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A choice jest kicks things off, a burglary interrupted by a call from Guess That Tune in a darkened screen streaked by flashlights, furtively at first and then jubilantly. (Cassandra's Dream has a doleful variation two decades later.) Rockaway recollections, "a million of 'em" in Woody Allen's uncharacteristically fond collage. His prepubescent surrogate (Seth Green) is a wry little redhead who uses Israel donation money for a Masked Avenger decoder ring and takes his lumps after dubbing the rabbi "my faithful Indian companion." Mom (Julie Kavner) and Dad (Michael Tucker) head a vaudeville houshold, "I love him, but what did I do to deserve him?" The impressionistic Forties, a continuous flow of tunes and programs from when radio had the nation's ear and imagination, Fanny and Alexander as cherished oldies station. Perpetually unlucky in love, the aunt (Dianne Wiest) is left in the mist after a War of the Worlds broadcast has her date fleeing in terror. Similarly, Pearl Harbor news curtail the dramatic debut of the former cigarette girl (Mia Farrow), an aborted bit of Chekhov facilitated by an amiable mobster (Danny Aiello). "I meet somebody from the old neighborhood in years, I finally do, and I gotta kill her." At his least anxiety-corroded, Allen takes a tour of Radio City Music Hall as a fantasy movie palace and basks in the glow of Diane Keaton singing Cole Porter. The I Vitelloni beach turns up as a spot for playing peekaboo with a Nazi submarine, the collective grief over the girl in the well gives way to the vicarious thrill of a New Year's Eve bash at the Stork Club. The coda is a galaxy of neon where swells can grow reflective about the passage of time, "and we never knew what any of it was about." Davies in The Long Day Closes makes the gauziness flesh. Cinematography by Carlo Di Palma. With Josh Mostel, Renée Lippin, Wallace Shawn, Jeff Daniels, Tony Roberts, Joy Newman, Kenneth Mars, David Warrilow, Richard Portnow, Judith Malina, Gina DeAngelis, and Kitty Carlisle.
--- Fernando F. Croce |