At the peak of the DVD/VHS era, studios would often release worse, extended, “unrated*” cuts of films with more boobs and cursing to trick a few customers into purchasing the film a second time. That’s what Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather; Megalopolis) has done with One from the Heart: Reprise. Considering the film once sent him into millions of dollars of debt and bankrupted his brand-new studio, who can blame him?

I can. I can blame him.

*These “unrated” cuts were not X or NC-17 or too scandalous to receive a rating as the name implied, but were simply not submitted to the MPAA rating board at all. So, while these films with no rating were technically “unrated,” the degree to which their content can actually burnish that as a badge of honor is various and always dubious.

The problem with Reprise is that it stinks, and since Coppola is presenting this as the definitive cut, and the only one in UHD, I started with that instead of the theatrical cut for my inaugural watch of One from the Heart. Starting with the new cut of a film I’ve never seen is an experiment I often run, which worked out great in the case of Blackhat last year. But here, it ruined my week to throw on the theatrical cut and realize how obviously more coherent it was. It was a bewildering experience, too, because when I watched it, I thought I loved Reprise. Its images and emotions are so strong, that even at the film’s stupidest, I was in love with it. Then I watched the clips play in a sensical order and realized I’d been in love with a lie, and this was the real film. Maybe I could love it, too; it’s certainly also my type and shares all the same general qualities. It’s more real and good. But that initial lie was still there, creating a gulf between me and the work.

In short, I’d been catfished by Francis Ford Coppola.

And just like when it happened to me on Tinder, even if the experience is great, the taste it leaves is still a little bitter. Here, it’s bitter because only the reprise is presented in UHD. The second Blu-ray disc the theatrical cut comes on is printed from the new restoration, thank god, so there’s no hair on screen or anything (more on that later), but the difference in the colors is night and day. Inspired by the technicolor musicals of his youth (in form but not all-ages appeal), Coppola bathes the sets and actors with expressionistic blocks of color, illustrative overlays, and truly magical feats of design trickery. How the film looks is its main draw. It’s awe-inspiring to the degree I can’t believe almost ALL of America refused to see it on a big screen in 1981. The spectacle alone would be worth the ticket. But is it worth 35 bucks? It’s harder to say yes when the good cut isn’t allowed to utilize that color to the fullest.

This is a consistent problem with non-boutique releases of physical media these days, the “optimization” of disc space, where disc space means “how many discs we’ll make space for in the silly box for silly people who should be glad we’re letting them buy our stupid movies.” No one is more guilty of this than A24, who can’t believe we’d have the audacity to want a Blu-ray disk with the 4K disc and its $35 cardboard sleeve, but releases like this are the second most obvious. Even Arrow did it to Blackhat, and Criterion did it with the 2K inclusion of Texasville with the 4K of The Last Picture Show. If a cut of a film is worthy of exhibition, it’s worthy of being fully supported in the physical edition. If it’s a 4K combo pack, every cut and film should be in 4K and Blu-ray. Charge $5 more if you must (you will anyway).

It’s not a total loss, as the Digital Noise Reduction (DNR) on the 4K disc is more glaring. It’s worse than I’d like on both copies (but not as bad as the True Lies (1994) 4K), but UHD brings it out the most. So while the theatrical cut suffers the sin a little less, the Reprise and its DNR speak to the revisionist wish at the heart of the release.

One from the Heart was the first film of a new era of American Zoetrope, Coppola’s production company, which had just purchased and merged with the American General Studios, which he’d passed every day on the way to junior high. It was a direct response to the lack of control that he’d experienced on his famous jungle disaster, Apocalypse Now (1979), with a new focus on improvisation, controlled sets, and the earliest innovations in pre-visualization and digital editing. It was a dream of returning to the old studio system, combined with a new age of “electronic cinema,” and he spent lavishly on it, so when investors backed out, Coppola put his home and studio on the line. He says this about it on the 2K disc in The Making of One from the Heart:

“A lot of people who see me moving out into interesting, unknown areas, uh … they see the way I manipulate finances and they say ‘Well, the guy’s reckless.’

My feeling, of course, is I’m the only one in the film industry who’s not reckless. Cause if you don’t bet, you don’t have a chance to win, and it seems to me so silly in life NOT to pursue the highest possible thing you can imagine. The biggest possible thing you can imagine. The best possible thing you can imagine. Even if you run the risk of losing it all because if you don’t pursue it, you’ve lost it anyway.

So, you can’t lose.”

