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.

This is one of those rare movies where the cinematography (by the incomparable Vittorio Storaro) and the music (by the equally incomparable Tom Waits, probably his most beautiful bunch of songs and instrumentals ever recorded) warranted (and for the latter received) some Oscar nominations, while the script warranted a golden raspberry. Coppola decided to take a risk and experiment even further after Apocalypse Now- to go to something 'light' like musicals he directed in college after going through such a dark experience like A.N.- and in the process made something that, had it paradoxically been a silent film with most of the accompanying music, would've been a full-blown masterpiece. To say it's gorgeous to look at isn't suffice; anyone who has any interest in the abstract qualities that film can offer, the sublime levels of a "movie" in all its plastic qualities of lavish and stylized production design, ideas put into the construction of a world of fantasy with music, and bright primary colors and compositions that look like they're out of a dream, would have to make it a must-see.If it's necessarily a good movie is another matter. The problem is, as mentioned, when the characters have to read the lines, which have only so much development as a stunted fetus. Despite all the efforts put in by the unconventional leading players Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr, plus Raul Julia, Natassia Kinski, and Harry Dean Stanton in some clever and juicy supporting roles, and even a couple of moments of real, genuine heart and heartbreak (the latter being of note when Forrest tries to sing "You are my sunshine"), t's just too thin a story to nearly justify all the effort put into it. It makes it almost a frustrating experience to see it all unfold, as the little moments that the characters do connect are overshadowed by the moments of surrealism that Coppola can't pull off. Unlike Apocalypse Now where Coppola managed to equate the complex nature of the characters with he tremendous vision, here he can only do the latter.That being said, I wish it could've done a better at the box-office, if only had it been released as an art-house film, or (dare I say it) hadn't been so overblown with the finances in it, as it was the film that first put Coppola into chapter 11. However, anytime I want to hear the saddest songs of love recorded in the 80s I can always put on the soundtrack. And it provides more than a few moments of cinematography that will remain unparalleled in the years to come even as digital film grows stronger and film grows more obsolete. Bottom line, only Coppola could roll the dice on this one and almost make it a bona-fide classic.

Since it opened on Valentine's day, 1982, One From the Heart was among my top 10 flicks. Indeed, I kept an old Betamax alive for years simply so I could view my tape copy. For a decade, I've eagerly anticipated a definitive re-mastered DVD release.I'm still waiting. As other reviewers have noted, the DVD contains only a directors cut -- without even the option to view the original release -- that utterly undermines everything exciting and magical about the movie. Ten years of waiting turned into ten frustrating minutes of watching before I ejected and junked the disc.The 1982 release of One From the Heart was universally considered a disaster because, supposedly, its theatrical run closed after only a week. Had Coppola instead circulated the directors cut version on the 2004 DVD, it would have shuttered in a day.If you've got a One From the Heart "jones," buy the Tom Waits/Crystal Gayle soundtrack. But, at least until Coppola returns to the original version, stay clear of the DVD.

My main problem with this film is that I found neither of the main characters to be remotely sympathetic. Pathetic, yes; sympathetic, not at all. Both are liars and cheats and seemingly have no real pride in themselves or what they want. In short, I was anxious for the film to be over pretty much right from the beginning. The fact that this disastrous, dysfunctional couple gets back together at the end is both predictable and infuriating. Garr's character, for all her insistence that "this is the end", finally breaks down to the cliché "love conquers all" BS that this movie attempts to foist on the viewer. Just awful. Visually, there are some interesting techniques used, not to mention some genuinely beautiful shots, but that wasn't enough to overcome my disappointment. However, the only truly redeeming aspect of this flick is Waits' soundtrack. It's the only thing that got me to sit through the entire thing. After all, T.W. can do no wrong.