STARDUST MEMORIES (Woody Allen, 1980)

Reviewed: July 18, 2002 and July 21st, 2002

Introduction__________

As I was privileged enough to watch a rare print of Stardust Memories last night, it would be downright selfish of me not to write a review. Only problem is, Alexandra DuPont--arguably the best critic around, though her output is exceedingly sparse--already wrote a genius analysis over at The DVDJournal, stating most of the things I wanted to say.

What to do? Well, just as James Ellroy's masterful American Tabloid was born out of his reading of Don DeLillo's Libra (it frustrated Ellroy when he realized writing a fictionalized account of the JFK assassination from DeLillo's angle could now never be improved upon and thus went in an entirely different direction, though no less a compelling one) and Jean-Pierre Melville's wonderful Bob Le Flambeur was born out of his viewing of John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (it depressed him he could no longer make the serious heist film he'd been planning cause Huston had already mastered the subgenre, thus he decided to make a somewhat comedic one), I will write a direct response to DuPont's review, filling in any blanks she's left along the way (and despite her indisputable brilliance, there are a few).

DuPont's words will be in italics, mine in uninflected text.

Two Reviews For The Price Of One; Deconstructing DuPont__________

Stardust Memories is Woody Allen's greatest movie.

Yes, it is.

I know there's no way to get you to believe that; frankly, I'm not even sure if I believe it. I'm well aware that Stardust comes on the heels of Annie Hall and Manhattan and just a few years before Zelig and Hannah and Her Sisters. I also know that it kicks off a creative decade for Allen that ended with the soul-baring artistic laser burst that is Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Yet I find myself returning to Stardust Memories again and again — over and above all his other classics, which even I must admit are probably "better" movies.

I, on the other hand, adamantly refuse to admit any of Allen's other classics are "better" movies. That's a cop-out. What does "better" or "greatest" mean, anyhow? Everything is personalized and relative. I think DuPont is simply trying to say Stardust is her favorite Allen film even if some of his others, might--at first glance--appear to be richer, or more fully formed works. To hell with that. Our first impulses are always our truest. In mine and DuPont's humble opinion, Stardust Memories is Woody Allen's greatest movie (although it will probably take you multiple viewings to successfully reach this conclusion, if you ever do) and as DuPont alludes to, the most eminently rewatchable of his acknowledged masterpieces.

But still. I relish Stardust's gorgeously photographed navel-gazing and its biting-the-hand-that-feeds-it viciousness.

Yes, yes, yes. Stardust Memories is Allen's most self-confessional film (I will later make a strong case Stardust is more autobiographical than even Husbands and Wives or Deconstructing Harry, if only because it manages to cover a wider array of topics and ideas, particularly Allen's career and his responsibilities as an artist). And although its visuals are the antithesis of unrefined, I believe Stardust is Allen's rawest film (Husband and Wives--with its handheld camerawork and improvisational vibe--would again seem to be the obvious front-runner for that title).

I believe it to be a perfect deconstruction of several eras of Allen's career,

Without a doubt (ref: previous self-confessional graph). But several eras might be overstating the point. I'd argue two eras. Era 1: The light, slapstick, pressingly comedic, free-for-fall that is Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Sleeper et al. Era 2: More substantive, even dramatic work-- Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan and Stardust itself. DuPont seems to be denoting Interiors as an entire era unto itself, which despite it's initial novelty in the context of Allen's career, is unfair.

I'm convinced Allen would agree with my breakdown. According to John Baxter's biography of Allen the working title of Stardust Memories was "Woody Allen No. 4," because as Allen admitted to costar Marie Christine Barrault, "he had begun numbering his films from the moment he decided to start making serious movies."

a flawless melding of several different storytelling techniques, and that rare work of art that manages, a la Fellini, to be pretentious as hell while commenting on pretension itself.