But he did lose and lose big. To control risk, he overleveraged it, and it destroyed his career for decades and sank American Zoetrope. Watching the many, many hours of behind-the-scenes footage and extras in this release, including the incredibly compelling short documentary The Dream Studio (2004), which starts with Coppola arguing with the press after a disastrous public screening of the film, Coppola’s penchant for showmanship is laid bare. He is a self-mythologizer, even when working on set, and everything he promises sounds perfect and likely. Truly, when it comes to exploring a cinema of thought that tries to free live-action from the shackles of the proscenium — it’s a masterpiece of evolution. But that’s not what he seeks credit for, even if stylistically the film (and especially Reprise) sounds like the realm he’s working in with Megalopolis (2024). Instead, he seeks credit in these extras for getting the digital revolution right, innovating pre-visualization, compositing, and improv on a large scale, and he’s right more than he’d probably like to admit. I LOVE One from the Heart, and I think it qualifies for the lowest rung on the “masterpiece” ladder, much in the same way that Endgame (2019) does, because what Coppola ultimately innovated here was the mixed flavors of indecision and planning that plague Hollywood filmmaking today. The Marvel Method, but prettier to look at.

Taking the production away from all locations and on to backlots to “remove risk,” attempting to manufacture movie stars, letting the schedule run over to re-work already pre-vized and written scenes, showing clips to the public that don’t make the final cut, filming halves of the movie over and over again because you’re editing as you go and changing your mind as you go because you’re afraid of getting it wrong, this kind of “risk management” is the source of Hollywood’s modern risk. It felt like watching Joe Russo (Cherry; The Gray Man) film the reunion of Spider-Man and Iron Man three different ways in Avengers: Endgame, all on a set they replaced in post.

While stylistically he sought cinematic freedom, structurally he sought to wield the power of an executive instead of a director, and so gained the executive’s kryptonite. Throughout the box, he refuses to take any credit for its failure. During that famous press conference, when told that 13/15 people disliked the film, he asked a reporter who these people even were. In an earlier press conference, he told a reporter how to do their job. One of the new features, showcasing the new restoration opposite the DVD-era print, seems to serve the purpose of humiliating whichever idiot left a hair on the film in 2004.  But he’s a showman, and the show goes on later this year with Megalopolis.

He’s done it again, he sold shares of his vineyard to fund a monstrously over-budget film that seeks to innovate the cinematic art and followed it with a press conference. He’s been rolling out new cuts of The Godfather Part III (1990) and One from the Heart, seeking to change the narrative on his biggest failures and cap it all off with a win that changes everything. Yet, the failures of American Zoetrope and One from the Heart do still plague him, as they do us. Watching him work on that set, sitting in his video village trailer and directing Frederic Forrest (Apocalypse Now; The Conversation) over a landline, make an offer on Pinewood Studios before he’d turned a profit on the lot he’d already bought, and fail to show up to the meeting where they asked staff to take a 50% pay cut, I cannot help but think he was right when he said that American Zoetrope and One from the Heart were about cementing cinema as part of our American heritage. Maybe it’s a heritage of failure, of overpromising, underdelivering, and blaming those we seek to serve when the ideal doesn’t come about. Or maybe it’s a heritage of risking everything until you get it right. Who’s to say? Either way, the 4K UHD release of One from the Heart: Reprise cements for me the failure of that film as one of the most important moments in cinematic history. So far.

One from the Heart: Reprise Special Features:

4K UHD DISC

• Francis Ford Coppola Feature Commentary
• *NEW* The Look of One from the Heart
• *NEW* The Cast of One from the Heart
• *NEW* The Choreography of One from the Heart
• *NEW* Reinventing the Musical: Baz Luhrmann One from the Heart
• *NEW* One from the Heart: Reprise, Restoration Comparison
• *NEW* 2024 Trailer

BLU-RAY DISC (1982 CUT)

• The Making of One from the Heart
• The Dream Studio
• The Electronic Cinema
• Tom Waits and the Music from One from the Heart
• Deleted Scenes
• Videotaped Rehearsals
• Francis Ford Coppola Speaks to the Exhibitors
• Press Conference at the Studio
• This One’s from the Heart Music Video
• Stop-Motion Demo
• The Tom Waits Score: Alternate Tracks
• 2003 Theatrical Trailer
• 1982 Theatrical Trailer

Available on digital April 9^th, 2024.
Available on 4K UHD Blu-ray May 7^th, 2024.

For more information, head to the official StudioCanal UK One from the Heart: Reprise webpage.

Categories: Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews, streaming

Tags: 4K UHD, drama, Francis Ford Coppola, Frederic Forrest, Harry Dean Stanton, home release, home video, Lainie Kazan, Lionsgate, musical, Nastassja Kinski, One from the Heart, One from the Heart: Reprise, Raúl Julia, restoration, romance, STUDIOCANAL, Teri Garr, Zoetrope Corporation