The Purple Rose of Cairo

Maltings cinema
Thursday 27 18.30

USA, 1985, 84 min
Black & white and colour, 35mm
English
PG

dir/scr: Woody Allen
prod: Robert Greenhut
dop: Gordon Willis
editor: Susan E. Morse
sound: Frank Graziadei
music: Dick Hyman
cast: Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, Danny Aiello, Dianne Wiest

production company: Orion Pictures Corporation
UK rights: Park Circus
print source: Deluxe

Filmography as director:
2007 Cassandra’s Dream
2006 Scoop
2005 Match Point
2004 Melinda and Melinda
2003 Anything Else
2002 Hollywood Ending
2001 The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
2000 Small Time Crooks
1999 Sweet and Lowdown
1998 Celebrity
1997 Deconstructing Harry
1996 Everyone Says I Love You
1995 Mighty Aphrodite
1994 Don’t Drink the Water
1994 Bullets over Broadway
1993 Manhattan Murder Mystery
1992 Husbands and Wives
1992 Shadows and Fog
1990 Alice
1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors
1988 Another Woman
1987 September
1987 Radio Days
1986 Hannah and Her Sisters
1985 The Purple Rose of Cairo
1984 Broadway Danny Rose
1983 Zelig
1982 A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy
1980 Stardust Memories

1979 Manhattan
1978 Interiors
1977 Annie Hall
1975 Love and Death
1973 Sleeper
1972 Everything You Always Wanted to
Know about Sex
1971 Bananas
1969 Take the Money and Run
1966 What’s up, Tiger Lily?

In Depression-era New Jersey, Cecilia slaves away in a pretty menial waitressing job, which just about keeps her and her slobbish brute of a husband afloat. What he doesn’t fritter away on gambling or booze she uses to visit the Jewel, the local movie theatre, in the glow of which she manages to forget the dreary realities of her daily life. She is particularly taken with The Purple Rose of Cairo, an adventure melodrama starring charismatic lead Gil Shepherd as Tom Baxter, a daring archaeologist. Mixing exotic locations and glitzy New York night life, the film distils such a powerful dose of escapism that Cecilia sits through repeated viewings until, half-way through a screening, Tom Baxter turns to her. Moved by her devotion, he leaps out into her real world, leaving his fellow characters stranded on screen.

Stepping through the looking glass in both directions, Cecilia and Tom learn the disappointing truths inherent to the other’s world: the trickiness of real life isn’t quite what Tom had hoped for (you actually have to pay for restaurant meals?), while the glamour of the movie world is more two-dimensional than exciting. Back at the Jewel, Tom’s disappearance has thrown his on-screen colleagues into existential confusion; lost as they are without the safety net of their script, their petty bickering barely masks their terror at being obliterated if the projector goes out. The patrons of the cinema, meanwhile, all want their money back and the desperate manager calls the film’s producer for help. In comes Gil Shepherd, the actor who plays Tom, but will he be able to convince his character to return to his rightful realm?

The constant and perilous negotiation between real life’s inadequacies and the shortcomings of illusory happiness is a recurrent theme in much of Woody Allen’s work, yet it is treated here with atypical warmth and a less misanthropic sense of humour. Liberated from the relentlessly solipsistic and sometimes gratingly neurotic focus of the films in which he stars, The Purple Rose of Cairo allows Allen to explore his characters’ existential and metaphysical reflections (and this is indeed a game of mirrors) through a genuinely engaging blend of comedy and romance. Cecilia’s love of fluffy 1930s Hollywood fare is one that Allen and his cinematographer obviously – and unselfconsciously – share, for this is a sumptuous homage to the world of escapist fantasy that saw many Americans through the Depression. It is also a fascinating examination of the dynamics at the heart of the film-watching experience, which few movie audiences can fail to be enthralled by.