Pennies From Heaven

I've always thought of these two films as companion pieces. They were made within five years of each other and both explored the brutal realities of Depression-era life, contrasted with the mechanisms people used to escape their existence (movies and popular music). Both films end on bittersweet notes---Pennies From Heaven is arguably even less forgiving of its characters and brings them down even more brutally in the end. Also both films were products of the '80s, an era that echoed the economic injustices of the '30s in the harsh divisions that arose between the have's and the have-nots.