Radio Days

Radio Days (1987)- written, directed, and narrated by Allen:

What a beautiful, kind, gentle, ironic, warm, sentimental (in a very good way and yes, I am talking about Woody Allen's movie, that's right) yet perfectly balanced delight. It is a series of sketches about young Joe (young Allen, of course, played by Seth Green - that was a surprise), an adolescent in Brooklyn, NY during 1930s-1940s who was passionately in love with radio which was a king. The film is a tribute to the magical radio days and the myths and legends about radio personalities, the memory of a grown man who never forgot where he came from, the love letter to his always fighting and arguing ("I mean, how many people argue over oceans?") but loving relatives and a very funny comedy (the way only Allen's comedy can be). It is the film where pretty like a doll and painfully naive Sally (Mia Farrow) asks who Pearl Harbor is? Where gorgeous Diane Keaton sings and Diane Wiest, his beloved Aunt Bea never gives up hope of one true love. He never told us if she found it...

"I never forgot that New Year's Eve when Aunt Bea awakened me to watch 1944 come in. I've never forgotten any of those people or any of the voices we would hear on the radio. Though the truth is, with the passing of each New Year's Eve, those voices do seem to grow dimmer and dimmer."

The Radio days are gone but thanks to Allen, the voices of the times passed are still clear and sound and they always will be.

9/10

This movie shouts one word: WARMTH. The colors, the plot, the characters, they are all wonderfully warm.

I've watched this movie with senior citizens who were around in the forties. I once watched it with a Jewish guy who grew up on Long Island (albeit in the early 30's, not the 40's). All comments were the same: THIS was life in New York during wartime.

Vietnam was my war, so this era was a mystery to me. However, any time a genius like Woody Allen can create a film that not only makes me and my rowdy friends laugh, but gets guffaws from my dear old Mom as well, it deserves a little fanfare.

I didn't even mention the solid gold music.

See this film at once!

This is a wonderful wonderful movie that exemplifies the phrase, "misty watercolored memories." It is a joy to watch and listen to. The era before and during WWII, however, was anything but wonderful. Radio Days presents a time when America was dealing with the Great Depression and its after effects and the horrible event that was World War II. Since the man narrating the memories was only a boy then, it is altogether fitting and proper that he see things as a child; for as he states in one scene, "our conversation turned from Nazis to more important things,like girls." No movies, except this one, that I recall, are able to deal with this critical age in American history without conveying the tragic time that it was.

I would like to think this family was really Woody Allen's, but it is probably a work of fiction, like his other pieces. But how tremendous that he can create (or remember) these people. As I watched it, one thought that kept recurring was that these were not "beautiful" manufactured people like we see in the media today; they had big hips and were fat and poor and... and none of that mattered. They were real. They were believable. You can't watch this movie without wondering what happened to them, did Aunt Bee find a husband? You cared about this family and personally, I wished they were mine.

The vignettes were sad and sweet. My favorite was poor departed Kirby Kyle; at least he had heart! And Leonard; and "donations for the promotion of a state in Palestine." So many memories that make us a part of a family most people never had. The viewer belongs to this warm and loving group.

Something has been lost with the concept of "nuclear family," with the lonely big houses and empty hours and unshared hopes and sorrows. Radio Days reminds us that having someone to experience life with is a treasure and a blessing, despite whacks on the head, martians, and fish, "That man always brings home fish!"

And oh, the music!

This is Woody Allen's masterpiece.

Woody Allen fondly recalls that age before TV when radio was the nucleus around which family life revolved (and evolved). It's an affectionate (and, for Allen, atypically nostalgic) period piece, sketching with disarming humor the memories, anecdotes, and fantasies of an East Coast childhood in the 1930s and 1940s, narrated by the director himself and set against a collection of once-popular radio songs and programs. Television could never trigger such glowing memories, because TV numbs the imagination while the invisibility of the radio voice tends to enhance it. Allen includes plenty of jokes to that effect: the heroic Masked Avenger turns out, off microphone, to be the portly Wallace Shawn; the nonsense song Mairsie Doates recalls a neighbor brandishing a meat cleaver on a downtown rampage. The comedy is never more than feather-light, demanding nothing from its audience except uncomplicated laughter, but this is one filmmaker who has always been more effective on a smaller scale.

This movie starts with two burglars answering the phone during a break-in. They win the radio contest and the next day, the homeowners are shocked by the arrival of the winnings after finding their home robbed. Woody Allen narrates this nostalgic recollection of vignettes during his childhood. Joe (Seth Green) lives in Rockaway Beach with his parents Tess (Julie Kavner) and Martin (Michael Tucker) as well as an extended family. His imagination and his memories deliver stories about the people in his life and the radio they listen to. There is the War of the Worlds broadcast. Joe's favorite character is the Masked Avenger. There are also stories about the radio peronalities and aspiring actress cigarette-girl Sally White (Mia Farrow).

Woody delivers a loving tribute to the concept of radio through the eyes of childhood. This has a large cast with wide ranging vignettes. It's imaginative, touching, and fun. The characters are specific and compelling. There is a terrific veneer of memory. Through all the surreal and the real, there is the love of family and radio that transcends the screen onto the audience.