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wpe1.jpg (4966 bytes)The Purple Rose of Cairo

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ABSTRACT

In The Purple Rose of Cairo, Woody Allen, like many filmmakers before him, turns the camera on itself to investigate the complicated and sometimes magical relationship between characters on the screen and characters watching the screen. A romantic hero from the film-within-the-film steps down into the life of a devoted motion-picture fan in the theater, and this sets the scene for Allen's humorous but also deeply thoughtful study of how films can betray as well as serve the human need for fantasy.

CAST

Cecilia--Mia Farrow; Tom Baxter--Jeff Daniels; Gil Shepherd--Jeff Daniels; Monk--Danny Aiello; Cecilia's sister--Stephanie Farrow; Emma--Dianne Wiest.

Baseline Synopsis:

The Purple Rose of Cairo is, as viewers have come to expect from Woody Allen, a film that takes comedy to the edge of philosophy and philosophy to the edge of comedy. Throughout his career as a writer, actor, stand-up comedian, and director, Allen is at his best when he has one foot in the sublime and the other in the ridiculous. He seems to falter when he sets up camp in only one of these grounds: Take the Money and Run (1969), for example, is too relentlessly slapstick to be anything more than diverting, and Interiors (1978) is too relentlessly serious to be interesting or profound. In contrast, though, much of the reason why such films as Love and Death (1975) and especially Annie Hall (1977) stand up to repeated viewings is because in them the comedian and the philosopher keep each other honest.

Although it is not the most successful of his films, The Purple Rose of Cairo nevertheless demonstrates Allen's impressive skills as a comic philosopher--or philosophical comic. He is one of the few filmmakers able to give a compelling and entertaining representation of the despair in a slip on a banana peel and the humor of a look into the abyss, the perilous and humorous contest of appearance and reality, and the inevitably bittersweet nature of life to a person who both thinks and feels.

Allen does not appear in the film himself, but the main character, Cecilia (Mia Farrow), is a virtual stand-in for him--fragile, befuddled, and habitually ready to respond to disappointment with a nasal whine, an impotent voice of complaint. Like so many of the roles Allen plays in his other films, Cecilia is a romantic in hard times, hoping for more out of life than Depression America and a bad marriage can offer to her. She flees her unfaithful brute of a husband, Monk (Danny Aiello), and her menial job waitressing and washing dishes at a greasy-spoon restaurant to stare in rapture at the films playing at the local theater, the Jewel. To a certain extent, her star-struck behavior is only that of a pathetic young girl daydreaming of penthouses and Egyptian adventures, but at the same time she is also an image of anyone, young or old, who has fantasies encouraged and shaped by films: That should include nearly everyone, and Allen frequently reminds his audience that they are watching a film that is largely about the dynamics of watching films.

Cecilia is particularly enchanted by the latest attraction at the Jewel, titled The Purple Rose of Cairo, a delightfully implausible blend of exotic romanticism set in Egypt--where a pharaoh had a rose painted purple for his queen and now purple roses mysteriously grow at her tomb--and sophisticated nightlife set in New York City. Although the film-within-the-film is obviously presented as a parody of a run-of-the-mill adventure-melodrama of the 1930's, it is easy to see why Cecilia returns to it again and again: Even a black-and-white version of characters embarking on a "madcap adventure'' is preferable to her own drab life, ironically in living color, where her only alternatives are marriage with a man who beats her, prostitution, or an affair with an exterminator specializing in mice and silverfish.

Cecilia's dreamy involvement with The Purple Rose of Cairo leads to a magical and completely surprising moment when one of the characters of this film, the ingenuous archaeologist Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), suddenly looks down from the screen, breaks from the plot, and steps through to the real world to join her and confess his love for such a devoted fan. It is not the least of the many ironies in the film that the fictional characters long for the real world and the real characters want to live in a realm of fantasy and illusion. From this point on, Allen shows his debt to both Lewis Carroll and Luigi Pirandello, and the film alternates from scenes showing various adventures in looking-glass worlds (with both Tom and Cecilia able to pass through the screen) to scenes debating the ontological status of fictional characters.

Once the plot of the film-within-the-film is interrupted by Tom's departing, the characters therein experience the freedom and chaos of real human life: They can write their own lines and change roles, but they also face anxiety and confusion when their lives are not scripted for them and anticipate the ultimate horror of annihilation if the projector is turned off. Anyone who has ever come across a postmodern play (by, say, Eugene Ionesco or Tom Stoppard) has heard much of this before, and some of this metaphysical bantering gets somewhat tiresome, but Allen plays at least some of it for laughs, and that is his salvation. Cecilia's time with Tom is an interlude of happiness in her life, but one that cannot last.

The major problem with Tom is not so much that he is unreal but that he is naive and superficial. In some instances these qualities are endearing: He ends up at one point in a brothel, where the prostitutes are pleased to be in the company of a man who speaks so elegantly and innocently about the mysteries of life, death, and love. Ultimately, though, he is a man with no past and no future, no capacity for change or involvement, at home only on the screen. Nor is Cecilia any happier with Gil Shepherd (also played by Jeff Daniels), the actor who has created Tom Baxter and, like him, also falls briefly in love with Cecilia. Gil proves to be as fictional and insubstantial as Tom: He is an actor to the end who presents himself as Cecilia's true lover (in a marvelous scene where they enact a section from one of his previous films) but then abandons her to act out another role that will further his career.

