Stardust Memories

Reading some of the comments listed here, I'm dismayed by some of the narrowness of the criticisms ("It's shot in black & white for no reason!" "The flashbacks are indistinguishable from the present day!")... as if these were somehow to be construed as mistakes. Jeez.

I love this film. It rambles a little here and there, and sometimes it's so personal I feel voyeuristic watching it. The montage of Charlotte Rampling towards the end is stunning in how it summarizes Allen's feelings about memory, nostalgia, and the ever-present reality that never seems to allow the past to make sense.

One cannot deny that Allen has a very keen understanding of who he is, as a person, comedian, and lover. This is not to say that he is infallible or somehow more evolved than anyone else, but rather - through the retrospective of his "earlier funny films" - it's clear that he understands his strengths, and - outside the theatre - the weaknesses of his emotional life.

A perfect film for a quiet Sunday.

Funny, moving, imaginative, bold, intelligent, surreal, nostalgic and beautiful; Stardust Memories (1980) is one of Allen's greatest films, if not THE greatest. At its most simple level, the film is a merciless satire on the film industry, on the notion of celebrity, and on Allen's public persona, as he here essays the role of a stand-up comedian turned filmmaker wrestling with a number of weighty personal issues, including the death of a close friend, the breakup of a relationship and the beginning of an affair - all the while trying desperately to reconcile the need for personal success in relation to artistic expression. It is without question one of the filmmaker's most radical and imaginative works released at the peak of his powers, featuring a great deal of wit, warmth and human emotion alongside irreverent moments of personal homage, silliness and surrealism.

The film opens on a train as a ticking clock fills the soundtrack. Allen's character, Sandy Bates sits helpless in the carriage, surrounded by ugly, depressed looking people who stare back at him with dead eyes. As he looks out of the window he sees another carriage, this time filled with beautiful, revelling sophisticates all cheering and waving. Sandy tries desperately to convince the conductor to let him off the train so that he can switch carriages, but his pleas fall on deaf ears. As he tries frantically to signal to the other train, a beautiful woman kisses the glass and laughs as Sandy's train pulls away from the station. The next shot shows the ugly, depressed people from the train wandering through a garbage dump, recalling elements of The Seventh Seal (1957) and One Plus One (1968) before the film reaches the end of the reel and we realise that what we are seeing is a film within a film. The sequence works on a number of levels - firstly, as an extended homage to Fellini's 8 ½ (1963); establishing the theme of film-making and the games within the narrative, etc. Secondly, it is a comment on the nature of the character and on life itself; with none of the characters satisfied with the situations that they're in and always wanting something more. Lastly, the scene establishes the tone of the film; being every bit as stark, surreal and enigmatic as anything by Bergman, Fellini, Godard, etc - with the comment on mortality, on artist expression and on the journey of life - but is also incredibly funny.

Unlike later films of Allen that were more mature and more serious in-tone than the "early funny ones", like, for example, Crimes and Misdemeanours (1988) or Husbands and Wives (1992), Stardust Memory is a film rich in absurd humour, imagination, fun and frivolity, whilst also containing some of Allen's most moving and intelligent ideas. I'd liken it to a combination of the aforementioned 8 ½ and elements of the Coen Brothers' last definitive film The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), which would seem to have taken influence from certain elements depicted here. As a comment on the struggle of the filmmaker and the argument of art over commerce, Allen is entirely ruthless; turning the backroom nature of film production into a leering Fellini-like circus of stupidity, banality and contempt for the audience. At one point, Allen's character is being berated by the studio heads for turning in a film that is "pretentious, self-indulgent and unfunny", while carefully positioned in front of the famous Eddie Adams photograph of the execution of Vietcong prisoner Nguyễn Văn Lém; creating a tragic echo of that later scene which foreshadowed the murder of John Lennon.

It also shows the absurdity of film-making and the pressure for Sandy to return to former glories and produce work simply to satisfy the masses. Although Allen claims that there are no elements of auto-biography in his work, I think he is wrong. Even if does it unconsciously, without thinking, it's impossible to see Stardust Memories and not see it as a comment on the critical and commercial failure of his earlier film Interiors (1978). With that particular project, Allen was able to turn to the massive success of Annie Hall (1977) into producing a more sombre and serious film with heavy references to both Bergman and Chekhov. The film was a critical failure and led into the production of Manhattan (1979); one of Allen's most celebrated and iconic films, but one that he apparently wanted to have destroyed. Many of these personal issues can be seen in the character of Sandy, who is struggling through life like the rest of us and yet is expected to entertain. At one point he argues that it's impossible to be funny with so much sadness in the world, whilst simultaneously creating a film that is very funny as well as somewhat moving. The second element of the film deals with the memory of Sandy's troubled relationship with tortured manic depressive Dorrie. The relationship is sensitively handled and brilliantly performed by Charlotte Rampling, who conveys the fears, desired, dread and anxiety of this character on a path to self-destruction.

In the final act of the film the walls between life and death, fact and fiction, fantasy and memory all come tumbling down as Allen creates a kaleidoscope of elements all reoccurring from previous sequences in the film. The colourful characters, all chosen for their often unique physical features that are further distorted by the skewed, black and white cinematography of Gordon Willis also adds to the film's somewhat stark and surreal approach, which is filled with imaginative visual composition, intelligent production and location design, elements of wild fantasy and abstract, absurdist humour. By the end of the film, we no longer know if what we've experienced is real, literal or a theoretical film within a film, but we know the experience has been a unique one.

