FemaleFirst.co.uk: DVD: Pennies From Heaven [DVD] [1978]

Pennies From Heaven [DVD] [1978]
enlarge	Actors: Bob Hoskins, Cheryl Campbell, Gemma Craven, Kenneth Colley, Jenny Logan Studio: 2 Entertain Video Category: DVD List Price: ~~£29.99~~ Buy New: £12.98 as of 22/11/2009 21:44 GMT details You Save: £17.01 (57%) New (16) Used (3) from £12.98 Seller: Amazon.co.uk Rating: 12 reviews Sales Rank: 2306 Format: PAL Languages: English (Subtitles For The Hearing Impaired), English (Original Language) Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over Region: 2 Discs: 3 Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Number Of Discs: 3 Running Time: 480 Minutes Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3 Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 EAN: 5014503121426 ASIN: B0001P1B8E Theatrical Release Date: March 7, 1978 Release Date: May 31, 2004 Shipping: Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours


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Editorial Reviews: Amazon.co.uk Review Dennis Potter's astonishing six-part miniseries IPennies from Heaven/I remains one of the edgiest, most audacious things ever conceived for television. The story tells of one Arthur Parker (Bob Hoskins), a sheet-music salesman in 1930s England. Beaten down by economic hard times and the sexual indifference of his proper wife (Gemma Craven), Arthur cannot understand why his life can't be like the beautiful songs he loves. On a sales trip through the Forest of Dean, he meets a virginal rural woman (Cheryl Campbell) he suspects may be his ideal. Ruination follows. Punctuating virtually every scene is a vintage pop song--lip-synched and sometimes danced out by the characters. This startling innovation makes the contrast between Arthur's brutish life and his bourgeois dreams even more dramatic. p Potter's dark vision digs into British stoicism, sexual repression, the class system and even the coming of fascism in Europe. But it is especially poignant on the subject of the divide between art and reality. Piers Haggard directs the long piece with deft transitions between songs and story. (It was shot partly on multi-camera video, partly on film.) The cast is fine, especially the extraordinary Cheryl Campbell, who imbues her character with keen intelligence and no small measure of perversity. Bob Hoskins triumphs in his star-making part, bringing a demonic energy to his small-time Cockney, nearly bursting his button-down vests with frustration and appetite. IPennies from Heaven/I was remade in 1981 for the big screen (with Steve Martin), in an interesting, Potter-scripted adaptation; it's one of the reasons the original has been unavailable on home video for so long. I--Robert Horton/I

Customer Reviews: Showing reviews 1-5 of 12 1 2 3 Next » Simply Unmissable Potter June 21, 2004 Jl Adcock (Ashtead UK) 26 out of 26 found this review helpful Releasing this Dennis Potter masterpiece on DVD is probably the smartest thing the BBC will do this year. In an age of throwaway programmes, endless reality shows and a production culture that is risk averse and aimed at the lowest common denominator, here's a chance to see how it used to be. Yes folks, telly generally was better all those years ago - and Pennies From Heaven sums up the era well. The passage of time proves that quality writing, acting and production never go out of style. What strikes me most about Pennies From Heaven now is how long it is - a 6 part serial that allowed the characters to develop, the story to unfold. Now, sadly, it would probably get the 2 hour treatment with the news bunged in the middle.pPrevious reviewers have really said it all - and this DVD allows us to enjoy again and again what happens when fine writing, acting and production all magically come together. Outstanding central performances from the cast, with wonderful support from the likes of Freddie Jones and Hywel Bennett - and even a very youthful Nigel Havers! DVD extras are kept to a minimum - but this 3 disc set allows the beauty and craft of the story to come through strongly, proving the point that less can be more. still a benchmark January 11, 2005 20 out of 20 found this review helpful Bowled over by this when it was first shown on PBS, back in the late seventies I think, I've been impatient for a revisit ever since, and snapped it up the minute it appeared on DVD. Does it live up to my own pre-billing, after more than 20 years? In summary, yes. In fact it far exceeds it, even