In one of the climactic moments of the film, Cecilia must choose between her two loves, and she courageously opts for reality, not fantasy, the real man, not the perfect but fictional representation. Yet this moment of decision turns out to be illusory: Tom disappears as the picture at the Jewel changes, and Gil goes back to Hollywood, home of dreams and, inevitably, disappointment. Cecilia ends the film exactly where she began, in a film theater, enraptured by a new film that comforts and relieves but can never transform or save her.

The Purple Rose of Cairo is a talky film, as one would expect from such a verbally witty and philosophically inclined writer-director. Most of the characters are nervously self-conscious, always ready to bare their souls honestly and openly to anyone in the vicinity. In addition, the constant conversation is regularly punctuated by eminently quotable aphorisms--always a great joy in Allen's films--that simultaneously aspire to wisdom and render that wisdom ridiculous. Gil, for example, clinches an argument with Tom by pointing out that though he may be perfect, he can never be real because reality is a state, like being a midget, that cannot be learned.

The emphasis on dialogue is reinforced by careful attention to voice. Allen seems to have cast his actors as much for the quality of their voice as for their physical appearance, and much of his direction seems to center on getting the right tones, not so much the right gestures, out of them. Tom's naivete, Gil's egotism, Monk's harshness, and Cecilia's aching but doomed desire for a life of enchantment are all powerfully conveyed by the tones with which they deliver their lines, and the skillful orchestration of these voices is one of the subtle achievements of the film.

At the same time, The Purple Rose of Cairo is visually interesting as well as discursive. Allen relies heavily on Gordon Willis' cinematography to evoke a particular mood of the 1930's without necessarily turning the film into a period piece. The economic Depression is, after all, not Allen's primary theme, only a useful background for his examination of a much more far-reaching kind of psychological depression. Cecilia's world is not melodramatically grim or even colorless, but it is lonely and unilluminated, much in contrast to the world of the film theater. The Jewel, as the name suggests, is a place of dazzling light; the marquee is a flashing invitation to fantasy, and even the inside of the theater, which one would expect to be dark, is radiant, bathed in glowing brown tones.

The most interesting shots and scenes of the film are set in the theater, the most obvious being the film-within-the-film, crafted by Allen and Willis as a loving tribute to, as well as send-up of, the films of the 1930's. This balance is crucial here, otherwise Cecilia's devotion to the screen would be only laughable or pitiable. The key to much of The Purple Rose of Cairo lies in Willis' ability to create captivating shots of Cecilia and the rest of the audience deeply involved in the film that they are watching. The special-effects shots showing Tom and Cecilia stepping through the film screen into each other's world are fascinating but, ultimately, not as important as when the camera simply focuses on Cecilia while she becomes totally engaged in the film and her fantasies. Such an image provides a very effective conclusion: The final shot of Cecilia sitting in the theater, once again cheered up by cinematic illusion, fleeting though it may be, is deeply moving. No words are needed at this point: Mia Farrow's face subtly registers and conveys the power and pathos of the film experience.

The film is clearly the creation of someone who loves watching and making films but finds these activities inherently problematic. Some of the fault lies with the traditional filmmakers of Hollywood, and Allen rarely hesitates to take a satiric jab at the system that is entrusted with viewers' dreams and never fails to trivialize them. Though the satire of Hollywood is much less pointed here than, say, in Annie Hall, perhaps in part because Allen's focus here is broader and deeper. Hollywood is not solely to blame, even though it creates such characters as Tom and Gil, hardly able to satisfy Cecilia. The problem is, to coin a phrase, not with the stars but with ourselves: It is somehow intrinsic to human nature that fantasies are necessary for happiness but not sufficient to insure that such happiness will continue for very long. It is this dilemma, dramatized so sensitively and imaginatively by Allen, that makes The Purple Rose of Cairo so poignant and profound.

Questions for Discussion:

  1. Which of the main characters in The Purple Rose of Cairo—Cecilia, Monk, Tom, Gil—best fits Boggs’ definition of flat (two-dimensional), round (three-dimensional), static, and/or developing characters?
  2. Contrast Tom Baxter and Gil Shepherd. How is each of them characterized (by what means), and how are the two similar to (and different from) each other? And finally, what meanings lie in the similarities and contrasts?
  3. The Purple Rose of Cairo is what Boggs calls a linear, chronological (read: traditional) narrative—despite its seemingly fantastic turn of events, each event in the plot is motivated by one before it. What would you identify as being the exposition, the complication, the climax, and the denouement of the film?
  4. In chapter four, Boggs tells us that setting can both determine and reflect character. What ironies does Allen achieve by contrasting the economic (and psychological) Depression of Cecilia's world, lonely and unilluminated, with the world of the "Purple Rose of Cairo" playing at the film theater?
  5. Allen frequently reminds his audience that they are watching a film that is largely about the dynamics of watching films. Thematically, what does Allen’s film suggest to us about the meaning or value of films? How does that meaning challenge, extend, or reinforce what Buster Keaton suggests in Sherlock, Jr.?