Pennies From Heaven starring Steve Martin
Director: Herbert Ross


Essential Actor / Actresses Here

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Steve Martin plays Arthur, a '30s-era traveling sheet-music salesman whose marriage is bleak and who embarks on a fateful affair with a teacher (an amazing Bernadette Peters). Arthur's dreary world is juxtaposed with Busby Berkeley-styled musical production numbers that showcase Martin's and Peters's versatility. Arthur's world is desperate, sad, and only the more so when directly compared to the musical numbers. But it does work and it is affecting.
This dark, yet simultaneously ebullient film written by Dennis Potter is capable of presenting such polar-opposite visuals and emotion. Until this film, Martin was best known for his comedic albums, and for 1979's The Jerk. In other words, Pennies' disappointing box office can be accredited to audiences' inability to accept a dark Martin in the early 1980s. If Martin's dancing ability comes as a surprise, an even greater revelation is Christopher Walken in a sexy stripping tap-dancing number. Bob Hoskins played Arthur in the 1978 British miniseries of the same name.
Synopsis
Herbert Ross's lavish adaptation of the BBC series of the same name; it's a contemplative, avant-garde musical, in which drab everyday surroundings magically become movie sets, and everyday speech suddenly turns into song. Meet Arthur: he sells sheet music -- and the dreams promised in their lyrics -- in 1930's Chicago. He's not always the most pleasant of fellows: he cheats on his wife, lies to his lovers and seduces an innocent schoolteacher. But his spirit still has a sweetness and innocence... the sweetness of the tin-pan alley tunes he hawks and the innocence of the fantasy-filled Hollywood musicals he sees. He certainly couldn't be a murderer... could he?

Video Description
A warm and joltingly bizarre musical fantasy about a drifter who becomes friends with a pitiful orphan girl and her grandfather. Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters give stunning performances. Academy1 1ward Nominations: 3, including Best (Adapted) Screenplay.

 

 

 

 

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