged techniques that are common nowadays.
With Megopolis he seems to be trying to re-invent the form. I believe that is a folly. The form of Cinema is now pretty much fixed in stone. Reinventing it would likely be as successful as reinventing the chair. You might produce something that ‘works’. But people would be unlikely to accept it.
I think most people are unaware that Coppola has also directed the following: Twixt (2011), Tetro (2009), Youth Without Youth (2007), The Rainmaker (1997), Bram Stokers' Dracula (1992), The Godfather Part III (1990), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), Gardens of Stone (1987), The Cotton Club (1984), Rumble Fish (1983), The Outsiders (1983), and One from the Heart (1981).
In other words, Coppola has directed plenty of bad to mediocre films after his incredible run from The Godfather through Apocalypse Now (1972 to 1979). Granted, that run was enough to forever ensconce him in Pantheon of great films directors. I think Megalopis is getting so much (undeserved press) because Coppola says its his last film and it was self financed. The trend line in his movies, however, has been negative for a long time. So, were it not for those two remarkable attributes, Megalopis would probably have come and gone with little notice, much like the rest of his since the 90s.
Hardware Geeks like me were enthralled. MGM was lost. Charles Lippincott reverted the sales pitch to an inference that a really good LSD experience would come with your movie ticket, and 2001 took off. George Lucas hired Charley when he missed the Christmas 1976 release date, paid him by selling all the T-shirt rights for 100K. Like 'The Stunt Man', 'One From The Heart', 'The Last of the Mobile Hot Shots', 'Angel and the Badman' et al, sometimes fans have to pry the good stuff from the grey suits.
Do Not lick your ticket.
P.S. I didn't get to read the WSJ screed, i'm outside their club:(
I love FFC. I'm a current UCLA film student - Coppola's alma mater. One thing to think about: UCLA has always been the "indy, intellectual" film school. It's our rep, internally and (to an extent) externally. When Coppola left UCLA to work in Hollywood, he was branded a sell-out by his fellow students.
One thing to think about w/ this whole "crush Hollywood" thing is this: most of your favorite movies (assuming you've got a boner for the New Hollywood period like I do) were a result of an aging, out-of-touch entertainment monopoly making desperate, reactionary moves to save itself. The old system didn't work, the people in charge had no idea how to fix it, so they went crazy taking risks on young directors. FFC, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman, de Palma, Lucas - all the really top-drawer American filmmakers, honestly - were a result of this period of blind desperation.
There would be no Godfather without Hollywood. No Apocalypse Now. (also no Taxi Driver, no Star Wars, no Indiana Jones, no MASH or Nashville) In the absence of Hollywood, you get movies like Youth Without Youth and Tetro - two wonderful oddities, but you'd be hard pressed to make the case for them against Coppola's early masterpieces.
The beautiful and horrible thing about Hollywood is that it's a system designed to throw huge stacks of cash at storytelling problems. It's fucking absurd, because money has never been capable of solving those kinds of problems - practice and gut instinct are what create good stories. But when strong storytellers are placed in an environment which supplies nearly unlimited resources, totally amazing things happen. Yes, we can all point to Heaven's Gate, New York New York, and Coppola's own One From the Heart, but flops like those are the inevitable flip side of the system I've just described: talented people can abuse unlimited resources just like anybody else.
I guess what I'm saying is: I'd be seriously depressed if Hollywood were to vanish. Yeah, it produces a lot of shit, but its high water marks have never really been replicated by any other mode of production.