Radio Days

 

Writer/director Woody Allen

Woody Allen and Mia Farrow

RADIO DAYS                       A-                                                                                                  USA  (85 mi)  1987

The scene is Rockaway.  The time is my childhood.  It’s my old neighborhood, and forgive me if I tend to romanticize the past.  I mean, it wasn’t always as stormy and rain swept as this.  But I remember it that way because that was it at its most beautiful.                                                   —narration spoken by Woody Allen, Radio Days (1987): Rockaway (22 seconds)

A terrific New Year’s Eve movie, a film about America’s fascination with radio in the 1930’s and early 40’s, with wall-to-wall jazz music of the times, this is Woody Allen’s heavily romanticized American counterpoint to the British autobiographical childhood recollections of Terrence Davies in Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992).  This comedic/dramatic hybrid film is where Allen begins to indulge in mixing mood and genre textures into his films, where the dramatization of old-time radio serves as an imaginative source of some of the giddiest fantasies and news of personal tragedies both at home and on the war front, often underestimated and overlooked when it was released, deserving of a rediscovery.  A filmmaker who speaks with such awe and admiration for both Bergman and Fellini, this was openly inspired by Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959) and Fellini’s AMARCORD (1973), with its rambling autobiographical account of his personal memories, though Allen may never be taken seriously as a director of art films, claiming in a 1987 interview with William Geist (Woody Allen: The Rolling Stone Interview), “I’m trying to make as wonderful a film as I can, but my priorities are always in order, and they’re never artistic.  Artistic accomplishment is always third or fourth.”  However, in this film, the period music and extraordinary production design add artistic elements that actually overshadow the script, evoking a strong feeling of nostalgia, offering a distinctly fictionalized, stream-of-consciousness tapestry of personal memoirs, yet despite the embellishments, it remains the most autobiographical of all of Allen’s films.  Following a string of accomplishments leading up to this film, Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Stardust Memories (1980),  A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), ZELIG (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (1985), and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), this is Woody Allen without the neurotic angst, as one might actually say he was relaxed and comfortable with his life when he made it, having time for walks around New York City, watching Knicks games, browsing around bookstores, seeing friends, always finding an available table at Elaine’s, while regularly playing clarinet at Michael’s Pub.  Living in a large duplex apartment overlooking Central Park, he was sharing a life with actress Mia Farrow and her eight children (five of them adopted) living on the other side of Central Park.  Not since Charlie Chaplin had any other actor been more recognized by their onscreen persona as Allen, often playing himself, or disguised by alter-ego representations, including childhood versions of himself, making him, in some way, the Woody Allen protagonist in all his films.  Early on, when television gag writer Allan Konigsberg changed his name to Woody Allen as part of his stand-up comedy act, his material was always about the person behind it, continuing this autobiographical connection in his films, transformed into Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, while here Allen narrates the drama, never appearing onscreen, instead his childhood is manifested as a young red-haired Jewish kid named Joe (Seth Green), living in the lower middle-class section of a windswept corridor of Rockaway Beach in Queens on the South part of Long Island with his parents, Martin (Michael Tucker) and Tess (Julie Kavner).  Always nearby are grandparents, and everpresent aunts and uncles, including Aunt Ceil (Renée Lippin), whose life is consumed by the fish her husband Uncle Abe (Josh Mostel, son of Zero Mostel) constantly brings home from Sheepshead Bay, and perpetually single Aunt Bea (the always delightful Dianne Wiest), who dreams of finding the right guy, but ends up having disastrous taste in men, abandoned on one date when the fateful Mercury Theater War of the Worlds broadcast on the radio describes a Martian invasion, her date fleeing in fear, or another when she comically realizes that she’s dating a gay man grieving over a dead fiancé named Leonard.    

