Colvin In Paris Part Two: Memories With Woody

My dislike of Woody Allen films is well documented, through Netflix ratings and comments on blogs, including a few posts on Jeremy Richey’s Moon in the Gutter. Of the twenty-four films directed by Allen that I had seen before my trip to Paris, I liked three: Manhattan (1979), Another Woman (1988), and Husbands and Wives (1992). Not a very good batting average. In fact, I almost skipped out on attending the screening of Allen’s Stardust Memories (1980) at the Filmothèque du Quartier Latin based on our history together. Thankfully, I did not.

It was the middle of June and homesickness was taking its toll. I missed my girlfriend. I missed my cat. I missed forests and hills. I missed staying up late and watching stupid television. My heart was heavy and my head was constantly throbbing. I had just picked up the current issue of Pariscope, the guide to all cinematic happenings in the city, and, moping along in muggy dreariness near the Place d’Italie, I spied a listing for the Filmothèque’s Woody Allen retrospective (God, the French love him), and decided the day might be brightened by a light dosage of Woody’s usually unbearable routine of nervous romance and pseudo-intellectual banter. What really sold me was the film that was playing – Stardust Memories – a gigantic allusion to Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963), one of my all-time favorites, and photographed by Gordon Willis, whom I trusted to at least provide some enticing visuals. I hopped on the Metro and had to half-jog once I got to the Boulevard St-Michel in order to make it on time for the 2:00 pm showing. Sweaty and a bit tired, I waited in line for the doors to open with about twenty people, all looking equally uncomfortable.


Seated in the Filmothèque, anticipating the dimming of the lights, I heard English being spoken by a trio of students around my age – two American guys and a French girl, who was romantically linked with the more attractive dude. They were seated at my left, and I was positioned in the center of the screen. They complained about not having a good enough view when I decided to speak to them. I think it surprised the girl-less American next to me when I told him, in English, that I could move over a few seats, if they wanted. Enthusiastically and with genuine gratitude, they thanked me and we all proceeded to shift down the row. Pre-flick friendly chatter started up and I learned that my next-seat neighbor was from Oklahoma. I told him I was from Kentucky. He had never been there, and I told him that I had never visited the Sooner State either. I inquired as to if he had seen any good movies in Paris and he revealed that he and his friend had seen Five Easy Pieces (1970) a few days earlier and that that was about it. I asked if he had seen 8 ½, to which he replied in the negative, prompting me to briefly explain the plot and style of that film so that he could get the most out of Stardust Memories. He was sincerely appreciative of my half-assed introduction, and, for once, my film geekiness came in handy. How about that?

The opening scene of Stardust Memories, a sarcastic, yet loving, quotation of 8 ½’s famous introductory dream sequence, had me nearly rolling on the floor immediately. Woody Allen was making me laugh! What a novelty! Gordon Willis was coming through as well, imitating the crisp black-and-white cinematography of Gianni Di Venanzo, while concurrently injecting a humorous, satirical flair that further embraced the comedic edge of Fellini’s masterpiece. Then came the turn – instead of the opening all being a dream, it was a movie, created by Allen’s fictional protagonist, Sandy Bates (played by Allen, of course), a director in the midst of an artistic and romantic crisis (sound familiar?), openly seeking to emulate Fellini’s precedent and rescue himself from being pigeonholed as a solely comic filmmaker, just as Allen had been the time. Autobiographical elements popped up throughout the film, although Allen denies the autobiographical quality of Stardust Memories, and the film sustained a brilliant blend of absurd/surreal humor and existential/romantic tragedy as it relayed some of the most intense moments in any Woody Allen picture – a fitting tribute to the Maestro.


Watching Sandy Bates struggle with lost love, trust and idealism, his flashbacked past, and the dark cloud hanging over his future, I felt centered and placid. The screen was talking to me, calming me, and I was talking back, in my chuckles and moments of sharp recognition. Woody and I were finally having the conversation that I felt like he had always been trying to have with me. He and his fellow filmmakers had found the right framing, the right lighting, the right emotions, the right movements, and the right cuts. As the film played and I grew closer to it and I felt myself loving my girlfriend more, loving my home more, loving cinema more – all without bittersweet loneliness, only an exuberant promise of being held: by her, by the foothills, by each frame of film. I felt comfortable in Paris, really comfortable, for the first time. And at the end of the film, Woody did something that made me love him.