...and, in Sandy Bates, the lead of his satire on celebrity, loves, and his usual themes of turmoil over life and death, is a sense that Woody Allen is doing one of two things (or both perhaps)- taking from his own life and thinly disguising characters and situations, or using his own public image in film's culture to look through the looking glass slightly at some of his popular themes. This is not to say that the film is one of his very best. I could see what Allen was doing, for example, with the scenes and instances of tipping the hat to Fellini and his masterwork 8 1/2- the two films share that common thread of an artist in an overall funk of bittersweet memories and creative confusion. But while Fellini made his film out of a burning need to reveal all of his love for cinema out of his angst(s) after La Dolce Vita, Allen's track record shows that he's near incapable of waiting around too long to make a film (he's averaged nearly a film a year in 37 years up till 2003) so much of what comes forth in Stardust Memories isn't as much autobiographical as it is told through a character filtered with and not with himself. In short, a lot of the 8 1/2 dues were my least favorite parts in the movie (though I did like the quick Superman-type mementos).

But does that make Stardust Memories a failure, pretentious? Not to my point of view- once Allen starts the story rolling, and he gets his characters/actors into the gist of the film, it goes along like most other Allen films involving phobias, fears, loves (women), and sophisticated sense of varied parody. There are moments that Allen's stand-up act is injected into the mix, or a scene that could've been a chapter from one of his books, but mostly the audience gets the sense of his OWN love of cinema via Sandy Bates. Bates is another one of those Woody characters that seems all the more impressively formed and executed since it feels like the Woody we know, but Bates is just a little more on the edge of satire, viewing into his own self-doubts and trying to see if there can be any hope or meaning to it all- or if he can tell funny jokes.

The script contains some of the most memorable moments of Allen's career in one-liners (there are a few from the fans and autograph-hounds that stick out) and in having a natural flow, close to a type of poetry, in the conversations and dialog in the film. Even if one doesn't laugh, it definitely shows the work of a wonderful writer at the peak of his game. His direction is also intrinsically interesting, especially how he uses the unique, dark, and evoking cinematography by the great Gordon Willis, and the unusual editing stylizing by Susan Morse (though, once again, some of these editing tricks are to Fellini's credit). And the performances work well enough for the material, more often than not, with Charlotte Rampling as Dorrie, Bates' wonderfully stressed ex-girlfriend, Marie-Christine Barrault as Isobel, an old friend who left her husband for him, Jessica Harper as Daisy, whom he falls head over heels for while she and her professor-boyfriend are at the Stardust attending Bates' appearance(s), and Tony Roberts, who had a worthy supporting role in Annie Hall, pops up here as well.

I can recommend Stardust Memories for Woody Allen's main fan base, as it gives those who love his early films and his films that have more mature subject matter a bit of a (delightful) challenge. I don't know if I could recommend it however, as the very first film someone could see if the person wants to start of his films. There is an amusing quality to it that could give non-Woody fans a second thought about the filmmaker's work, but it's hard to say. It's not an altogether easy film to watch, or is it a masterwork like Manhattan. By the end of it, never-the-less, my time was not the least wasted, I knew I saw some ingenious scenes and jokes here and there, and there was a subtlety to it that has me liking it and responding more to it on repeat viewings. Is it homage? Sure, but it's a blend of homage (or as Roberts says "ripping it off") and a personal, nearly original style, and it ends up, on a repeat viewing, a major work. 9.5/10

In my opinion, Stardust Memories is Allen's greatest achievement. The film perceptively explores the relationships between art and reality, between the artist and his work, between the work and its consumers. Beyond its philosophic concerns though, this is also an incredibly funny film. There are more genuinely funny moments within this serious film than in many of Allen's earlier pure comedies. It skewers the movie industry, the movie-going public, Allen's own earlier work, Allen's present insecurities (surprise!), and a number of other targets. Intelligent, thought provoking, and at times hilarious, this film is an overlooked gem in the Allen canon.

Only a filmmaking genius like Woody Allen could bring such viable characters to the screen with such life and perception. Allen (who also scripted) is Sandy Bates, an acclaimed, world-reknowned director who attends a weekend festival honoring his works. When he's not being bombarded by mobs of autograph hounds and PR people, he takes time to reflect on himself and the three diverse women in his life: drug-abusing actress Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling), wistful violinist Daisy (Jessica Harper, who also appeared in Allen's "Love and Death" (1975)) and French housewife Isobel (Academy Award-nominee Marie-Christine Barrault). Loaded with the crisp dialogue that we've come to expect from Allen (Best line: "I would trade that Oscar for one more second of life"), "Stardust Memories" is noticably one of Allen's most personal films. Also, what makes "SM" unlike his other works, where his characters do a lot of interacting, the film's focus is mainly on Allen (most beautifully) interacting with himself mentally. Sharon Stone has a bit part in the beginning as a train passenger. Gordon Willis' cinematography is gorgeous. ***1/2 of ****.