The Purple Rose of Cairo

I notice that the Woody Allen movie The Purple Rose of Cairo is going to be on TCM tomorrow afternoon at 2:15 PM. So this morning was the perfect time to sit down to watch it again and do a blog post here.

Mia Farrow plays Cecilia, a struggling waitress in New Jersey in 1935 who lives with her husband Monk (recently deceased Danny Aiello), an unemployed factory worker (remember, this being 1935, there's a depression on). It's not much of a life, so to deal with the humdrum existence, Cecilia likes to go to the local movie theater for some escapism, seeing a movie called The Purple Rose of Cairo multiple times.

She's about to start seeing the movie more, because she finds that Monk is cheating on her while a dispute with her boss at the diner gets her fired. So after leaving Monk she decides to spend all day at the theater watching this formulaic movie. The plot of the movie-within-a-movie, such as it is, has some socialites going on a trip to North Africa where they meet adventurer Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) and bring him back to New York.

If the movie-within-a-movie is less than exciting for those of us who have watched a ton of 1930s movies, imagine how it must have been for the actors who had to do take after take. So one day, while Cecilia is watching the movie for the umpteenth time in a row, something strange happens. Tom Baxter decides he's tired of this lame story, and decides to step off the screen, having seen the way Cecilia eyes the dashing young adventurer! The two then run out a side door of the theater.

Now, this doesn't seem to be a fantasy or dream sequence, because odd things start happening at the theater. The other characters in the movie-within-a-movie start complaining about the absence of Baxter, and start showing up as though they're actors on the set back in Hollywood, between takes. And other patrons in the movie theater start complaining about what they're seeing, since they paid to see an actual movie after all.

News of this all hits Hollywood, where Gil Shepherd (Jeff Daniels again), the actor who plays Tom Baxter, is horrified because of this and what his character's refusal to keep doing the story will mean for his career. So Gil heads off to New Jersey to try to find Tom, meeting Cecilia along the way since she's more or less protecting Tom. As for Tom, he begins to have problems since he's still not a real person despite having stepped off the screen....

It's an interesting premise, and one that's handled pretty well by Allen and the actors. Daniels, with the double role, has the most to do here and shows again that he's actually a capable actor. Farrow is good as well, although I find it difficult to think or her apart from the personal problems in her relationship with Woody Allen. Watch for Van Johnson in a small role as one of the characters in the movie-within-a-movie; I also could have sworn one of the complaining patrons looked and sounded a bit like Broderick Crawford, although IMDb and Wikipedia say no. I think fans of 1930s movies will really enjoy Allen's homage to the genre here.

The Purple Rose of Cairo seems to be out of print on DVD, although you can watch it at Amazon streaming if you can do the streaming thing.