though it isn't what I recall.brFirst of all my memory contains a black-and-white version and this one is in colour, so whether our TV at that time was BW or PBS showed it that way, I'm not sure. Secondly it stands so far apart from anything I've watched on TV in the two decades since I first saw it that it shocks like an ice-shower. "An outstanding example of how television can be a distinctive art form," says the snippet from John O'Connor of the New York Times on the box. Agreed whole heartedly, but who has followed that example? "Pennies from Heaven" throws a harsh light on the banalities we accept as entertainment from today's TV. It is tough, uncompromising and scathingly honest about us and the world we live in, in ways that Hollywood and the major TV producers cannot begin to imitate. Even some of the acclaimed BBC imports of recent times, Zhivago, Lost Prince, pale alongside it and as disturbing a film as American Beauty (which I like) feels manipulative and lacking in conviction by comparison.brThe performance of Hoskins is as outstanding as I had recalled. But I had forgotten how good the rest of the cast is: Gemma Craven strangely evoking the corseted girlfriend in Billy Liar; Cheryl Campbell a dazzling concoction of primness, sensuality and inner steel; Kenneth Colley the epitome of all the world's discards - subtly painted as a Hoskins minus the panache and after a few wrong turns in the road. Even Hywel Bennett (whatever happened to him?) produces a fine ten-second-smoothie/pimp. Potter's grit, in-your-face talent and sheer imagination shines through more than seven hours of tour de force. Of course there is unevenness: the first episode takes a while to catch its rhythm and, to me, Hoskins' soul-baring speech to his salesmen cronies at the breakfast table, meant to be one of the keystones of the piece, doesn't quite come off. But these are minor quibbles set against the stratospheric standard of the series as a whole.brI hesitated to enter this opinion because the review by Gavin Wilson just about says it all. But in a TV world of artistic forgery, bluster, throw-away drama and just plain dross, a work like this deserves all the promotion it can get. No, it is not "entertainment" in the currently-accepted sense of the word. It demands too much of you. Potter seems to recognize that by inserting a kind of "faux happy ending" as if to mock us and our expectations of popular TV. But if you care about drama, acting, and the state of the human spirit, you need to see Pennies from Heaven. brHowever many stars Amazon lets you attach to a review, this work warrants them all. One of Potter's masterpieces a TV-great.... February 7, 2005 Jason Parkes (Worcester, UK) 30 out of 34 found this review helpful 'I wanted to write about the way popular culture is an inheritor of something else. You know the cheap songs so-called actually have something of the Psalms of David about them. They do say the world is other than it is. They do illuminate..,' Dennis Potter, 1994. p'Pennies from Heaven' is one of Potter's key-works (see also The Singing Detective, Blue Remembered Hills, Brimstone Treacle, Double Dare, the neglected Black Eyes, the Nigel Barton plays...)- probably his signature-work, most notable for the way it uses music of the 1930s, lapsing into lip-synching to popular-songs, expressing another world and saying what the characters could not. The six-episodes, originally screened in 1978 (though not declared a classic until after the success of The Singing Detective), tell the story of a travelling sheet-music salesman Arthur Parker (Bob Hoskins) who is trapped in a marriage with Joan (the gorgeous Gemma Craven), until he crosses paths with a mysterious-down--out (Kenneth Colley) a schoolteacher from the Forest of Dean Eileen Everson(Cheryl Campbell). pThe story shifts between the Forest of Dean, to the Parker's suburbia, to the grimier side of London as Arthur Eileen are put through traumas. Eileen is perhaps the Forest of Dean equivalent of the femme-fatale, Arthur's way to her leaves of trail of coincidences that lead toward the scaffold. pOf course, the dialogue is brilliant here- 'Pennies from Heaven' remains a very funny-series, I found myself laughing at the dialogue (e.g. "You've got your organs and all, Arthur", "Nah- just dippin' me wick", "I painted lipstick on the points of my bosoms", "Remember to pull them back up" etc). The effect of the 1930s songs, a conceit that certainly works for the whole-series, is also comic, but frequently revealing and sometimes tragic. It shows that an alternate-approch, other than the obvious common to TV can be made- pop-songs can express what people can't put into words (as PIL said, "Words cannot express"). 