The best decade for Woody Allen films was the 1970s. While the great success of Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979) assured that his 1980s projects would receive funding, his highlights from that decade were not as strong. The exception was The Purple Rose of Cairo, which was not only imaginative and entertaining, but perceptive as well.
As was the case with another great 'later Allen' film, Bullets Over Broadway, Allen directed and contributed the screenplay, but remained behind the camera. The burden of carrying the film instead fell upon Mia Farrow, the talented daughter of actress Maureen O'Sullivan, and also Allen's lover at the time.
Fortunately, Farrow seems perfectly cast for the sweet but unglamorous role. To her credit, she never tries to exceed her character by making it stronger. Cecilia will always return to her lazy, philandering, and abusive husband (Danny Aiello), because she lacks the willpower to build an independent life. She prefers to escape her hardships through Hollywood films at the local theater, whose characters have the luxurious and glamorous lifestyle that she longs for.
In Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. (1925), the hapless protagonist is able to cross the boundary between the silver screen and real life. But Allen finds inventive ways to expand upon this gimmick. Adventurer Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) leaps from the movie theater screen to romance Cecilia, and is even able to take her back with him. The actor who played Tom Baxter is Gil Shepherd, who in turn is also played by Jeff Daniels. Daniels' dual role is especially interesting since Baxter represents only a subset of Shepherd, his 'good side'. But Shepherd, being a real person, also has the weaknesses of egotism and duplicity.
There is quite a bit of male bashing in The Purple Rose of Cairo. Not only does Aiello play the most selfish and loutish husband that is imaginable, but Cecilia's boss at the diner is also ill-tempered and bullying. The Hollywood actors and bosses are conceited and hardened. Cecelia is conned by her presumed savior, Gil Shepherd, who is far more concerned about his own career. These characterizations provide great contrast with Tom Baxter, a perpetually romantic and good-natured fantasy.
The film within a film has a plain-spoken and overweight black maid (Annie Joe Edwards), a stereotype from Hollywood films of that era. While she is given several sharp lines, her character makes us feel uncomfortable because the racism is so obvious. But this is a point that Allen is trying to make: that racism was pervasive in the 1930s. As with the other film characters, the maid is limited to what her role requires. She must behave like a stereotype.
The film's bittersweet ending has undoubted disappointed many viewers, who naturally want only good things to happen to the heroine. But a film should provide more than entertainment, and the ending hits the right note. Once the projector is turned off, we return to the navigational perils of reality.
The Purple Rose of Cairo received only one Oscar nomination, for Best Original Screenplay. Woody Allen's script did better at the Golden Globes and the British Academy Awards, where it won. It also won Best Film from the British Academy Awards, and Best Foreign Film from the French Academy of Cinema. Farrow was nominated for Best Actress by the Golden Globes and the British Academy Awards. (78/100)
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