Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1981

The Contenders:

The French Lieutenant’s Woman
On Golden Pond (winner)
Pennies from Heaven
Prince of the City
Ragtime

Happy Endings Only in Songs

Film: Pennies from Heaven
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

When you think of musicals in general, you think of happy and fluffy. At least I do. Sure, there are some that go against that trend: West Side Story, Oklahoma, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but most of them shoot for the happy ending and pure entertainment from start to finish. That’s what I was expecting with Pennies from Heaven. It’s not at all what I got, though. In fact, Pennies from Heaven is tonally very close to a film like The Purple Rose of Cairo.

Arthur Parker (Steve Martin) is a sheet music salesman around Chicago during the Great Depression. Sales aren’t good and worse for him, his wife Joan (Jessica Harper) is frigid and unaffectionate. Arthur would like to own a store that sells records, but Joan will not loan him the money she’s inherited from her father. In fact, she won’t even let him borrow from the bank using that money as collateral. This is Arthur’s reality, but in his head, everything in his world is perfect, just like the lyrics of the songs he sells.