Filled with witty charm and a warm glow captured by the stunning honey-tinged cinematography of Carlos di Palma, who also shot Hannah and Her Sisters, as well as Antonioni’s BLOW-UP (1966) and RED DESERT (1964), the neighborhood recollections are scenes of innocence, like teenage girls in bobby socks sitting at the soda shop counter and sighing in unison while listening to crooners on the radio, much to the disgust of neighborhood boys who find it much too ridiculous for their tastes.  Violence in school is little more than a spitball fight in noisy classrooms, while sex was just boys on rooftops hungrily looking through binoculars at a nude woman dancing in her apartment to the strains of Babalu, 29 Xavier Cugat w. Richard Hayes - Babalu (Radio Days) YouTube (2:37).  Joe’s teenage cousin Ruthie (Joey Newman) dances in front of her bedroom mirror, her head wrapped in a towel turban, to the sound of Carmen Miranda’s energetic 1940 tune South American Way, Dias de Radio. Woody Allen. 1987. YouTube (1:12), while the men in his family easily slip into fantasy lip-synching, briefly turning their own lives into art, something that has been the root of Allen’s filmmaking since the beginning.  Released just a month after the Neil Simon written film based on his early play BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS (1986), there are similarities in period locale and adolescent coming-of-age reflections, often feeling interchangeable.  It’s a fairly slender and plotless film, yet the extensive use of an ensemble cast, with many appearing only for brief cameos, is positively stunning, more effective than any other film in his entire career.  At $16 million dollars, this was Allen’s most expensive film up to that point, where a major slice of the budget went to clearing the rights for the music, where a whopping 43 songs were used, hand-picked from Allen’s own massive music collection, many of them period pieces reflecting specific memories that play out in a stream of connecting vignettes, with Allen injecting plenty of humor, exaggerating the sense of dysfunction within his family to the point of absurdity, with everyone huddled around the radio in the evenings, tying the entire country together in an era before television, looking for snippets of war reports mixed together with each family member’s favorite radio shows.  Joe’s favorite was The Masked Avenger, a super hero (ironically played by balding, diminutive actor Wallace Shawn) who always found his way out of tricky situations while warning the general public to be on the lookout as he flies over city rooftops, “Beware, evildoers, wherever you are!”  Joe’s cartoonish view of the world adds an exaggerated imitation of what real-life people are like, examining lives on both sides of the radio, contrasting the ordinary lives of his eccentric family with the more glamorous worlds of their favorite radio personalities, but it’s the incidental tales of the daffy radio personalities that come alive, with his mother hooked on her favorite show, Breakfast with Irene and Roger, conjuring up images of chic, sophisticated people living in glamorous Manhattan penthouses, spending their evenings at the Stork Club, formally dressed for celebratory drinks and dancing while mixing in civilized conversations with other radio celebrities.  In this gloriously imagined world, Mia Farrow enters as Sally White, the down on her luck King Cole Room cigarette girl at the upscale St. Regis Hotel, her sixth appearance in a Woody Allen film, where her impossibly thick Brooklyn accent stands in stark contrast to the suave elocution of Roger (David Warrilow), who can’t keep his hands off her, pleading with seedy come-ons to have a moment alone, both rushing onto the rooftop for a quickie rendezvous, with her cigarette tray continually getting in the way, where her reaction afterwards is priceless, “Boy, that was fast!  Probably helped I had the hiccups.”         

