Stardust Memories

I distinctly remember the first time I saw Stardust Memories. I was a sophomore in college, and a certified Woody Allen fanatic. (My fandom was based on Annie Hall and Manhattan, his books, and his stand-up comedy album). When the film opened in September, I took the Long Island railroad from campus (it was only $3.10 from Stony Brook to Penn Station in those days) and walked across town to an East-side theater, just in time to see the beginning. I believe I had read that the film was more experimental than his stuff before, modeled on the films of Federico Fellini (not that I had any idea at the time what a Fellini film was like). Therefore I was a little worried when the opening featured Allen on a train, surrounded by odd, depressed faces. There was no soundtrack. Across the tracks was a train full of happy, attractive people drinking champagne. A beautiful woman (played by a young Sharon Stone) blows Allen a kiss, and he frantically signals the conductor that he wants to be on that train. Then the train passengers are at a garbage dump. What was going on here?

Soon enough the scene shifted back into familiar territory. This was a film-within-a-film, the latest from Allen's alter ego, Sandy Bates, a director famous for his comedies but longing to make more serious movies. His studio thinks he has lost his mind, and urges him to reconsider. He is booked to appear at a weekend on the Jersey Shore, where a retrospective of his films are to be shown. He is beset by his fans, who are mostly grotesque and fawning.

Stardust Memories was something of a disappointment for many, and angered some. Coming off the richly romantic Manhattan, this film was far edgier and caustic, perhaps the edgiest one he's ever made. Many people felt that he was insulting his fans as sycophants and unhinged. For me, though, it's still one of my favorites of his, a daring attempt to explore the issue that has bedeviled him for his entire career--comedy is less satisfying than drama.

Allen has always thought this way. He's called those who deal with drama, like Eugene O'Neill, as eating at the adult's table, while comedy is far less important. He's also always thought that luck was the most important element of success. In Stardust Memories he tells an acquaintance from his childhood that since he told jokes, and they have importance in our culture, he's made it big. "If I had been an Apache Indian, I would have been out of a job," he says. Or, "If I had been born in Poland or Berlin, I'd be a lampshade."

But Allen parodies his own beliefs. In a fantasy sequence, he meets extraterrestrials who have all the answers. "We enjoy your films, especially the early funny ones," he is told. Bates wonders if being funny is enough--shouldn't he help the blind, or be a missionary? "Let's face it, you're not the missionary type," the aliens tell him. "You want to do mankind a service? Tell funnier jokes."

The film does owe a lot to Fellini, specifically 8 1/2, which is also about a film director, struggling to make a film, who encounters bizarre types in a resort setting. 8 1/2 also begins similarly, with Fellini's director stuck in traffic, without a soundtrack. As with 8 1/2, Stardust Memories has its protagonist frequently flashing back to childhood, and then has an extended sequence set in a meadow with UFO enthusiasts that may or may not be real (and anticipates the shooting of John Lennon by a deranged fan). The film then pulls a twist at the end, as the whole thing is revealed as just a movie, with all the actors appearing as themselves as they walk out of a screening (with actresses Marie-Christine Barrault and Jessica Harper discussing Allen's kissing technique).

As for those women, Allen repeats certain themes. As with Manhattan, he is torn between the dark, psychotic woman who is more intense (played in Stardust Memories by Charlotte Rampling) and the more nurturing, well-balanced woman (Barrault). Rampling's character is an old flame, who eventually was institutionalized, but she appears in spirit in Harper's character, who Allen meets at the film retrospective. When he overhears Harper on the telephone talking about her popping Darvon and Valium and alluding to a possible Lesbian affair, you can tell he's hooked.

I think most of the criticism of this film was unfair. Just because the character of Sandy Bates is similar to Allen doesn't mean it's autobiography. If fans saw themselves in the gawkers of Stardust Memories, that's their problem. There's plenty of laughs on hand (such as when Allen, hearing of Rampling's mother's suicide says, "There were no suicides in my family. My mother was too busy putting the boiled chicken through the deflavorizer to pick up a gun and shoot herself") and the black and white photography shimmers. Those who want to experience Allen when he was at the height of his abilities would be advised not to miss this one.