 | |
List Price: $14.98 | | Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Salesrank: 32582
Released: July 5, 2000 |
| Our Price: $5.72 |
| Used Price: $3.83 |
|
MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
A sharp, satirical look at the high price of fame, Woody Allen's Stardust Memories is a "wickedly funny" (The New York Times) story about a disillusioned filmmaker who is just about at the end of his rope. Sparkling with the confidence of an artist in full bloom, Stardust Memories is "a film to be seen and savored" (Jeffery Lyons)! Legendary comic filmmaker Sandy Bates (Allen) is tired of being funny. Teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown, Bates attends a weekend retrospective of his films, only to confront the meaning of his work, the memories of his great love, Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling), and the merits of settling down with new girlfriend, Isobel (Marie-Christine Barrault). Plagued by hallucinations, alien visitations and the bloodless studio executives trying to re-cut his bleak new film, Bates struggles to find a reason to go on living. But when he falls prey to a gun-wielding fanatic, his zany brush with death reveals that there is value tohis own existence, and that often, the best reason to go on living is life itself.
Description of Stardust Memories:
"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 honor, 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 Cousine/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
Stardust Memories Reviews:
Stardust Memories 
2009-06-23 - I love this film from beginning to end. I have watched it many times and never fail to love it even more each time. Woody Allen is a genius that is able to make an everyday occurence into an hysterical event, by allowing you to experience what we all think but never say. His brand of paranoia, anxiety and pessimism reflects my own warped sense of humor. I was finally able to add this to my all time favorites. I will pull it out and watch it everytime I have a depressing day, as it never fails to cheer me up.
Wonderful to discover this after three decades 
2009-01-30 - Others have done masterful jobs in summarizing and reviewing the details of this film. I would only add that I am actually glad I waited until now, nearly three decades after its release, to discover "Stardust Memories."
If I had watched it when it first came out, I would have dissed it as "another unfunny Woody Allen movie." Watching it today, I find Woody Allen's take on the perils of fame subtly hilarious.
What could be worse than an artistic life where audiences laugh forcibly and long at one's most mundane observations? Where fans don't want to change one bit?
Where every stranger (most filmed here as grotesques, which is how they must look to a sensitive creative type who becomes famous) announces like a robot either, "I'm your biggest fan!" "Can you sign an autograph?" or "We're having a cancer benefit next month, can you come?"
I won't give away other moments of wryly observed comedy. Suffice to say, if you've never seen "Stardust Memories," you may find now the ideal time to discover its merits -- much better than rushing to see it in 1980, when someone like me would have shook my head (then) and said, much like the so-called fans shown here, " ' Bananas' and 'Take the Money and Run' were funnier!"
Can't miss
2008-08-03 - This and "Manhattan" are Woody's two great masterpieces, I think. It's quirky, but it hasn't dated at all because it's classic. You won't laugh a lot, but you may smirk, or smile. I hadn't seen this since it came out years ago. It was a great re-visit. Typical Woody jazz soundtrack lends atmosphere.
Declaration of cinematic independence
2008-07-27 - There are so many levels to Allen's "Stardust Memories" that it seems a slight to his genius as well as an impoverishment of the viewing experience to reduce the film to only one of them. At one level is the "existential" message: the worries about mortality and meaning that ooze through Allen's films, even the early slapstick ones. There's the "Eurofilm" message, in which Allen pays homage to the thoughtful and experimental films of Bergman and Fellini (rumor has it that Allen thought about calling the film "4" on the grounds that it wasn't half as good as Fellini's "8 1/2"). But there's also a hint of parody here as well, just the slightest suggestion that perhaps avant garde film makers (and this includes Allen) take themselves a bit too seriously. There's the exploration of human relationships with three different women--Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling), Daisy (Jessica Harper), and Isobel (Marie-Christine Barrault)--and the suggestion that in love, we're often more attracted to the wounded and broken (Dorrie and Daisy) than the healthy and life-affirming (Isobel). There's the comedic level, especially in the scenes with the aliens, the sister, and he driver.
But for my money, the overarching theme is one of liberation--Allen's liberation as a film maker. Although he's said that the film isn't autobiographical, and that he shouldn't be confused with the lead character Sandy Bates, these protestations are, of course, nonsense. Allen's film is in part a nose-thumbing at those fans and critics who demand that he continue making "funny" films--that is, all those viewers who think that they have proprietary rights in him and resist any challenge to those rights. The film is also a rebellion against the studio money men (in this case, chillingly represented by a haughty, supercilious, slightly bored Laraine Newman) for whom all that counts is the bottom line and who also claim proprietary rights. In short, the film is Woody's declaration of cinematic independence from fans' expectations and film executives' pocket books--but done with undertones of self-deprecation and bittersweetness rather than bravado, as witnessed by a closing scene of Allen staring into an empty theater's blank screen and a tender but bittersweet one of him remembering a Sunday morning with Dorrie.
And speaking of Dorrie: I don't think there's any doubt that the collaboration between Rampling and Allen in "Stardust" is sheer cinematic history. The collage of Dorrie speaking to the camera from the insane asylum, which Allen says was inspired by cubist art, is the film's most memorable scene.
In short, a brilliant film. No wonder Allen considers it one of his best.
stunning
2008-01-28 - Stardust Memories is a brilliant tribute to Fellini and Bergman that still manages to give us some of that classic Woody Allen humor every so often to lighten things up just a bit. The plot moves along at a good pace and I enjoyed the flashbacks that are interjected so masterfully into the film. The convincing acting held my attention all the way and the black and white footage is very tastefully done.
The action begins when overstressed movie director Sandy Bates (Woody Allen) is pushed into attending a two day film festival in his honor. At the festival they show his "funny films;" and Bates is lauded for that by his adoring--and endlessly pestering--fans who want many more comedies from Bates. Trouble is, however, that Sandy Bates no longer wants to make funny movies. Instead, he now prefers to make artistic, meaningful movies that reflect the human condition--or perhaps Sandy may even want to quit the film industry altogether and go into some type of profession in which he can help other people.
There are not one, not two, but three women in Sandy's life. His relationship with his former lover Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling) is portrayed very well in flashbacks; and his current romance with Isobel (Marie-Christine Barrault) is a bit shaky at times but it's still ongoing. Sandy also flirts with another woman he meets at the film festival; he likes Daisy's (Jessica Harper) artistic and sensitive qualities.
Look for excellent performance by Tony Roberts who plays himself; and Helen Hanft plays Vivian Orkin, the "MC" of the film festival.
Overall, if you've seen Fellini's 8 1/2, you're going to appreciate this film more than if you haven't. At the same time, however, other people will still get a lot out of this even if they haven't seen 8 1/2. I highly recommend this film for Woody Allen fans and people who enjoy artistic cinema with very high quality control.