The exquisitely lush production design by Santo Loquato, using a high Art Deco style, is simply stunning, especially that Times Square rooftop, complete with a large neon Camel cigarettes billboard with a smoker blowing smoke, seemingly something that should have been preserved in a showcase museum.  Manhattan is depicted as a fairyland in bright lights, with posh nightclubs showcasing jazzy Latin bands, as Tito Puente is seen holding singer Denise Dumont’s chihuahua as he conducts, while she symbolizes the exotic chanteuse in Tico-Tico no Fubá, Woody Allen's Radio Days - "Tico Tico" YouTube (46 seconds).  This New York never really existed, as it’s a beautifully conjured dream of memory, a jarringly different impression than the seedy realism, sporadic gunfire, and wandering dispossessed souls that characterize the New York films of Martin Scorsese.  According to Charles Dickens in Great Expectations, “I’m not going to tell you the story the way it happened.  I’m going to tell it the way I remember it.”  Even the hallowed annals of baseball becomes an amusing target of satiric absurdity with the legendary story of Kirby Kyle, Radio Days 1987 YouTube (1:49), a Monty Pythonesque parody of real-life pitchers Monty Stratton (on one leg) and Pete Gray (with one arm).  Yet it’s the utterly adorable Mia Farrow who really steals the show, a dim-witted yet ambitious Judy Holliday kind of blonde who momentarily forgets herself when inviting a room full of society people up to the roof of a building on New Year’s Eve, bookending the seediness of her earlier scene, yet she also has the most memorable line when her first live radio show is interrupted by an emergency announcement that Pearl Harbor has been invaded, when she innocently asks, “Who is Pearl Harbor anyway?”  We follow her zany saga as she changes her ditzy gangster’s moll accent into a cultured speaking voice by taking diction lessons, Radio Days (1987) - Sally and her diction lessons - YouTube (1:43), a radical transformation that leads her into commercial opportunities, seen receiving surprisingly intense emotive directions for a laxative commercial.  Among the multiple storylines swirling around the life of Sally White, she actually witnesses a mob hit, forcing the killer (named Rocco, of course, played by Danny Aiello) to knock her off, leaving no witnesses to the crime, but while driving her to meet her inevitable fate, he learns they’re both from the same neighborhood in Brooklyn, developing a special bond, stopping first to have dinner with his mother (Gina DeAngeles), who politely urges her to “Have some more cannoli honey.  You’re so thin. (Turning quickly to her son) So where are you going to dump her body?”  Through a strange twist of fate, it’s actually the mob that exerts their notable influence to conveniently jumpstart her career, finally finding her place, eventually becoming a radio star.  Allen is a master of small touches like that, moments of intimacy that go haywire, sprinkling little moments of poignancy throughout the film, like his uncle Abe going next door to quiet their communist neighbor (Larry David) for blasting their radio on the day of the Sabbath, as they are fasting while quietly atoning for their sins on the Jewish high holidays, and returns confessing that he snuck an unkosher pork chop while spewing slogans of the Communist Manifesto.  Impeccably weaving in a veritable stock company of recognizable Allen regulars who are perfectly cast, there are moments of magic in this film, yet the most ecstatic moment is Joe’s first visit to the magnificent Radio Center Music Hall theater, ascending the stairs in an exhilarating cathedral-like experience that he describes glowingly, “My most vivid memory connected with an old radio song I associate with the time that Aunt Bea and her then-boyfriend Chester took me into New York to the movies.  It was the first time I’d ever seen the Radio City Music Hall and it was like entering heaven.  I just never saw anything so beautiful in my life,” as Sinatra sings 'If You Are But A Dream' in Woody Allen's 'Radio Days' YouTube (1:58).  Supposedly a favorite of venerated director Stanley Kubrick, it’s really one of Allen’s greatest creations, certainly among his ten best, as this film links radio’s relationship to the imagination and to filmmaking, and by extension to real life, by exhibiting with dramatic immediacy all the many ways that radio can transcend the ordinary world we live in, while also connecting it to the impermanence of memory.   

