Cinema
Penny dreadful
Peter Ackroyd
Those who expect a recognisable version of the television series will, I think, be disappointed. Although Dennis Potter's script is in places as sharp as the original, and although it uses the same device — of song introduced into a realistic setting Pennies From Heaven has in crossing the Atlantic suffered a sea-change. It may be rich, it has the resources of MGM behind it, and it may be strange — at least for the American critics who prefer their sentimen- tality straight, not on the rocks. But there are no pearls where the eyes were, and the meat has been picked clean from the bones.
The setting has been changed to Chicago in the mid-Thirties, but the story is much the same. A little man, a sheet music salesman called Arthur Parker, has big dreams; he is both liar and romantic hero, a man without morals but with a marvellous sense of fantasy. He leaves his girlfriend in the lurch, and is then arrested for a murder he did not commit. It is a sentimental plot, and a somewhat sentimental theme is elicited from it: a contrast is drawn throughout between the poverty of the Depression and the heart-breaking aspira- tions of the period's popular songs. 'Pen- nies from Heaven' are the only pennies these people are likely to see.
But here the resemblance to the original series ends; where the television play was skilfully plotted and dexterously handled, the film shows a manifest inability to con- trol its material or to arrange it in a convincing manner. The musical 'numbers' are extravagant and intrusive, while the realistic scenes are merely bathetic. And this is principally a failure of tone, a failure to reconcile American methods with a British sensibility.
The director and producer, Herbert Ross, has attempted to create a MGM musical, firmly based upon conventional models but striated with an ironic and thoroughly contemporary self-conscious- ness. But, in the end, he gets the worst of both worlds: the song-and-dance routines are glittering and impersonal, quite over- whelming the plot from which they spring, and where in the original the realistic setting was closely rendered, here it is continually at the mercy of spectacle and whimsicality. As a result, it becomes even more mawkish and awkward than it need be.
There are some good moments, neverthe- less. Steve Martin, who plays the salesman, may not have the energetic vitality of Bob Hoskins who originally filled the part, but he is rather better looking and he comes to the film with an already established comic persona which stands him in good stead when the action threatens to die of inani- tion. Bernadette Peters, playing his unfor- tunate girlfriend, is very good: at first ill at ease, bashful, trusting, she turns into a thousand-watt `tramp' who gives as good as she gets. And she gets a lot.
In addition Dennis Potter's script is literate and often very funny — it is the film's saving grace. And of course the songs cannot fail: 'Did you ever see a dream walk- ing? Well I did'. These Thirties lyrics retain their charm, since they combine old- fashioned sentiment with nostalgia for a time when such sentiment seemed possible.
But, in the end, Pennies from Heaven is a curiously flat and lifeless film, never reaching the height which it aspires to. Herbert Ross has succumbed to the tempta- tion to be self-conscious about the innova- tive form of the narrative: he has stepped back from it and played with the idea of fantasy, rather than becoming involved with it and lending it imaginative life. He is `artistic' in the most conventional sense, with balletic dance sequences and a turgid attempt to copy the lineaments of Edward Hopper's paintings. But since he has not mastered his material, or understood it ex- cept in the most superficial and `camp' manner, he reverts to old-fashioned cinematic techniques. Towards the end of the film, he even introduces a sequence from a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers vehicle. This is his most serious mistake, since he has given the audience a reminder of what a real musical can accomplish in terms of elegance and inspiration.
Without either quality here, we are left with a plot so mawkish that it defies belief — and this mawkishness is not alleviated by the ironic use of tricksy sets and lush photography. 'Real life', someone says, 'is a bunch of dog biscuits.' It's all right if you're a dog,' comes the reply. Pennies from Heaven is a bunch of chocolate drops with a glossy surface — all right if you are infantile, but not otherwise.
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