In Woody Allen’s “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” a movie character in a classic, Old Hollywood, Depression-era costume drama steps out of the screen and falls in love with a woman in the audience. He later pulls her onto screen and into the fold of the movie and shows her a night on the town. A montage of lights and marquees with the two actors walking and smiling in black and white plays, and it’s a perfect, yet unremarkable moment typical of just about any film made from that era.
Step back though and you’ll remember this movie wasn’t made by some generic Hollywood director like Mervyn Le Roy or Leo McCarey, but was made by Woody Allen in 1985. Allen’s attention to detail in even just this simple montage is impeccable. And yet it’s all so light and frothy. Movies like “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan” all have a special place in my heart, but some of my favorites of Allen’s are movies like “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” “Sleeper” and this film’s closest surrogate, “Midnight in Paris.” They’re effortlessly fun and seemingly insignificant romances and flights of fantasy, but they have surprising depth and insight about the world.
“I want what happened last week to happen this week. Otherwise, what’s life about?” That line could go almost unnoticed in the film. It takes place in a hilariously chaotic moment where the characters on screen are all taunting, showboating and arguing with the theater patrons watching them. One of the attendees says that line and it says so much about why we come to the movies, about how their predictability doesn’t just offer an escape but keeps us grounded.
For Cecilia (Mia Farrow), she’s married to an out of work brute, and her inability to pull her head out of the clouds while thinking about the movies gets her fired from her waitress job. The movies are both an escape and the root of her problems. So she sees the film “The Purple Rose of Cairo” every day, numerous screenings, until finally the movie’s handsome architect Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) takes notice and decides to leave the screen to be with her.
As Woody Allen stages it, the moment almost feels like a dream sequence, like a quick one-off gag that will soon give way to the rest of the movie. But he emerges from the screen, and the crowd goes insane, and suddenly a grin creeps across your face as you realize the wonder and possibility this innocent act entails. Allen truly gets inside the head of a fictional character suddenly made aware. What if they all imagined they were the most critical part of the film? What if all their memories and their sense of the world existed only within the context of that universe?
For Tom, this leads to delicious, fish-out-of-water antics, but it also suggests that these characters are lonelier than you would imagine. “Where’s the fade out,” he asks Cecilia. “You make love without fading out? I can’t wait to see this.” In the same breath he also says, “Dad was a card. I never met him. He dies before the movie begins.” It’s Allen balancing comedy and character in a way only he can.
The adventures of Tom Baxter would’ve been more than enough for a short comedy, but Allen has the foresight to bring in the actor who portrayed him, Gil Shepherd (also Daniels) to consider what it’s like to meet a character you created. “I tried so hard to make him real,” Shepherd says, with just a hint of humble bragging and Hollywood narcissism for good measure.
Perhaps most surprising is “The Purple Rose of Cairo’s” ending, which shows that reality may not have happy endings, but there’s always another reel, always another movie. It’s why it’s worth celebrating movies as good as this one.