The storytelling technique point is crucial and will be expounded upon later, but the pretentious comment deserves a little further examination. Forgive me for getting all semantical on you, but my dictionary definition of pretentious is as follows: "expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature." I'd argue that since--as DuPont notes--Allen frequently comments on the idea of pretension itself in Stardust Memories, anytime Allen brings up lofty notions (and Stardust is loaded with them, including but not limited to: why life is so short, why is there so much human suffering, is there a God, what our collective purpose on Earth is, if nothing lasts why do we bother doing anything) it is not unwarranted but fully necessary in order to make said comments. And Allen inherently cannot be presenting these ideas with exaggerated importance by virtue of him knowingly lampooning their importance as soon as they're spewed. Allen doesn't just comment on pretension, he satirizes it. My favorite example occurs during a bizarrely incredible setpiece that has Allen speaking to super-intelligent aliens. He asks: "But shouldn't I stop making movies and do something that counts, like helping blind people or becoming a missionary or something?" Their response: "You wanna do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes."

All that and it's also funny.

Oh fuck, is it ever.

And so — much as Woody Allen asked you to indulge him when he released the film — I ask you to indulge me now:

Six Reasons Stardust Memories Marks Woody Allen's Creative Zenith

1. It makes fun of Woody Allen fans. And good heavens, did Woody Allen fans ever deserve it at the time.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around filmmaker Sandy Bates (Allen — and yes, the "Mr. Bates"/"masturbates" pun is indeed obvious and sort of dumb) attending a retrospective of his career at a unnamed seaside town.

I'll start mounting autobiographical evidence: This retrospective was apparently based no small part on a weekend tribute celebration run by critic Judith Crist, begrudgingly attended by Allen in the wake of Annie Hall's popular splash. According to Baxter's biography, Allen spent the day prior to the tribute watching his idol Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal and Cries and Whispers and remarked just before the weekend began, "I see his films and I wonder what I'm doing." This kind of self-doubt echoes loudly throughout Stardust.

When he's not fighting with the studio over his latest film,

Allen was initially so disappointed with Manhattan he allegedly offered to buy the film back from United Artists in exchange for making his next film (which turned out to be Stardust) for free.

obsessing over his failed relationship with the bipolar Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling),

Dorrie's based at least somewhat on Louise Lasser, Allen's ex-wife (who even makes an appearance in Stardust as Sandy Bates' assistant). Both Dorrie and Lasser suffered from clinical depression and had mothers who committed suicide. As Baxter writes: "...Lasser's adult persona is closer to that of Dorrie in Stardust Memories, neurasthenic, febrile, racked with incestuous guilt over her love for her father."

coping with the arrival of his French mistress (Marie-Christine Barrault) and her two Gallic hellspawn, or pursuing a high-foreheaded violinist (Jessica Harper), Sandy Bates is mobbed by his fans. They give him useless gifts. They ask him to show up at charitable functions. They pitch him idiotic script ideas. They sneak into his bedroom. They disclose needless personal data. They tell him how much they liked his "earlier, funny" films. In short, they behave exactly like real-life jack-a-napes rendered brain-dead by celebrity culture, and Allen just rips them to shreds — much better than he did in 1998's Celebrity, by the way.

That's an excellent point. Celebrity--one of Allen's weakest films--is rendered virtually moot by Stardust Memories as they both cover a lot the same ground, but Stardust covers it supremely better. Also: as a self-reflexive fuck you from a filmmaker to all his critics, Stardust Memories obliterates Todd Solondz's recent Storytelling (although given the majority's response to Storytelling, they probably feel that doesn't mean much--I, for one, really liked the film).

Site contributor D.K. Holm put it best during a recent conversation, which I paraphrase here: "You know, when Stardust Memories first came out, I hated it like everybody else, because Woody Allen made fun of his fans and bit the hand that fed him and all that. But then I watched it again, years later, and I realized — well — he was right."

This is why all negative reviews of Stardust Memories written/spoken when it was released should be ignored. All the same people who praised Annie Hall and Manhattan and stuck it to Interiors (aka most every Allen fan at the time) were bitterly, hilariously torn apart by Allen in Stardust. So they were furious, jealous, vindictive when they should have just lightened the fuck up. Unlike D.K. Holm, It's quite possible many of Allen's early fans have yet to forgive him.

"One critic said my audience left me," Allen said in 1992, "but the truth is, I left my audience. The backlash really started when I did Stardust Memories. People were outraged. I still think that's one of the best films I've ever made. I was just trying to make what I wanted, not what people wanted me to make."

