Stardust Memories (1980)
Directed by Woody Allen

Film Review

With Stardust Memories, Woody Allen completes an unbroken run of unique film masterpieces that began with the zany sci-fi romp Sleeper (1973) and saw him rapidly develop from a great comedy writer-director and performer into a fully fledged, serious auteur filmmaker.  At the time of its release, the film was lampooned by the critics, many of whom saw it as a poor man's version of Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963) or just a cold rehash of his earlier work.  Whilst Stardust Memories certainly revisits the core themes of Allen's previous films - Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979) in particular - it offers a fresh perspective on Allen's main preoccupations - the purpose of life, the impossibility of finding true love - and is arguably the director's most succinct expression of those anxieties that are at the crux of his art.

As in Fellini's film, Stardust Memories is about a middle-aged film director - played by Allen himself - who finds himself hopelessly locked in a professional and personal impasse.  But whereas 8½'s Marcello Mastroianni has lost the will to go on making films, Allen's alter ego (Sandy Bates) looks as if he has lost the will to go on living.  Citing the Second Law of Thermodynamics (which guarantees everything - even long-running soap operas and shampoo commercials - will eventually come to an end), Allen asks what is the point of doing anything if it is merely going to wind up being blotted out of existence.  Indeed, what is the point of living if you know you are going to die and be totally forgotten not long afterwards?  It is the same fundamental question that Allen keeps coming back to in his films, and it isn't until a later film - Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) - that he finally comes up with a plausible answer, which is that the meaning of life is life itself.

Stardust Memories deserves to be rated as Woody Allen's most intelligent and coherent work (in spite of a free-flowing narrative that shifts seamlessly back and forth between reality and imagination, past and present), but there is no question that it is one of the most attractively photographed of his films.  Doubtless encouraged by the success of Manhattan, Allen opted for black and white and his cinematographer (Gordon Willis) once again surpasses himself, giving the film the arresting lustre, vitality and elegance of a superior European art house movie of an earlier decade.  Allen seems to reference just about every first rank French and Italian film director of the 1960s - from Jean-Luc Godard to Michelangelo Antonioni, although it is the amusing allusions to Fellini's early films that are most easily spotted.  In one incredibly powerful sequence, Allen skilfully appropriates Godard's use of jump-cutting to convey both the fractured state of mind of the protagonist's former lover (Charlotte Rampling at her most enigmatic and desirable) and the devastating emotional impact this has on her visitor.  On a second or third viewing, you will discover that the film is chockful of wonderful little touches such as this.

Celebrity culture receives a fair bashing (as it would do in some of Allen's later films) as the film morbidly dwells on the asininity and selfishness of obsessive fans whilst convincing us that fame is definitely not what it is cracked up to be.  Allen was quick to dissociate himself with the often unsympathetic character he plays in the film after its original (fairly unsucessful) release, but the wearying pressure of persistent fan attention is doubtless something he knows a great deal about - his vivid caricaturing of fans in the film isn't that far from the truth.  (If there is one film guaranteed to put you off wanting to be famous, this is it.)  The disconnect between the public image and the private person is poignantly felt throughout the film and a great deal of Allen's own personal frustration comes through, in a way that can hardly fail to resonate with anyone who has yet to match professional success with emotional fulfilment (i.e. just about everyone with a pulse).

Like a deep philosophical discourse (but with far more belly laughs along the way), Stardust Memories is a film that forces us to re-evaluate our lives and seek within ourselves the purpose of our existence.  Allen doesn't need to be visited by super-intelligent extra-terrestrial beings to be told what his role in the grand scheme of things is ("You're not Superman; you're a comedian. You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes!").  The answer as to what life is for lies within ourselves, and if you really are that hung up on the fact that entropy will ultimately reduce everything to a cold sea of lifeless star dust you really do need to spend less time contemplating the futility of existence and watch more Woody Allen films.

Film Synopsis

Sandy Bates is a middle-aged comedy film director whose attempt to make a more serious movie is jeopardised by his producers.  Against his will, he is coerced into attending a film seminar offering a retrospective of his past work.  As he is being mauled by adoring fans who rave about his early work he meets a young musician, Daisy, who reminds him strongly of a mentally unstable woman, Dorrie, with whom he once he had an intense love affair.  Before he knows it, Sandy is torn between the youthful Daisy and his present girlfriend, Isobel, who offers him the stability he desperately needs.