I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #180 - Radio Days (1987, dir. Woody Allen)

In 1987 when Woody Allen made Radio Days, he waxed nostalgic for the days before television, when memories were formed and commemorated at the pace set by weekly radio programs, yet he could scarcely have conceived of the world of social media we inhabit now, where truth is lie and memories are discarded as soon as they are made. His incredibly heartfelt and masterful tribute to a slower time, when families sat together in living rooms and experienced life together as it crackled out of old vacuum tubes, feels like a prehistoric cave drawing compared to today’s reality. With hindsight, Radio Days is one of Woody Allen’s greatest achievements, and the movie that most exposes his sentimental attachment to his own childhood.

Taking place in the early 1940’s as World War II begins to permeate the consciousness of all Americans, our hero, Joe (clearly Woody as a child) narrates the story of his family’s combative but close living situation. An extended family of first generation Jews inhabiting tight quarters in Rockaway, Long Island, they, by physical necessity, experience everything together. No influence is more prevalent or central to their existence than the

constant warm glow of the radio. News of the day binds them emotionally, while talk shows and serials light their imaginations. No aspect though, is more present than the musical hits of the day. Along with the miraculous cast which includes Dianne Wiest, Mia Farrow, Julie Kavner and Michael Tucker (with cameos by everyone from Diane Keaton to Wallace Shawn to Larry David), the most present character in the movie is the delightful and memorable soundtrack. Filled with heart-tugging melodies and hilariously obscure novelty songs, Allen weaves them into the plot of his movie in a unique fashion - they don’t just accent the action, they predict, dictate and drive it forward. The songs propel the plot and color the most memorable scenes with unimaginable emotional impact. And emotional impact is where Woody Allen is heading with this movie. This is not one of his slapstick outings, nor is it a philosophical treatise on Man’s existential search for meaning, nor is it a fantasy. In fact, it stands alone in his canon as a beautifully honest and wistful autobiographical depiction of family and childhood.

Radio Days is blessed with a simultaneously linear and random plot line. Like memory itself, which boils the endless moments of life down to certain indelible images and an overall emotional “flavor,” this movie is episodic, and each episode is deeply imbued with rich details of family life and unforeseen emotional outcomes. Through it all is Joe’s childish narration, reminding us that the events which move history have deep resonance on the family and individual levels. The romantic life of Joe’s perpetually single Aunt Bea (Wiest) feels like another episode of his Mother’s favorite show, Breakfast With Roger And Irene. Allen’s script completes this circle in such an artistically satisfying fashion, weaving the lives of the actors of those shows into Joe’s life. In the end, as Joe melancholically bemoans the loss of radio, and ultimately the loss of youth, innocence and familial connection, we can’t help but share his sadness. In losing the details of our childhoods: the shows, the actors, the classrooms, the holiday dinners, the lives of our parents, we ourselves actually start to disappear, in real time, as we approach our own demise.

In a career defined by such artistic greatness and equally by such personal and public failure, Radio Days stands out in Woody Allen’s filmography as one of his purest artistic expressions. He masterfully creates a series of touching, jewel-like moments from life, which will ring true to anyone with a heart, and then he creates narrative connective tissue with the sounds of the radio and the unbreakable bonds of family. It is his most emotionally satisfying film.

-          Paul Epstein

I'd Love to Turn You On At the Movies #135 - Sleeper (1973, dir. Woody Allen)

Back before Woody Allen got serious in the late 70s, he was an heir to the great slapstick film comedians. Roger Ebert drops Buster Keaton’s name in his review of this film while Allen himself says that he thought of it as a tribute to two of his favorite comedians, Groucho Marx and Bob Hope – and they’re both right. There are slapstick moments in Sleeper that are as funny as anything Keaton put on film and self-deprecating verbal wit on par with Groucho or Hope, all wrapped up in a goofy, freewheeling science fiction story that’s really just an excuse for Allen to riff on his favorite subjects – love, sex, and death – and take potshots at the some of the ridiculousness of the early 1970s.

Allen uses the standard sci-fi approach of a futuristic dystopia to tell the story of Miles Monroe, owner of a Greenwich Village health food store who goes in for a routine surgical procedure in 1973 and wakes up in 2173, unfrozen from his cryogenic sleep by a band of underground rebels who enlist him to help stop the oppressive Leader from enacting the sinister Aries Project. That’s about as much plot as is needed because the rest works itself out in ways you’ve seen before, though it’s Allen’s wit and goofy scenarios taking off from these commonplace plot elements that make this film something special. Some of them are time-bound – jokes about Nixon, Howard Cosell and United Federation of Teachers organizer Albert Shanker – and funnier to audiences of the time, but others – as when he’s forced to impersonate a robot servant, a convenience-oriented society that uses an “Orgasmatron” instead of sex, or when he drops lines like “My brain? That’s my second favorite organ” or “I was beaten up by Quakers” that don’t require any translation from 1973 to today. And some of the film’s moments are downright strange – as when he believes he’s being crowned Miss America or when he and Diane Keaton suddenly drop in a gender-swapped routine from Streetcar Named Desire – and funnier as a result. With training from his standup years in nightclubs, Allen is great with one-liners and I wouldn’t want to spoil any more of them, but this is the first of his films where he shows that he’s equally conversant in film – nodding to silent comedy of course (usually in dialogue-free scenes that feature him playing ragtime clarinet alongside the Preservation Hall Jazz Band or The New Orleans Funeral Ragtime Orchestra), and also to contemporary sci-fi (he enlists Douglas Rain, the voice of 2001’s HAL, to play a sinister computer here as well).