2. Its craftsmanship is gorgeous to behold. I would, in fact, argue that Stardust Memories is visually the most gorgeous of all Allen's films — even more stunning than Manhattan, which had New York and a planetarium to work with and thus received a sort of compositional head start. Allen and cinematographer Gordon Willis out-Fellini Fellini here, shooting in black and white,

Completely agreed. The effortless complexity of Allen/Willis' shots should also be singled out. Standouts include: a stupendous flying crane shot during which a close-up of Allen and Rampling kissing in front of a carousal in the rain is quickly revealed to be a movie within a movie. A 2 minute 40 second beautifully choreographed tracking shot which has Allen trying to have an important conversation with Marie-Christine Barrault while oblivious fans weave in and out of frame, accosting him. Another incredibly convoluted yet impeccably executed tracking shot, follows a Rampling/Allen argument throughout different rooms of Allen's apartment, and switches light sources no less than four times, climaxing in a Rampling/Allen silhouetted reconciliation (of sorts).

boldly lighting the bizarre faces of their extras, and masterfully arranging large crowds for maximum comic/narrative impact.

An additional note about those bizarre extra faces: Juliet Taylor's skillful casting of Stardust Memories is literally legendary. Every face in the film isn't just bizarre-- they're striking and haunting, sometimes almost deformed and always unforgettable. Bonus kudos to Taylor for her prescient casting of Sharon Stone and Daniel Stern in key extra roles (speaking of prescient, the climax of Stardust is scarily similar to--being protectively cryptic--a major event in the near future of Stardust's release). Plus Gordon Willis excellently utilizes his wide-angle lens to exaggerate the strangeness of his subjects in close-up.

The formally satirical "8-1/2"-lite plotline also allows Santo Loquasto to unhinge his set decoration: Sandy Bates frequently appears in front of walls plastered with 15-foot tall portraits depicting (among other subjects) the Marx Brothers and the Vietnam War.

Yeah, those murals are laugh-out-loud. Their subjects vary depending on Bates' mood, and go a long way towards keying us into which Bates' career stretch we're in. But an important note: Santo Loquasto--Woody Allen's production designer from 1987's Radio Days straight through to now--began his collaboration with Allen (on Stardust Memories) as costume designer. Mel Bourne was the production designer on Stardust, and though according to Baxter's biography "he all but disowned Stardust Memories... the look of which had been effectively hijacked by new arrivals in the Allen retinue, in particular costume designer Santo Loquasto ...who dressed the characters in high-contrast patterns," I believe that's severely understating Bourne's impact. All the sets are marvels, crucial to the overall feel of the film.

I also find it kinda sad that Bourne essentially disowned the film, since, after first reading Stardust's script, he "thought it was going to be the greatest movie ever" and his perceived grandeur ended up not being that far off the mark. I have no idea what happened exactly--Baxter's biography does little to illuminate the situation--but Baxter does write that the Stardust shoot eventually got five weeks behind schedule and "artistic disagreements among the production team were rife."

As Bourne told film historian Gerald McKnight: "At the beginning of Stardust I thought we'd never get it right. Allen would just sit around and say, 'I don't think this is going to work.' My spirits would drop down to zero."

Bitching and moaning aside--and independent of whatever differences they may have had--Bourne went on to make three more films with Allen.

And editor Susan E. Morse hijacks pomo New Wave editing tricks to ginchy effect

If anyone knows what ginchy means please tell me.

— from Godardian jump cuts (which didn't appear again in Allen's oveure until Deconstructing Harry)

Wrong. Allen first revived jump-cutting in Husbands and Wives, a full five years before Deconstructing Harry.

to seamless flashbacks that occasionally only reveal themselves to be flashbacks quite a while after they've begun.

Right on. These are so fucking great and remind me of Allen's textbook use of flashbacking in his Crimes and Misdemeanors, though his techniques are quite different within each film.

Given the above, it's almost redundant to point out that Stardust Memories really must be appreciated in widescreen — an opportunity presented on home video for the first time thanks to the magic of DVD.

!!!

