Francis Ford Coppola's bold musical does not have a great reputation. It was a gigantic bomb grossing only $636,000 against a $26,000,000 budget and sunk Coppola's American Zoetrope production company. Most of the films the director made in the following years were done to pay off debts incurred during One From The Heart's production. Okay, so the film was a monumental failure at the box-office, but is it really that bad a film? Not at all. It's actually pretty underrated. Musicals were not popular at the time (Martin Scorsese had a similar disappointment with his musical New York, New York in 1977) but looking at the film now, through post-modern eyes, the film has much to offer. Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle provide the original soundtrack and Waits was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Soundtrack, one of the only positives to come out of the production at that time. The soundtrack is a big part of the enjoyment but credit must also go to the performances by the cast and Coppola's ambitious if misguided direction. A truly audacious film that is in need of a reappraisal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6aYLIn9zXs