And as a special bonus for Coloradoans, much of the film was shot here in Colorado – within the first few minutes there’s a shot of our famous Botanic Gardens building, several scenes take place in and around The Sculptured House (the “mushroom house” off I-70 just west of the city, often now called “the Sleeper house” due to its inclusion in the film), the Church of the Risen Christ on South Monaco is turned into a McDonald’s, some of the outdoor shots were filmed at the Table Mesa Laboratory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, and so forth. Beyond the laughs of the film and the inevitable budding romance of Allen and Keaton’s characters, it’s fun for those of local privilege to location spot throughout the film. Sleeper stands as the finest film from a delightful era of Allen’s development, when slapstick and a ruthless desire to make people laugh was at the forefront of his mind. With the release of the classic Annie Hall in 1977, he started to take the relationships in his films far more seriously, and with 1978’s great Interiors he paid direct tribute to one of his cinematic heroes, Ingmar Bergman, rather than satirizing him as he’d done only a few years prior in Love and Death. I don’t value this period over his more mature works but there’s a verve here, a willingness to go to any lengths for a laugh that is missed in his later films, whatever other virtues they may have.

-          Patrick Brown

I'd Love to Turn You On At the Movies #67 - Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993, dir. Woody Allen)

Woody Allen has directed, written and acted in so many films that it’s hard to say for sure how many Woody Allen films there actually are. According to IMDB, he’s directed 49 (including two that are yet to be released), written 71, and acted in 44, and all but a very few of them are quality flicks with universally high reviews. So it’s folly to single one out and offer it up in this “turn you on” space. So I’m offering his 1993 release, Manhattan Murder Mystery, not so much as an exemplary Woody Allen film, but as a masterwork by one of the finest actresses of our time: Diane Keaton.
Which Husbands and Wives or Crimes and Misdemeanors; it’s a genre film, a mystery, with inexperienced sleuths bumbling their way from clue to clue. Still he manages to pull from the central conceit – a mysterious death, a group of well-to-do friends whose curiosity turns into obsession and pulls them into increasingly dangerous situations – to be an allegory about marriage, how relationships can grow stale and couples can drift apart despite all appearances of being close. And this second story, the crumbling of a marriage, emerges so easily from the potboiler plot that the viewer gets lulled into it before really knowing what’s happening. It’s also got some arty touches, a few homages to classic cinema: a nod to the Billy Wilder classic Double Indemnity at the beginning, and a spine-tingling scene with mirrors near the end that’s a nod to Orson Welles’s The Lady from Shanghai.

is not to say Manhattan Murder Mystery is not primo Woody Allen. It is. In addition to being prolific, Allen has maintained a consistent style and voice, even as his work has evolved over the years, and that’s the case here. Many of his trademarks are present, from the understated titles and credits to the subdued and elegant set and costume design (warm lighting, lots of earth tones, Upper East Side classiness) to the way the characters easily digress from the plot in banter that makes them wonderfully complex and interesting. This film really showcases his skills as a writer. It’s not
one of his deepest and most profound films, such as
But what I love most about this movie is Diane Keaton. This isn’t an Oscar performance. There’s not a lot in the way of heavy emotion. But it’s her performance that really makes the film work, draws the viewer in and has the audience at the edge of their seats. Which is doubly amazing because the part wasn’t even written for her. Allen wrote it for Mia Farrow, but the two split as it was going into production. Legend has it that Keaton was nervous at the first shooting, and she had to consult with an acting coach, which obviously did the trick. Her obsession with the murder develops very quickly, and is conveyed eloquently with her facial expressions (that furrowed brow mixed with slack-jawed amazement), her movement through the crime scenes (driven, confident and awkwardly inexperienced, all at once), and the tone of her voice (increasingly sharp toward her husband, played by Allen, and intimate toward a recently divorced friend played by Alan Alda). The chemistry between these two is palpable from the start, and so natural. Allen has said of Keaton’s role in this film that her ability to play comedy is so strong that it pushed him into the role of straight man, which is not his usual place. He doesn’t change anything; he’s still the stammering, neurotic, wisecracking, hand-gesturing Allen we all know. It’s just that Keaton’s presence is so strong that even at full-force Allen’s character moves into a secondary position. Plus she’s just as smart and sexy as can be, despite her reading glasses and conservative pants suits and turtleneck sweaters.
Of course, none of this should be a surprise. Keaton is an Oscar winner, after all, for her performance in Annie Hall. Still it’s great to see a terrific actress really bring it to role that might otherwise be mundane, and bring such life and depth to a film that would otherwise be like so many other long forgotten films in the same genre.
Joe Miller