3. It's funny. (Also) given the above, it's a testament to Allen's craft that Stardust Memories never crumbles under the weight of its own self-reflexive conceit — that the relentless artsiness serves the comedy, and vice-versa. Many of my favorite Allen lines are in this film (Bates to a momentarily sane Dorrie: "They must be putting something wonderful in your lithium"), and although the jokes are spaced further apart than in, say, Annie Hall, many if not most of them are home runs or at least solid base-hits.

Many of my favorite Allen lines are in Stardust as well, but I don't want to spoil any of them. Here, I'll carefully single out two hilarious moments so you'll only know what I'm talking about after you see the film: the "wink" and the "shirt."

Among my favorite moments are those in which Allen spoofs his own early career as a director of proto-Airplane! Freudian laff fests. Sandy Bates' early comedies — "highlights" from which are shown at the festival-within-a-movie — are sort of lame and cheap-looking and badly composed but still, somehow, amusing; in other words, they're just like Allen's early comedies.

Yep, very true. Great point. Actually the first one of these spoofs (the dance routine) is so fucking hilarious (and so over the top) I was choking on laughter.

The level of self-awareness (or perhaps self-assurance) required for a director to do this particular variety of hatchet job on himself is, to me, stunning. Allen even makes damnable fun of his own fascination with Bergman, which had crescendoed only two films earlier with his critically and popularly reviled Interiors. As Stardust Memories opens, Sandy Bates is grappling with the studios over his latest film, which is deeply (and ham-fistedly) serious and symbolic (touches of Sullivan's Travels?)

Indeed. While the opening of Stardust Memories is always cited by Allen's detractors as being ripped off from 8 1/2 (instead of being accurately credited as the homage it is), these same critics (almost always) inexplicably miss the opportunity to accuse Allen of ripping off the opening sequences of Sullivan's Travels. To wit:

Stardust Memories' opening sequence is the ending of a rough cut screening of a famous film director's new film, this time a drama instead of comedy. Said sequence is not revealed to be a movie within a movie until said sequence ends.
Sullivan's Travels' opening sequence is the ending of a rough cut screening of a famous film director's new film, this time a drama instead of comedy. Said sequence is not revealed to be a movie within a movie until said sequence ends.

Stardust Memories' second sequence transpires in a movie executive's screening room after movie within a movie context is revealed. A debate over merits of said movie within a movie occurs.
Sullivan's Travels' second sequence transpires in a movie executive's screening room after movie within a movie context is revealed. A debate over merits of said movie within a movie occurs.

Stardust Memories' third and fourth sequences involve said filmmaker interacting with his aggravating-ly fawning employees.
Sullivan's Travels' third sequence involves said filmmaker interacting with his aggravating-ly fawning employees.

and involves train passengers at a garbage dump. The suits want to change Sandy's ending and send the passengers to "Jazz Heaven." It's alarmingly prescient of today's Hollywood climate.

I laugh just thinking about "Jazz Heaven."

(I should also note that Stardust Memories contains an out-of-nowhere moment involving young Sandy Bates pretending to be Superman that made me and my companions laugh hysterically for a solid three minutes when we saw it in an art-house theater half a decade ago. In my experience, only the convenience-store robbery and ensuing chase in Raising Arizona has had a comparable effect. Of course, I've now completely ruined any surprise that moment may have held. Hi.)

DuPont hit the nail on the nose here. This out-of-nowhere moment had a comparable effect on me and my companion as well. (Though DuPont didn't go so far as to ruin the punctuation mark of the scene, so fear not). Also: as I mentioned, the dance sequence and then the ensuing movie within a movie audience response (replete with an insanely exaggerated laugh track) had me and my companion doubled over for quite awhile.

4. The depiction/satirizing of relationships is impeccable. Of course, this is pretty well true of all Allen's films from this period (well, maybe not Interiors), but it's noteworthy that the relationship themes in Stardust Memories are writ both large and small — with Sandy Bates' obsession with surface personality in his women mirrored by his fans' obsession with the surface flash of his celebrity. In both cases, the devourer ends up strangely unsatisfied.

