Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8623 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-07-16
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Colour, PAL
• Original language: Italian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 85 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
"Doesn't he know he's got the greatest gift anyone can have, the gift of laughter?" Woody Allen stars as filmmaker Sandy Bates, who, like John Sullivan in Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels, no longer wants to make comedies. As studio executives threaten to wrest control of his latest film, he reluctantly attends a weekend film-culture festival in his honour, where he is besieged by journalists ("I'm doing a piece on the shallow indifference of celebrities"), groupies ("I drove all the way from Bridgeport to make it with you"), and persistent oddballs ("Can I talk to you about my idea I have for a movie? It's a comedy based on the whole Guyana mass suicide").

After the exhilarating Manhattan, Stardust Memories was a dramatic departure that threw critics and fans for an outraged loop. But out of all of Allen's films, it is perhaps the one most ripe for rediscovery. It poses the same dilemma Stephen King would later tackle in Misery: What happens when a popular artist is held captive by an adoring audience that doesn't want him to change? The answer may come from an extraterrestrial, who in one of the many fantasy sequences advises the comedian, "You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes."

The film is impeccably cast with Charlotte Rampling, Jessica Harper, and Marie-Christine Barrault (of Cousin/Cousine) as the three women in Sandy's life. There are also choice bits by Sharon Stone as a fantasy woman on a train, Daniel Stern as an aspiring actor, Louise Lasser as Sandy's overwhelmed secretary, Laraine Newman as an unimpressed studio executive, and Tony Roberts as Tony Roberts. My own aunt, Victoria Zussin, utters the film's most famous line as the patron who tells Sandy she loves his movies, especially "your early funny ones." --Donald Liebenson

Synopsis
A top film-maker faces a major crisis in his life and career when he attends a festival of his films and is hounded by the women in his life, fans, critics, studio execs and groupies!

Customer Reviews

Better seen again!
A film presumed autobiographical by many and, therefore, considered insulting by some. When Allen's character becomes disillusioned and unhappy with the limitations imposed upon him by his audience, his financers and his life, he seems to grow resentful and begin to attack.

Taken at face value, this is a comedy of grotesques: it's funny, desperate, purposely incoherent and confused. It's made that way, I imagine, to show the protagonist's state of mind: much of the film actually takes part therein. This film is a perfect release for DVD; the black and white photography is best seen 'sharp' and, as I say, it's the kind of movie better seen again. I started to like it the second time I saw it; now - I love it!

Clue in the title?
What, exactly, is going on here? Is Woody Allen, in apparently revealing himself, perhaps as barely and honestly as he ever has, actually playing his cards closer to his chest than at first appears? This movie apparently presents the perfect biographical sketch of Allen's well known persona; self-obsessed, frequently pretentious, neurotic, unstable, lonely, needy, nerdy and therefore funny in a desperate sort of way.

But is it a disguise? Is Allen gently and warmly sending up his own stereotype? Stardust Memories never quite commits to definite conclusion on this question. But surely the location is a clue? Both "Some Like It Hot" and "The Stunt Man" share it and both are films about people pretending to be someone they aren't.

Quite chaotic, witty, warm, visually stunning and in the end reassuring. Sandy gets the right woman, makes the right calls, accepts himself and his life. We are not any closer the the "real" Woody. But maybe that's the point. There isn't one - it's all stardust!

The Fairlground Of Celebrity, A Cautionary Fantasy
I put off seeing this for years. My mother introduced me to Woody Allen and always insisted Stardust Memories was a disappointing film. Well, I think it's time she watched it again.

The flipside of Manhattan (1979), Stardust Memories (1980) is another b/w movie, sort of an arthouse Sullivans Travels, in so far as the director character wants to switch from comedy to more serious fare. I think it is Woody's most successful amalgamation of Bergman's influence with his own innate comedic flare. Actually, Annie Hall is a better comparison than Manhattan because once again Woody's protagonist is reflecting on a past love affair, whilst being overwhelmed by the attentions of admirers at a festival of his films. The scattergun questions and comments thrust at and around him by his fans and critics are hilariously perceptive, and the flights of fancy beautifully integrated and dovetailed. Personally, I think the film might be just a fraction too long - even at 85mins - but there's so much to laugh at, admire and enjoy, it hardly matters. I guess, it's a summation of his work from the 1970s, before the new period with Mia Farrow and Allen's increasing delight in nostalgia.

Charlotte Rampling is splendid as Sandy's (Allen) lost love - the scene where they break up is very cleverly done. There's also a lovely cut away from a dialogue with space aliens (you'll see) to the image of lots of air balloons coming in to land. You can see how Allen must have caught his target audience off guard with the disorientating opening scene, the coda of Sandy's new film which the studio execs loathe. Truth is, it's very poetic, expertly done, even as a parody, and in true Woody Allen fashion, intellectual pretension is undercut by humour immediately.

Sandy may want to confront life's tragedy, but Stardust Memories is a comedy with its teeth bared. You'll enjoy it, a masterpiece, a world away from some of the recent euro stinkers.