Every Wednesday, FM writers Simon Columb and Brogan Morris write two short reviews on Woody Allen films … in the hope of watching all his films over the course of roughly 49 weeks. If you have been watching Woody’s films and want to join in, feel free to comment with short reviews yourself! Next up is Radio Days and Bullets Over Broadway…
Simon Columb on Radio Days…
Though Woody narrates Radio Days, unconventionally, he doesn’t appear. The charm in Joe’s (Seth Green) family – comfortably married family members – defies Allen’s usual unfaithful couples who cannot help but stray and play-away. Flitting from this childhood, we see the rise in stardom of Sally White (Mia Farrow) – a waitress who, undergoing elocution lessons becomes a radio celebrity. Steeped in nostalgia, amid mahogany furniture and detailed, delicate lamps, is a thinly-disguised reflection on Allen’s childhood in the early 1940’s. Ending in 1944, the characters hope the war comes to an end. A family gathering around a radio to hear news of trapped child breaks your heart, while a sequence describing specific songs that are inextricably linked to his memory is relatable and personal. Rather than a clear, concise story, Radio Days is a warm series of romanticised vignettes harking back to an innocent time in America when ignorance was bliss.
Brogan Morris on Bullets Over Broadway…
Woody Allen can alienate through wilful intellectuality – Bullets Over Broadway addresses the criticism, and sees Allen at possibly his most playful and self-deprecating. Here, the Woody surrogate (John Cusack) is another frustrated, misunderstood artist, though slowly the truth outs; writer-director of new Broadway play God of Our Fathers, Cusack’s David Shayne tentatively accepts input from mobster Cheech (Chazz Palminteri), until the work becomes unrecognisably brilliant and David realises he’s vastly overestimated his own genius. As the secretly average David enters collaboration with a subverted version of the dumb gangster archetype, Bullets Over Broadway crucially lacks the superciliousness of some of Woody’s other works. It’s surprisingly sweet (but not without darker moments – Cheech casually offing a key character late in the game is played for laughs), and everyone involved has their guard down, including an over-the-top Dianne Wiest and a fat-suited Jim Broadbent. Palminteri and Cusack, though, have chemistry to spare.
Brogan Morris – Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the young princes. Follow Brogan on Twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion.
Originally published January 15, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
