Screened: May 16, 2008
Format: DVD - MGM (2001)
Selected By: Libby
Woody Allen’s 1987 comedy Radio Days may be the filmmaker’s most ambitious and sentimental work in a substantial and wide-ranging filmography. Describing what happens in the film is futile, as there is no overarching plot to speak of. Rather, Radio Days features a parade of amusing and touching vignettes, some spun from Allen’s own recollections of a 1940s New York City childhood, some plucked from the legends of radio’s Golden Age. The film serves as an homage to a vanished America and a wistful examination of nostalgia itself. Allen is occupied with recreating not the reality of a particular time and place, but a time and place as it is remembered.
Although he is now New York’s most recognizable auteur, Allen’s began his career as a wunderkind comedy writer for the likes of Ed Sullivan, Sid Caesar, and The Tonight Show. He eventually parlayed his success into standup, acting, and filmmaking, where he perfected an enduring persona as a nebbish New Yorker. His early films were broad comedies, but beginning with 1977’s Annie Hall, the director’s output took a more sophisticated turn. The 1980s remain Allen’s most well-regarded period, encompassing significant works such Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and Radio Days itself.
The number of characters and storylines in the film is dizzying, but it never feels directionless. It spins one witty anecdote after another, all set to a brash, romantic Big Band soundtrack. The cast is enormous. There is Mia Farrow, then Allen’s partner and frequent collaborator, as aspiring radio star and gossip columnist Sally White. Then there’s a young Seth Green as Allen’s childhood alter ego, Joe, running through the streets of a gloriously grubby 1940s Rockaway Beach. Julie Kavner and Michael Tucker claim memorable roles as Joe’s harried parents. The cast brings together a host of recognizable faces—Dianne Wiest, Danny Aiello, Wallace Shawn, Jeff Daniels, Diane Keaton—with the voices of the Golden Age itself, such as Kitty Carlisle and Don Pardo. Together, the cast and filmmakers craft a mash note to an era that is fast fading from living memory, acknowledging that its magic was fictitious and fleeting, but still to be cherished.