'Pennies from Heaven' strikes me as a perfect series in every detail...pThe cast is brilliant- Hoskins, Craven Campbell brilliant as the principles with great support from Colley, Nigel Havers, Hywel Bennett, Ronald Frazer, Freddie Jones, Peter Bowles, Dave King many other faces common to British television. p'Pennies from Heaven', along with 'The Singing Detective' (1986) remains one of Potter's two complete-masterpieces and more than stands up today. Like 'Twin Peaks' it's a reminder of how potent and unconventional the medium of television can be (it's all list-shows, reality-shows, soap-operas, serial-killer-cliches and repeat, repeat, repeats these days...). Its incfluence is more than apparent in such films as 'Blue Velvet', 'Everyone Says I Love You', 'Mulholland Drive', 'Moulin Rouge'; avoid the dubious Hollywood-movie of this starring Steve Martin however... Pennies from heaven May 27, 2004 S. J. Williams (Leeds, West Yorkshire United Kingdom) 14 out of 16 found this review helpful Inevitably it is with some caution that one sees again tv programmes which in the memory stand out as remarkable. Dennis Potter produced so much work in the 60s, 70s and 80s which I remember as being quite astonishing in both content AND in the audacity of method (Blue Remembered Hills with adults playing children!)that one wonders if it will seem mannered and rather passe. Well Pennies is as wonderful as it seemed, perhaps MORE so when viewed from a time when tv drama is so predictable, dull and quite simply not grown up. The music is intrinsically charming, but it takes Potter's genius to recognise the importance of popular song to us all and embed it in a drama which explores the fantasy lives, aspirations and repressions of his characters. Though it is a period piece (1970s drama, 1930s songs) it is, like all the very best drama, about people as they are, no matter what the time, and in this it is fresh minted. Any one with happy memories of the original broadcasts will not be disappointed. Anyone too young to see them will be stunned by the seriousness (though not po-faced) of the enterprise. Where did tv like this disappear to? Potter's most heretical work June 17, 2004 Gavin Wilson 9 out of 11 found this review helpful From his early days, Dennis Potter was obsessed by the nature of the religious experience, particularly the Christian version. The black and white 'Son of Man' play for the BBC examined the earthly life of Jesus. 'Brimstone and Treacle' examined the possibilities when the Devil visits one home.p'Pennies from Heaven' took elements from the gospel story and mixed it with a Bonnie and Clyde story of a man and his lover on the run. Thus Arthur Parker tries to evangelise the world with his musical message -- he gets very few takers, at least initially. In the end, he is tried by a Pilate-like figure and executed for a crime he didn't commit. Having been hanged, he then appears to the Mary Magdalene figure (Cheryl Campbell playing a prostitute). The analogy falls down with the Accordion Man, a key character in the play who has no direct biblical equivalent -- although he may be a Judas Iscariot figure who, burdened with guilt, commits suicide. But the most heretical aspect of this analogy is that Arthur Parker as a Christ figure is such a duplicitous liar and cheat.pThe casting in this magnificent production is excellent. The part seemed tailor-made for Bob Hoskins, and it's hard to imagine Steve Martin playing this role in the American film version. The two leading ladies are outstanding: Cheryl Campbell a superb actress whose dancing improved immensely, and Gemma Craven a great dancer whose acting ability surprised many critics at the time.pI don't doubt that this is one of the most important musicals yet made, and along with 'The Singing Detective', it's a fitting tribute to the genius of Dennis Potter. Just before the hanging in the final episode, there's a hint that pennies from heaven are nothing more than the arc of urine created by schoolboys competing to see who can aim highest. That at the very last gasp Potter tries to trivialise the entire concept with this joke is a mark of his mastery of the dramatic form. Showing reviews 1-5 of 12 1 2 3 Next »

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