Hannah and Her Sisters

HANNAH AND HER SISTERS                A        

USA  (103 mi)  1986  d:  Woody Allen

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the colour of its countries

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

―somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond, by e.e. cummings, 1931, somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond | Academy ...                                              

Opening with the soaring notes of Harry James’ golden horn, You Made Me Love You - Harry James / Helen Forrest ... YouTube (3:18), this is one of the better Thanksgiving films, beginning and ending with a lavish Thanksgiving party given by the family of “three sisters,” borrowing liberally from the idea of the original Chekhov play, turning this into one of Allen’s most novelistic films.  Generous, warmhearted and funny, the complexity of the story unravels the lives and tangled relationships surrounding Hannah, who attempts to juggle a complicated life and a demanding family that includes her two sisters, her parents, her husband, ex-husband, and an assortment of friends and relatives, where this is the best ensemble piece in Allen’s career, a character driven drama, where the performances all enrich the dramatic detail of the story.  At its core this film feels very incestuous, with men lusting after and even stalking other sisters from the same family, possibly because their family throws such a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner party that it’s impossible not to want to be there.  Another way of looking at it is a Woody Allen love letter to Mia Farrow, providing a “romanticized” view of her, who as Hannah is at the center of a story that revolves around her two sisters, each of whom is lusted after by one husband or another, while she remains at center the rock of Gibraltar for the entire family, cooking and preparing the Thanksgiving dinners, while seven of her own children play themselves in the movie, including Soon-Yi Previn, Allen’s eventual wife, adding more than a touch of authenticity, while her own real-life mother, Maureen O’Sullivan, plays her mother.  Having been involved with Mia Farrow since 1980, this was their fifth of thirteen films made together, shot in Farrow’s own Central Park West apartment, with the camera moving in and out of the rooms, and is Allen’s variation of Ingmar Bergman’s autobiographical FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982), opening with large theatrical families gathering together for three successive holiday celebrations, with Bergman’s film celebrating Christmas, displaying a restless tone of contentment in the first gathering, signs of turmoil and trouble in the second, with a resolution of the lingering troubles by the third.  Much like the short stories of Chekhov, a chapter heading opens each new sequence, with Allen, after having re-read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, experimenting with a literary style that intercuts and intertwines various stories.  It’s a film that shows a bohemian side of New York City that no longer exists, including Pageant Books and Tower Records, or Top Shop in Soho, all part of the existing landscape, with a trio of sisters that are beautifully written and brilliantly acted, saving one of the best roles for himself.  Shot by Carlo Di Palma, it all comes together with a painterly feel vividly capturing a romantic side of a contemporary 80’s New York bathed in an autumnal glow, enriched by a newfound maturity in the artist’s life.                                                     

Hannah (Mia Farrow) is the eldest of three sisters, with Holly (Dianne Wiest) as the middle child, a rebellious coke addict in the beginning of the film and something of a misfit, while Lee (Barbara Hershey) is the youngest, most sensual, a recovering alcoholic, and the target of interest from the leering eyes of Hannah’s husband Elliot (Michael Caine), who secretly longs for her.  Lee is involved in a relationship with an older father figure, Frederick (Max von Sydow), a gloomy artist and social recluse.  Hannah’s ex-husband is television producer Mickey Sachs (Woody Allen), a full-blown hypochondriac who believes he is suffering from symptoms of every known fatal disease, but more likely simply suffers from the stress and pressures of his fast-paced job.  While Holly is a struggling actress, she’s temporarily cofounder of the Stanislovski catering business that she runs with her friend April (Carrie Fisher), where they meet a dreamy architect with a love of opera, David (Sam Waterston), who takes them on an architectural tour of New York, Hannah And Her Sisters - David's architecture tour of New York YouTube (5:15), before dating them both, leaving Holly’s ego bruised as she thought he was exclusively into her.  While the sisters are very close, tension still exists between them, especially in the changeable lives of the younger sisters who look up to Hannah for stability, as she is a constant fixture in their lives, also the darling of her parent’s eyes as well, continually doting on her throughout their own tumultuous marriage, where Nora (Maureen O’Sullivan) is the ever flirtatious alcoholic who always wants to be the center of attention, both still thriving in acting careers of their own, while Evan (Lloyd Nolan) seems destined to always bring Norma back down to earth with quips like (in reference to Hannah), “I can only hope that she was mine!  With you as her mother, her father could be anybody in Actor's Equity!”, continually seen playing piano standards like “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” over the holidays, which becomes a central theme of the film.  Allen uses the voiceover to allow each character to describe their inner feelings, which also has a way of foreshadowing events that are about to happen.  What remains unclear is any backstory, as we never know what drew Hannah and Elliot together, especially since he’s immediately interested in someone else, attempting to show discretion, but he always seems to go out of his way to find her, and then very much like Frederick, he’ll suggest a book, a piece of music, or a poem, like the E.E. Cummings poem that he marks and notates as a reflection of his feelings for her.  Perhaps because she needed to get out from under the authoritarian vice grip of Frederick, she opens the door for Elliot, which is bit surprising, considering the respect the sisters have for Hannah, but that is one of the central strands of the storyline.  Allen, of course, frames Frederick’s realization that Lee is having an affair with a despairing rant about the state of the world, as he’s actually been bored by the mediocrity of television:

