***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, and Danny Aiello.
Directed & written by Woody Allen
1984
82 min PG
“The Purple Rose of Cairo” is sort of the ancestral link between “Sherlock Jr.” and “Being John Malkovich.” It’s not heavy film criticism, but a mild and breezy look at why we like watching two-dimensional characters doing the same things over and over again. A Depression-era waitress (Mia Farrow) finds escape in the movies in the same way her lout of a husband (Danny Aiello) finds escape in the bottle; she never notices that people stop listening to her long before she’s done talking about the movies. Even if she weren’t watching the exact same movie over and over she would essentially be watching the same fantasy, about globetrotting, liquored-up socialites who’ve never heard of a Depression.
Then, one day, her favorite character (Jeff Daniels, as a handsome adventurer who never takes off his pith helmet) sees how lonely she is and walks off the screen to comfort her. As they hide from her husband, the police, and the studio execs flown into to handle the crisis, she discovers just how wonderful and how limited her hero is: his devotion to her is myopic, he can’t be hurt or even ruffle his hair, he doesn’t understand the reproductive process, and he can’t be made to care about money. This leaves the other characters stuck on the screen, unable to finish their movie and bickering with the audience.
Several jolly and intriguing vignettes follow, from members of the audience, about how they want “a story,” how they don’t like being picked on, and how they don’t like silly movies turning serious (a bit of autobiography on Woody’s part, perhaps?). This is all to say that they like the movies to stay the same. Meanwhile, the actor who played the adventurer (Daniels again, this time self-centered and insecure) comes in search of his doppelganger, and they argue over whether it was he or the writers who created the character. That both the fiction and the real man fall in love with the same woman makes sense, as they represent two sides of the same person. When the adventurer finally returns to his movie, this time with Farrow in tow, we can actually feel what a palpable relief it would be to live inside a movie instead of suffering in the real world, even if all the champagne is ginger ale.
The tone of “The Purple Rose” is key to its success. It lets us know that this is all happening on some strange plain of abstraction. How quickly people accept that black-and-white characters are walking out into the color world is delightful. Daniels’s understated performance as the unflappable adventurer is also a charmer. He can’t be anything but insouciant and casual, because that’s how he’s written. At 82 minutes—I love how short Woody’s movies are—there isn’t an unnecessary instant or a scene that goes on autopilot.
Finished Thursday, July 7th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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