BEFORE: After going through his background on IMDB, the inevitable has happened - I'm starting to empathize with Woody Allen. I realized we both played the clarinet, got into show biz in our teens (he was 15, I was 18 or 19) and both got out of NYU ahead of schedule (I graduated early, but it sounds like he was asked to leave - I should probably investigate that further.). And we're both fans of classic films, and we've each had our share of woman troubles - but that's where the similarities end. I'm not Jewish and I wasn't born in Brooklyn, though I lived there for about 15 years.
Perhaps some of this feeling comes from the "everyman" quality of the neurotic loser he tended to play in the 1970's, and the fact that his early films all sort of follow the same formula - put the loser in a comical situation, string a bunch of gags together, relate some self-deprecating anecdotes, and stop before the film goes on too long. This week's films are all around 90 minutes or less.
Hey, that's kind of what I do here every night - watch a film, write about some personal anecdotes, and quit before I start to ramble. It's like he and I are lost twins or something...
THE PLOT: A neurotic film critic tries to get over his wife leaving him by dating again, with the help of a married couple and his alter ego, Humphrey Bogart.
AFTER: Woody did not direct this film, it's true - but it still fits right in with his oeuvre. A man obsessed with movies, particularly "Casablanca", gets dumped and has to get back into the dating scene. (Unlike most of Woody's characters, this one lives in San Francisco, not New York, but we'll let that slide...) But this also fits in with some of the romance films I watched earlier this month, because the nebbish starts hanging out with his best friend's wife, while she gives him dating advice. And the friend is a busy executive, always going on business trips - I think everyone in the audience could see where this was going well before it got there.
The film does make a point of stressing how much "Allan" and his best friend's wife have in common - and that's what people tend to do when they fall in love, they emphasize the things they share, and tend to ignore the things they don't. Then, after a few years, people focus on and obsess about the things they DON'T have in common, and tend to ignore the things they do. That's just human nature.
But this all happens to set up this love triangle, and the love triangle exists so that Woody can star in his own version of the famous airport scene from the end of "Casablanca". He gets advice from an imagined version of Bogart throughout the film (WWBD?) so I guess subconsciously he really wanted to be the guy urging his woman to get on that plane with her husband. It's one of those rare occasions where it's cooler to NOT get the girl, to be the bigger man. And you can't get a bigger comedy contrast than comparing Bogie's macho image with Allen's nerdy one.
I think Woody might have been the original nerd. He had this "disheveled loser" image long before people really knew what a nerd or a geek was, or had those words to describe them. Nerd culture has come a long way since 1972, of course, thanks to the Rubik Cube and video-games and superhero movies - so to truly understand these films I have to think back to a time when there was no support system for us. Of course, then I have to consider what he was like behind the scenes, and wonder how much of this nerdy image was really just the character he was playing.
(ASIDE: This film is also a great reminder of how much of today's technology was not around in the early 1970's. There were no DVDs or even VCRs back then, so if you wanted to watch a film uncut, you had to go to a revival theater. I don't think they even had premium cable yet. Also, no cell phones - the busy executive is always calling his office from landlines to tell them what number he was at, because there was simply no other way to reach him.)
I'm all caught up on the new season of "King of the Nerds", so right now that's at the forefront of my mind as well. It makes me think someone could make an update of this film, only with a central character who's a Star Wars or Star Trek fan, rather than a Bogart fan. Just replace Bogie with Yoda or something...
Of course, any true trivia player knows that Bogart never said the exact phrase "Play it again, Sam" in "Casablanca" - the exact line was "You played it for her, you can play it for me. Play it." It's one of those famous misquoted lines, where some impressionist or critic got the line wrong, and it stuck in the collective hive-mind that way. Capt. Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty" in the original Star Trek show - it was usually, "Scotty, one to beam up." And James Cagney never said "You dirty rat!" in any film, and Cary Grant never said, "Judy! Judy!" Where the heck do these things originate?
Still, I'm glad that I finally got around to watching "Casablanca" before this one - it did lend those scenes more meaning.
Also starring Diane Keaton (last seen in "Father of the Bride Part II"), Tony Roberts (last seen in "Switch"), Jerry Lacy, Susan Anspach.
RATING: 4 out of 10 Darvon pills
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