You missed a very dull TV show on Auschwitz.  More gruesome film clips and more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions.  The reason they can never answer the question ‘How could it possibly happen?’ is that it’s the wrong question.  Given what people are, the question is ‘Why doesn’t it happen more often?’

You see the whole culture.  Nazis, deodorant salesmen, wrestlers, beauty contests, a talk show.  Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling?  But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers.  Third grade con men telling the poor suckers that watch them that they speak with Jesus, and to please send in money.  Money, money, money!  If Jesus came back and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.           

Allen as himself is easily the funniest thing in the film, identifying himself in a chapter entitled “the hypochondriac,” perhaps initiated by a flashback sequence revealing his marriage with Hannah came apart when a medical report indicated that his sperm was infertile and he was unable to have children.  Causing him complete embarrassment and utter humiliation, she asks if he might have ruined himself somehow, perhaps from “excessive masturbation?”  In an amusing scene, he then awkwardly asks his best friend if he’d like to father Hannah’s child by artificial insemination?  After the divorce, for whatever reason he goes on a disastrous date with Holly, which is like a date from Hell, where she’s literally scooping spoonfuls of cocaine into her nostrils at an ear-splitting punk performance in the filth of CBGB’s that simply alienates Mickey, telling her “I’m afraid once they’re done singing they’re gonna take hostages!”  When she slams the door in his face afterwards getting into a taxi, he tells her “I had a great evening.  It was like the Nuremberg Trials.”  Later, unexpected hearing loss leads to thoughts of cancer and a brain tumor, where he’s already plotting out methods of suicide, where he may have to take his entire family with him.  The build-up of mental exhaustion sends him into an existential tailspin of endless despair, believing life is meaningless.  Finding no rational explanation for God, he even hilariously experiments with converting to Catholicism, an experience that apparently includes a crucifix, white bread and mayonnaise, which freaks out his own Jewish parents who weren’t even aware you could do things like that.  Thoroughly desperate, Mickey would try anything to find meaning in life, even talking to the Hare Krishna’s singing and dancing in the park, reading their literature, but everywhere he looked he could find no answers, seen eventually perplexed and confused by a holographic Jesus in a religious bookstore.  His moment of revelation comes at the most dire moment, following an unsuccessful suicide attempt where he simply wanders the upper west side streets of New York endlessly.  Tired and exhausted he winds up at a revival movie house watching a movie, which quickly becomes reminiscent of the “Let My People Go” Go Down Moses - Sullivan's Travels (1941) - YouTube (3:31) sequence from Sullivan's Travels (1941) where a chain gang sits down in an all-black church to watch a movie together with the parishioners.  The director Preston Sturges intended to play a Chaplin film, but rights were denied, instead playing a Disney Mickey Mouse cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse 1934 Playful Pluto - Video Dailymotion (7:22), where Pluto’s paws continually get caught on fly paper, where the animated pranks and pratfalls leave the congregation in stitches, a welcome relief from the otherwise harsh human conditions of the Great Depression.  In Mickey’s case, of course, the holy grail of movies turns out to be the crazy antics of the Marx Brothers in DUCK SOUP (1933), Duck Soup (10/10) Movie CLIP - To War (1933) HD YouTube (3:28), which resuscitates his declining spirits, deciding life should be enjoyed, rather than always having to be understood.   

