Woody Allen after his 1970s heyday reminds me of something the manager of Spinal Tap said: "They aren't losing popularity. Their appeal is just more selective." Even armed with a good idea and a luminous lead performance by his then-lover, Mia Farrow, Allen's 1985 film "The Purple Rose Of Cairo" is a comic fantasy that is neither especially funny nor that trippy. Instead, it presents another of his Bergmanesque ruminations on the misery and finality of life, appealing to his ever-more-selective audience and distancing everyone else.
Farrow stars as Cecilia, already with three strikes against her. It's the Depression, she's married to an abusive lout, and she lives in New Jersey. Her only refuge is the local Jewel movie house, where she escapes into the "madcap Manhattan weekend" that is "The Purple Rose Of Cairo". While watching the film for a fifth straight time, Cecelia is surprised when one of the characters, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), jumps off the screen and declares his love for her.
It's a great concept, and its execution is the film's best sequence, daffy and thrilling. Mia winningly playing a nebbish by channeling her then-partner's on screen personality (it's Woody by proxy in this movie, as the man himself stays offscreen), accompanied by delightful period-sounding music by Dick Hyman.
Cecelia and Tom share observations of life in their respective worlds in a decrepit amusement park he makes into his hiding place. He tells her he has been watching her for days, peaking at her when professing his love to another on-screen character. She gives him popcorn, which he reacts to like ambrosia from heaven.
"Been watching people eat it for all those performances," he says. "When they rattle those bags, though, that's annoying." The comedy never moves beyond that, except when we return to the Jewel to see the other film actors venting over Tom's desertion. Cecelia and Tom's relationship never evolves, either, as Cecelia proves surprisingly unwilling to accept this dream come true.
That's what throws me most about "The Purple Rose Of Cairo". When Farrow's eyes look up at you so puppy-like you feel her need for deliverance, yet everything about the film, including the character, is too hardhearted to led the fantasy breathe for a moment.
Daniels doesn't have a lot to do as Tom, except sit in the old amusement park and innocently chat up some prostitutes. Daniels does double duty as the real-life actor who portrayed Tom, Gil Shepherd, and is not as effective, so clipped and smug in his delivery you know what's going to happen with him from the moment he first appears.
SPOILER ALERT - I side with those people who call the ending too downbeat for the rest of the film. It's even more downbeat when one considers Cecelia's inexplicable culpability in the conclusion of the Tom story. Some see her last moments on screen as Woody's testimony to the wonder of cinema; I see an addict taking her final, fatal hit - SPOILER ALERT ENDS.
The film has integrity and offers some moments, magic and otherwise, along the way. But for a movie about cinema's spell on people, it proves a strangely inert experience.
Farrow stars as Cecilia, already with three strikes against her. It's the Depression, she's married to an abusive lout, and she lives in New Jersey. Her only refuge is the local Jewel movie house, where she escapes into the "madcap Manhattan weekend" that is "The Purple Rose Of Cairo". While watching the film for a fifth straight time, Cecelia is surprised when one of the characters, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), jumps off the screen and declares his love for her.
It's a great concept, and its execution is the film's best sequence, daffy and thrilling. Mia winningly playing a nebbish by channeling her then-partner's on screen personality (it's Woody by proxy in this movie, as the man himself stays offscreen), accompanied by delightful period-sounding music by Dick Hyman.
Cecelia and Tom share observations of life in their respective worlds in a decrepit amusement park he makes into his hiding place. He tells her he has been watching her for days, peaking at her when professing his love to another on-screen character. She gives him popcorn, which he reacts to like ambrosia from heaven.
"Been watching people eat it for all those performances," he says. "When they rattle those bags, though, that's annoying." The comedy never moves beyond that, except when we return to the Jewel to see the other film actors venting over Tom's desertion. Cecelia and Tom's relationship never evolves, either, as Cecelia proves surprisingly unwilling to accept this dream come true.
That's what throws me most about "The Purple Rose Of Cairo". When Farrow's eyes look up at you so puppy-like you feel her need for deliverance, yet everything about the film, including the character, is too hardhearted to led the fantasy breathe for a moment.
Daniels doesn't have a lot to do as Tom, except sit in the old amusement park and innocently chat up some prostitutes. Daniels does double duty as the real-life actor who portrayed Tom, Gil Shepherd, and is not as effective, so clipped and smug in his delivery you know what's going to happen with him from the moment he first appears.
SPOILER ALERT - I side with those people who call the ending too downbeat for the rest of the film. It's even more downbeat when one considers Cecelia's inexplicable culpability in the conclusion of the Tom story. Some see her last moments on screen as Woody's testimony to the wonder of cinema; I see an addict taking her final, fatal hit - SPOILER ALERT ENDS.
The film has integrity and offers some moments, magic and otherwise, along the way. But for a movie about cinema's spell on people, it proves a strangely inert experience.