Woody Allen Week: Stardust Memories (1980)

2 years ago

Woody Allen Week: Stardust Memories (1980)

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE

by Erin Crumpacker

There’s nothing seemingly magical about the way I discovered Stardust Memories. Like many film junkies before me, I found the DVD placed between a few beloved titles on the shelf of the Woody Allen section at my local video store in West Chelsea. I carelessly picked it up, while mentally checking another one off the list, and that was that. Well, okay. Maybe there was a bit of magic involved, because later that evening I discovered the most underrated film within Allen’s deep, diverse filmography. It wasn’t trying to be anything like the films that preceded it (Annie Hall, Manhattan, Interiors). It wasn’t anything else but Stardust Memories, a film for film lovers by one of its own.

Inspired by the great auteurs of art cinema – Bergman, Fellini and Goddard, to name a few – Allen paid homage to the genre quite early in his filmmaking career with Stardust Memories, a disjointed narrative full of inner dialogue, dreams and fantasies. Its unconventional style purposely distanced you, freeing your mind to reflect and connect emotionally to whatever it chose. That’s the fun. To get there, Allen experimented with French New Wave techniques like black and white cinematography, jump cuts, and breaking through the fourth-wall. Anyone who’s seen 8 ½ will recognize the first of many Fellini references in the opening scene. Yet, despite Allen’s intention to enlighten and entertain his audience, the opposite occurred. The film flopped.

So why do I think this film is such a gem when the audience of 1980 absolutely hated it? I suppose it’s because of the way I was introduced. Yes, I have an appreciation for cinema beyond the current, but I screened it without expectations or an entirely preconceived vision of the Woody Allen I wanted to see. This was about the 20^th Allen film I had seen at the time, so I suppose I was used to him shaking things up a bit, so to speak.

The film’s early audience was coming off Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan and Interiors. Stardust Memories - with its cast of Allen and beautifully alluring female leads - gave the misleading impression that it was going to be a romantic, comedic tale, which it is, but also isn’t. It also seems that many viewers made the mistake of identifying the film’s main protagonist, Sandy Bates, as Allen’s real-life ego personified.

Bates is a famous film director who ponders life and human existence, along with the attraction he has to three very different women: the intellectual, the maternal and the ingénue. All this existential reflection happens outside New York City, at the Stardust on the Atlantic shore, where Bates is the special guest of a retrospective of his work. While there, he is constantly plagued by demanding fans who prefer his earlier, funnier movies to his recent artistic efforts, an idea that is communicated scene-to-scene. It’s no wonder that a 1980 audience - without the context of the bulk of Allen’s work and influences - felt alienated by his portrayal of unattractive, ignorant, Philistines.

But again, the film’s not about the fans, and it’s not the inner voice of Woody Allen the director. It’s about a fictional director’s individual journey. It’s also somewhat a parody of the cinema he wants to explore. The writing is brilliantly funny, the neurosis is high, and even among the jumpy scene-to-scene, fantasy-to-dream narratives, the moments that make those memories special really shine with charm, something that many Woody Allen fans, myself included, find enduring.

So yes, I’d like to think Stardust Memories would be more of an enjoyable experience for Allen fans today. It shows his range, and even lends to teach filmmakers a thing or two about cinematography, editing and storytelling. I had to dive deep within his expansive body of work to get there, but the journey helped me appreciate this film, and Woody Allen, that much more.