I went upstairs to the balcony, and I sat down, and the movie was a film that I’d seen many times in my life since I was a kid, and I always loved it.  I’m watching these people up on the screen and I started getting hooked on the film.  I started to feel, how can you even think of killing yourself, I mean isn’t it so stupid.  Look at all the people up there on the screen, they’re real funny, and what if the worst is true.  What if there is no God and you only go around once and that’s it.  Well, ya know, don’t you wanna be part of the experience?  You know, what the hell it’s not all a drag.  And I’m thinking to myself, Jeez, I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I’m never gonna get, and just enjoy it while it lasts.  And after who knows, I mean maybe there is something, nobody really knows.  I know maybe is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that’s the best we have.  And then I started to sit back, and I actually began to enjoy myself.

Continually borrowing money from Hannah for her next project, Holly abandons her acting and catering careers to try her hand at writing with a script that seems to reveal personal details of Hannah and Elliot’s relationship, including secrets never revealed by Hannah to either of her sisters, so she’s shocked to see her life exposed under such scrutiny, threatening to expose Elliot’s relationship with Lee, who was mysteriously able to provide insight that even Hannah was not aware of.  When questioned, Elliot disavows having anything to do with it, but this revelation makes Lee step back, as her affair is obviously threatening her sister, so by the second Thanksgiving she ends the relationship and decides to go back to school.  Hannah, however, is stung by the revelations that she’s viewed as so saintly that she doesn’t need anybody, that she’s self-sufficient and overly focused to the point that she displays no weaknesses or vulnerabilities, always being so reliant and taking care of others that she becomes impenetrable, which is another way of indicating she doesn’t let anyone else get truly close to her.  Everyone in the film is exposed, while at the same time showing signs of envy and even harboring thoughts of secret bitterness at the success of others, making this one of the most complicated films that he’s ever written, where errors and imperfections are sympathized with along with personal strengths.  Emerging from this myriad of relationships drifting apart and coming together, the film brings out the most important ingredients of life and love, while still exploring feelings of jealousy, confusion, sibling rivalry, sadness, loneliness, and most especially hope.  Rather than an out-of-place side character lost in the struggles of depression and self-loathing, Allen’s own personality infuses this film with the same sense of humanity found in the other characters,  In fact, his search for meaning in a meaningless world and what passes for organized religion becomes quite touching, where his affirmation of life rises above the typical cynicism found in his other works.  Only by learning from their previous mistakes do they eventually discover their humanity.  The knock on the film is that it is too warm and optimistic, where the ending is at odds with the bleak realism of all but the last fifteen minutes, as the original ending had Elliot still with Hannah, but in love with Lee, who had married someone else, where he was forced to relive the same nightmarish feelings of personal torment, doomed to forever see her at family parties, a constant reminder of what he had lost, leaving him emotionally adrift, drowning in his sorrows, which Allen recalled “was so down for everyone that there was a huge feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction every time I screened it.”  He also filmed more explicit sex scenes between Hershey and Caine that were also cut, but it all comes together in the end with Mickey accidentally running into Holly in a record store, rekindling forgotten feelings, allowing him to read something she wrote that he genuinely admires, finally affirming Holly’s long felt ambition, bringing a note of tenderness and optimism to an emerging expression of love.  Both Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest won Academy Awards in the supporting actor categories, while Allen won for best original screenplay.  The film is listed at #4 from The Guardian Poll, published October 4, 2013, "The 10 best Woody Allen films".