After Sandy Bates screens his finished film for the entire cast and crew (a meta-feat of “hey, was she playing an actress playing a part or was she just playing the part or is she just playing herself?” comparable to Fellini’s achievement), and after they all rush out, muttering critical opinions to one another, he is left alone in the relatively small screening room. A bit somber, a bit relieved, Sandy (or is it actually Woody this time?) walks up and down the vacant aisles, touching his hand slightly on the tops of empty chairs. He grabs his thick-rimmed glasses from his former seat near the front of the pew-less congregation and looks up at the plain white screen affixed to the wall. Staring deeply, lovingly, he pauses and carefully moves closer to the smooth rectangular icon, suggesting intimacy. Slowly, he places his hand upon the screen and lowers his head slightly before moving away respectfully and exiting the screening room. I knew what he had done. He had said, “thank you.” I understood. I knew that gesture, that feeling. Woody and I were on the same wavelength then – grateful for the cinema, grateful for its generosity. And that’s a sensation that I have brought back with me – all the way home, thousands of miles from Paris, where Woody spoke to me and made my loneliness bearable.

by Brandon Colvin
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Work and Play in Fellini's "8 1/2"

Right out of the gate, Federico Fellini’s cinematic milestone, 8 ½ (1963), displays its surreal, tragicomic analysis of the dichotomy between responsibility and escapism – work and play – with iconic imagery and endless imagination. In the film’s famous opening scene, artistically frustrated and creatively drained film director Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) sits in his car, locked in a traffic jam – inside of a dream. As Guido grows increasingly claustrophobic and as his breathing becomes heavier, he notices that he is being watched. Becoming frantic, Guido climbs out of his car’s window and stands on the roof. Spreading his arms to catch the wind, Guido begins to fly. While soaring through the sky, Guido notices a string is attached to his ankle, triggering his realization that he is being used as a kite by some condescending fellows on horseback, who are gallivanting on a beach. Guido’s tormentors then tug his string, causing him to crash into the ocean, resulting in his awakening from his fantasy, as he lies in bed, thrusting his outstretched hand into the air, full of desperation

In the dream sequence, the extent to which the pressure and strain of Guido’s job invade his life is expressed succinctly and clearly. Even in Guido’s fantasies – his supposed moments of liberation – he cannot escape the constricting demands of his overseers. Guido seeks freedom from the confines of his smothering work (his car) and when he is able to fly away, to experience the joy of escape and play, he is only made to realize that he is still the object of someone else’s playtime: he is a kite that forgets he is a slave to the whims of his controller. Guido’s recreation can never reach its idealized potential; the bonds of employment pull him down, sinking him in an abyss of drudgery and stress. As 8 ½’s narrative progresses, Guido continually slips into extravagant reveries, each combining humor and melancholy, during his charmingly destructive attempt to complete his current film amidst the chaos of his dissolving marriage, strained friendships, inconsolable sexual appetite, and Catholic guilt. Guido’s fantasies are always given dark, unusual facets, while upholding an unsentimental nostalgia for innocence and idealism – as in his imaginings of the perfect woman, Claudia (Claudia Cardinale), his visualized wish for an obnoxious critic/script doctor to hang himself, and, most notably, his hallucinatory harem of all of the women in his life, in which he dictatorially designates to them their places and responsibilities. During his fantasies, Guido adopts the role of the employer, doling out responsibilities and attaining the freedom that allows him to truly be at play; his desires do not illustrate a sympathetic portrait of the “working man,” but rather the cynical structure of power that even the subjugated and shat-on wish to sit on top of.
Making Guido’s situation even more ironic is the fact that he bosses so many others around, considering he is a film director, but can’t stand to be pushed around by anyone else. Guido’s attitude exemplifies a realistic and surprisingly endearing megalomania, which Fellini describes using an incredibly personal and honest script, milking Marcello Mastroianni’s irresistible warmth and intelligent masculinity. Guido’s ambitions to autonomy and power set-up a difficult problem – hinging on his lofty expectations – without an easy solution. In fact, the film’s solution to Guido’s struggle for freedom and recreation is perhaps one of the most thought provoking and ambiguous in film history.

As Guido’s film spirals out of control into a state of universal ridicule and artistic mire, the troubled director’s options seem limited and dismal. Failure looming, Guido caves in, deciding to crawl underneath a table during a hectic press conference for his film and shoot himself. Or does he? The film’s repeated fluid transitions between reality and fantasy make the scene hard to pin down as being Guido’s true fate or an imagined extension of his anxiety. What follows Guido’s “suicide” is the film’s ultimate dream (or afterlife) sequence, in which Guido plays a sort of ringleader, organizing basically every character in the film into a huge dancing line, full of cheer and gusto.

Tellingly, the carnivalesque finale is sparked by post-suicide Guido’s sight of his younger self as a marching flautist with a band of clown musicians. Guido can only attain control over his life and can only reach a state of contentment after witnessing himself as a playful child – forgetting the weariness of the world, his work, his romantic entanglements, and his guilt, by losing himself in the celebratory tunes created by his happier self. Following the raucous dancing extravaganza that ensues, the young Guido is left alone, marching in a circus ring; his fellow musicians gone and all of the lights out, except for one spotlight which follows the chipper boy as he marches off screen in the film’s last shot. Is Guido’s youthful incarnation victorious, marching to freedom beyond the limits of the screen and the pressures of work and responsibility, or are the fading lights intended to notify the audience of the fantasy’s inevitable end? Fellini doesn’t answer so that the audience must define the situation for itself. Work or play?

by Brandon Colvin

This article originally appeared in Rise Over Run Magazine.***

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