Radio Days (PG.)
Directed by Woody Allen. 1987
Starring Seth Green, Julie Kavner, Michael Tucker, Dianne Wiest and Mia Farrow. 87 mins. Released on blu-ray from Arrow Academy or as part of the Woody Allen: Seven Film – 1986-1991.
Woody Allen always seems to be taken aback and shocked to his very core when, after he has made a film about the love life of a stand up comedian, or a film director whose fans prefer his early funny films, viewers then assume that there could be some autobiographical element to his films. Radio Days though, a loose collage of anecdotes and memories from his childhood, and about the life of the performers on the radio shows that his family always listened to, from the late thirties to the end of WWII, smut surely be an exercise in autobiography. Yet, somehow this unadorned look back at his childhood is the one that seems the least real, and the least revealing.
For a start this kid grows up in Queens, near to the sea, rather than Brooklyn. Though the father and mother argue all the time and over everything – which is the better ocean, the Atlantic or Pacific – the home seems more loving than his real one. This is surely the fantasy of his childhood. But if these stories aren't real, or are highly romanticised why aren't they funnier or more interesting?
An unseen Allen narrates the adventures of his kid self (Seth Green), of his parents (Tucker and Kavner), of all the uncles and aunts that live with them including aunt Bea (Wiest) who can never find a man, the stars behind the microphone and the mishaps of Sally White (Farrow), a cigarette girl who dreams of stardom. The first vignette is very funny: two thieves break into an empty house and when one of them decides to answer the ringing phone he finds himself being the lucky contestant chosen at random to take part in a radio show quiz, Name That Tune. It's a great opening, yet nothing that follows work as well. The sequences are mostly fragments, not fully formed. They start up but then mostly drift off or end, some time before they have reached a denouement. So, after going to the rooftop for a tryst with an influential married man, Sally White finds that the door is locked and they are stuck up there. And that's it. We don't find out what happens. Bea is out on a date with a man who is driving her home through some fog, when Orson Welles's notorious version of War Of The Worlds is comes on the radio, and thinking it's a Martian invasion he runs away. And that's it. It's lots of set ups, and almost no punchlines.
This is always described as his Fellini film, specifically his Amarcord, Fellini's childhood reminiscences. Perhaps the real Fellini touch though is having things finish abruptly, never play out properly.
I couldn't really get with it but most viewers seem to love it It does all look perfectly lovely, and there is certainly a warmth to it. It's also full of little cameos: Diane Keaton pops in to sing a song; Jeff Daniels reprises, more or less, the character he played in Purple Rose; most amusingly Kenneth Mars, the Nazi playwright in Mel Brooks' The Producers, gets to play a strict rabbi.
I guess these fake memories, this dream autobiography of a fictional Allen who grew up in the next borough to him, is deliberate in that the film is about the passing of time and the fading of the past and confusion of out memories. Ultimately everything that is precious is subservient to the passing of time. The film doesn't quite get this across, so Allen employs the heavy artillery of September Song to blast home the point.
Its final moments though, - Spoiler, obviously - when Wallace Shawn as the actor who is the voice of the Masked Avenger, delivers his catchphrase “Beware Evildoers, Wherever you are!” from the roof of a building off Time Square after they've just seen in the New Year, are beautifully poignant and touching.
Directed by Woody Allen. 1987
Starring Seth Green, Julie Kavner, Michael Tucker, Dianne Wiest and Mia Farrow. 87 mins. Released on blu-ray from Arrow Academy or as part of the Woody Allen: Seven Film – 1986-1991.
Woody Allen always seems to be taken aback and shocked to his very core when, after he has made a film about the love life of a stand up comedian, or a film director whose fans prefer his early funny films, viewers then assume that there could be some autobiographical element to his films. Radio Days though, a loose collage of anecdotes and memories from his childhood, and about the life of the performers on the radio shows that his family always listened to, from the late thirties to the end of WWII, smut surely be an exercise in autobiography. Yet, somehow this unadorned look back at his childhood is the one that seems the least real, and the least revealing.
For a start this kid grows up in Queens, near to the sea, rather than Brooklyn. Though the father and mother argue all the time and over everything – which is the better ocean, the Atlantic or Pacific – the home seems more loving than his real one. This is surely the fantasy of his childhood. But if these stories aren't real, or are highly romanticised why aren't they funnier or more interesting?
An unseen Allen narrates the adventures of his kid self (Seth Green), of his parents (Tucker and Kavner), of all the uncles and aunts that live with them including aunt Bea (Wiest) who can never find a man, the stars behind the microphone and the mishaps of Sally White (Farrow), a cigarette girl who dreams of stardom. The first vignette is very funny: two thieves break into an empty house and when one of them decides to answer the ringing phone he finds himself being the lucky contestant chosen at random to take part in a radio show quiz, Name That Tune. It's a great opening, yet nothing that follows work as well. The sequences are mostly fragments, not fully formed. They start up but then mostly drift off or end, some time before they have reached a denouement. So, after going to the rooftop for a tryst with an influential married man, Sally White finds that the door is locked and they are stuck up there. And that's it. We don't find out what happens. Bea is out on a date with a man who is driving her home through some fog, when Orson Welles's notorious version of War Of The Worlds is comes on the radio, and thinking it's a Martian invasion he runs away. And that's it. It's lots of set ups, and almost no punchlines.
This is always described as his Fellini film, specifically his Amarcord, Fellini's childhood reminiscences. Perhaps the real Fellini touch though is having things finish abruptly, never play out properly.
I couldn't really get with it but most viewers seem to love it It does all look perfectly lovely, and there is certainly a warmth to it. It's also full of little cameos: Diane Keaton pops in to sing a song; Jeff Daniels reprises, more or less, the character he played in Purple Rose; most amusingly Kenneth Mars, the Nazi playwright in Mel Brooks' The Producers, gets to play a strict rabbi.
I guess these fake memories, this dream autobiography of a fictional Allen who grew up in the next borough to him, is deliberate in that the film is about the passing of time and the fading of the past and confusion of out memories. Ultimately everything that is precious is subservient to the passing of time. The film doesn't quite get this across, so Allen employs the heavy artillery of September Song to blast home the point.
Its final moments though, - Spoiler, obviously - when Wallace Shawn as the actor who is the voice of the Masked Avenger, delivers his catchphrase “Beware Evildoers, Wherever you are!” from the roof of a building off Time Square after they've just seen in the New Year, are beautifully poignant and touching.
