One From The Heart: Reprise (15) |Home Ents Review

March 2, 2024March 2, 2024 Colin Dibben

Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, US, 1982, 93 mins

Cast: Frederic Forrest, Teri Garr, Raul Julia, Nastassja Kinski, Lainie Kazan, Harry Dean Stanton

Review by Colin Dibben

Blending cinematic and theatrical techniques to wonderful effect, this blue-collar musical wears its excesses with lightness and style – and the 4K restoration really does look superb. Coppola has done some minor rejigging to warrant the amended title, but it is the look and feelgood feel of the movie that will get to you.

Set in a deliriously set-bound version of Las Vegas, One From The Heart tells the story of Hank (Forrest} and Frannie (Garr), who argue while celebrating their fifth anniversary. Heading in separate ways, they both meet and spend the night with strangers: Hank with Leila (Kinski) a runaway circus performer, and Frannie with Ray (Raul Julia), a handsome waiter who moonlights as a cocktail pianist and singer.

Boy loses girl, boy finds girls again, then loses her again … it is a classic movie story. What Coppola did with the bare bones is still extraordinary, and not just because of the music and dance numbers: almost every shot is a dynamic palimpsest that highlights the different but similar narrative parabola of Hank and Frannie.

One From The Heart was the first film to be filmed entirely on the lot of Coppola’s own Zoetrope Studio in Hollywood, at the time the only such production company owned and operated by an active filmmaker. It was way ahead of its time in terms of digital innovation and this still shows: Coppola and his team are in total control of the stylistics they deploy; the melding of state-of-the-art theatrical and cinematic techniques is eye-popping.

The music by Tom Waits, featuring duets between himself and Crystal Gayle, is another strong charm in the film; and there is also dance choreography from Gene Kelly.

There is an odd trigger warning at the beginning. My audience struggled to see “outdated behaviours” that weren’t flagged as such by characters in the movie; and noted that the trigger warning didn’t cover the couple of times that the camera distinctly leers at Garr’s nude body.

The new Reprise cut is presented along with the 1982 theatrical cut, and a bumper package of brand-new and archive extras for the physical product home entertainment releases. The Reprise cut includes never-before-seen footage, brand-new titles taken directly from the original camera negative and over 19 minutes of footage replaced with new source scans. For the restoration, supervised and approved by Francis Ford Coppola, 4K scans were lifted from the original camera negative and 13 minutes of original camera negative added.