The_late_Buddy_Ryan
Woody Allen's 1980 attempt to flee the comedy ghetto and join Bergman and Fellini on the artistic heights may have been cathartic for him, and I'm glad other folks have been enjoying it, but we couldn't stay with it for long. The film opens with a little Felliniesque riff that's actually pretty great—Woody's trapped on a train full of scowling grotesques; there's another train full of glamorous revelers (including Sharon Stone) on a parallel track, but the passengers from both trains end up at the same unsavory terminus. It's only when Woody imitates Woody that he starts to bomb. The verbal gags are uninspired (Charlotte Rampling: "You're a great kisser." Woody: "It was my major in college." Btw, my wife says she can tell just by looking that he's not.). It was funny when he was cornered by a lobster in "Annie Hall," not so much when he's panicked by a pigeon in this one. One more thing: if the Woodman really sees his fans as a pack of hairy-nosed, frizzy-haired pests and losers, maybe that's something he should have kept between him and his therapist. Interesting cast, but we didn't hang around long enough to catch Tony Roberts or Marie-Christine Barrault. In retrospect, seems like Woody was in a five-year slump between "Manhattan" and "Broadway Danny Rose," during which he released two other films—one unmemorable ("Zelig"), the other unwatchable ("A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy").
ElMaruecan82
"Only Art you can control, art and masturbation. Two areas in which I am an absolute expert." Anyone would immediately guess which director is capable of such a hilarious self-deriding line. Woody Allen is a comedic landmark, the best American cinematic exportation to the European market. And this is only justice since the roots of his comedic geniality, besides the Eastern-Jewish humor, two filmmakers complete the European connection: Federico Fellini, the visionary and Ingmar Bergman, the introspective. Both Fellini and Bergman drove Allen's own contemplation of the world: while Fellini explores the depths of one's inner demons, lusts, and repressed impulses, Bergman elevates them to their world, questioning the place of men within their own condition. Allen never denied these two influences but it was not until the pinnacle of his slapstick career that he made them more obvious.Allen's tendency for homages could be foreseen in "Love and Death", a hilarious historical film parodying some iconic shots of Bergman's "Persona". "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan" intellectualized the relationships between men and women, but it was "Interiors" that provided the most proper cinematic expression to Allen's torments. The film was a clear homage to Bergman style-wise, but it was saying more about the conflict in Allen's own creative process, as if he was facing a sort of existential block, trivializing the achievements of the past, and questioning the reason-to-be of his work. If not mocking, Allen was questioning his own status as an intellectual clown. He made people laugh, so what? This nothingness might even echo the dichotomy between "art" and "masturbation", as if his oeuvre had no other purpose than satisfying an immediate, egoistical impulse, but leave nothing substantial for posterity.Through "Stardust Memories", released in 1980, Woody Allen is still stuck in his middle-career crisis, incapable to consider with objectivity the value of his work. Yet this time, it's not Bergman, it's not the "Ego vs. Rest of the World" perspective that is underlined, but "Ego vs. Subconscious". For such a diagnosis, the themes developed in "Stardust Memories" mirror Federico Fellini's "8½", the masterpiece chronicling the process of a film-maker's own actions and their incessant interferences with the impulses, grieves, childhood memories and personal fantasies. Both movies are in black and white and the references are obvious, just like "Interiors" that started with immobile contemplative shots of 'dead' nature; the very opening of "Stardust Memories" is an immediate reference to Fellini. Woody Allen, playing a fictional alter-ego director, Sandy Bates, stuck in a train full of sad-looking people, can't stand the suffocating atmosphere, forcing him to leave it immediately.However, the comparison with Fellini shouldn't undermine the review but only guide it to a better comprehension of Allen's motives behind the unusual format of "Stardust Memories". If one thing, the episodes are not disjointed and the movie is quite easy to follow; in fact, it even suffers from being too explicit at times. In one hilarious scene, Bates implodes all his anger toward an Alien presence, revealing his frustration not to be able to provide something more transcending than humor. I had to watch the Alien scene again, and I was quite satisfied with my previous review of "Interiors", which was expressing through a Family crisi, Allen's own fears and dilemmas, and in "Stardust Memories", they're just thrown away with words, speeches, rants leaving no room for symbolism and creativity.Fellini created a deliberate confusion from which something genuinely creative graced the silver screen, and left the viewer with an optimistic feeling, a hope in Art, as something that one can only control if he gets himself carried by his emotions and personal sensitivity. In "Stardust Memories", Woody Allen doesn't paint a fantasy but take a photograph of his existential crisis. He's a successful comedic director, loved and admired, but the way he depicts his fans and groupies as a bunch of variously pathetic, needy, weird losers says a lot about the vision he has of his own success, something shallow and meaningless. Bates is just a man who pleases the crowd because he incarnates the inner sexiness of an ugly or nerdy man with humor. Allen is known to be a master of self-derision, in "Stardust Memories", he sins by being harsher than usual toward himself. Yet "Stardust Memories" never gets too dark or pessimistic; not only it maintains the comedic tone but keeps us hoping about Allen. If he doesn't admire himself, probably putting himself lower than Fellini or Bergman, he doesn't omit the role of women in his life. "Stardust Memories"' romantic undertones are essential because they demonstrate that Allen, like every great man, has a woman behind him. He's attracted by the intellectual Jessica Harper, the sweet and maternal Marie-Christine Barrault but can't get off the beautiful and sophisticated Charlotte Rampling, so brilliant she can't find the path of her life in a world full of interrogations. Allen can be a mentor, a baby, or stands on an equal cerebral footing. The harmony he finds in his inspiration relies on his capacity to be that three-dimensional love- wise and therefore incapable to be satisfied. In the same vein than "Interiors", "Stardust Memories" is a pivotal moment in Allen's career, maybe the film didn't meet the success because people expected something exuberant and flamboyant a la Fellini. Ebert thought the film was frustrating because it was a depressing movie about a lack of inspiration. Well, Allen is never as funny as when he's pushing himself down. He's a man of contradictions, wishing he could make people take his humor seriously, but his vision of life is so full of fatalism, of absurdity, of an incapacity to find the right woman, that comedy remains the only proper medium to express his own disillusions. So, paraphrasing a line from "Interiors", not only Woody Allen has the anxiety of a true artist, but he also has the talent, and both show in "Stardust Memories".