It must also be noted whereas Annie Hall, Manhattan and Interiors hone in on said depiction/satirizing and tunnel vision everything else out, Stardust masters relationship-ing while simultaneously expanding its platter and focusing on other ideas like the nature of show business

Special attention must be paid to Bates' remembered relationship with the frequently unhinged Dorrie. Alternately intriguing and anorexic, bright and compulsive, creepily generous and (to borrow a phrase from D. Coupland) so self-involved as to be almost autistic, Rampling's Dorrie is perhaps the most criminally unappreciated of all Allen's female characters — Annie Hall by way of Frances Farmer.

Charlotte Rampling is one of the best actresses in the history of cinema.

(It's also sort of amusingly prescient when Dorrie, in a supposedly paranoid frame of mind, accuses Sandy of flirting with her 14-year-old cousin, but that particular bit of titillation has little to do with Stardust Memories itself and everything to do with Allen's later travails.)

5. Its musical soundtrack is to die for. But then, that's not surprising.

True. All of Allen's soundtracks are to die for if you dig his brand of jazz etc.

6. It has its cake and eats it too. Stardust Memories is a movie laden with showy craftsmanship that makes fun of showy craftsmanship — but, in my opinion, also succeeds as showy craftsmanship. For example: Two moments with Dorrie — an absurdly long take recalling a fond spring day in Sandy's apartment, plus a jump-cut-addled breakup scene — are genuinely affecting pieces of cinema, but they don't feel maudlin or out of place alongside the film's more overtly comedic elements.

I mean, really — could the Farrelly Brothers pull that off?

DuPont's final point is the perfect segue into my postscript:__________

Stardust Memories is Allen's best, most thorough, and most effective balancing of comedy and drama, surpassing even Crimes and Misdemeanors and Hannah and Her Sisters. Whereas in Crimes and Misdemeanors and Hannah and Her Sisters Allen specifically separated the comedic and dramatic elements by cleanly differentiating storylines (in Crimes and Misdemeanors Martin Landeau's adultery storyline is dead serious whereas Allen's making-a-documentary-on-Alan Alda's character storyline is often very funny--they don't intersect until the end of the film; likewise, in Hannah and Her Sisters, Allen's hypochondriac storyline is very funny while the stories of the sisters are more serious--though again, they don't really intersect until the film's end), Stardust Memories is much more sneaky.

Since Stardust is the story of a filmmaker wrestling with whether to make frivolous films or blacker, dramatic works, Stardust itself often feels as if Allen is trying to figure out that question before our very eyes via the film's writing and editing. Starting off leaning towards the light and airy comedy side with just a hint of tragedy, then shifting back and forth a bit, then growing progressively more serious, what could come off as haphazard, instead plays like a brilliantly unified, stream of consciousness collage. Speaking of which, I'd argue that only Annie Hall compares to the patchwork, fuck chronology, complexity of Stardust Memories' structure but Stardust goes one step further by incorporating truly fantastical elements (I know, Annie Hall had some very odd stuff like the Snow White animation, but they feel relatively tame compared to what Allen employs in Stardust). These include: aliens and absurdist touches like the Superman scene DuPont mentioned or the terrifying contortions (being vague, don't wanna give it away) and the surrealist movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie-sequences.

In other words: The two films most commonly cited/regarded as the apex of Allen's career--Annie Hall and Manhattan--play like the warm-ups for Stardust Memories they most definitely were. With Stardust Allen made his most ambitious film, combining many of the insights into love immortalized in Annie Hall and the power of the love triangle in Manhattan (actually Allen kinda one-upped that love triangle by adding a third woman to Stardust), but extending his themes well beyond male-female relationships (as I wrote before).

Extension: Stardust Memories is Allen's most powerful drama; for even if it doesn't have the ultimate bleakness of Crimes and Misdemeanors or the furious intensity of Husbands and Wives, it's quiet, sad, breezy despair and the unforced ambiguity of its ending are ultimately more affecting.

Speaking to this point, I'll close with a final excerpt from Baxter's biography:

"Stardust Memories abandoned even the residual optimism of Annie Hall... 'No longer searching for eggs,' commented [critic] Diane Jacobs mordantly, recalling the closing monologue from Annie Hall, 'Allen seems to be blankly staring into a yard of dead chickens.'"

Return home.