Actually, it was from the head as much as anything: a movie that arose from Francis Coppola’s shrewd, professional calculation that he could create and control an entire old-fashioned Hollywood romantic drama from his own studio, Zoetrope. The result was a lavish production which was very ambitious, hubristically or perhaps even ruinously so. But at the same time it looks oddly small scale, emotionally parochial and essentially monogamous – certainly a downshift from the colossal sweep of Apocalypse Now or The Godfather.
With its re-release now after more than 40 years, with six minutes added, One From the Heart reveals itself as a minor Coppola, but it is certainly a heartfelt romance-fantasia with charm and often a kind of goofy innocence; at one point the hero climbs a neon structure (that ubiquitous neon glow of 80s Hollywood) and gets electrified with his hair standing up, like a comic-book character.
