(1980, b/w) Celebrity filmmaker Sandy Bates (Woody Allen) reluctantly attends a weekend festival, celebrating and honoring his earlier films. While his critics complain that "He's not funny anymore" in his more recent cinemas - documenting his private sufferings and fobbing them off on audiences as art - Sandy replies: "I don't feel funny anymore," what with all the horror and suffering in the world (not to mention elementary particles of the universe decaying) and the recent death of a friend.

In this joke of reality, applying Fellini-esque surrealism to his own sardonic autobiography, director/writer Woody Allen has Sandy (an expert in art and masturbation) say to a group of extraterrestrial aliens: "I've gotta find meaning." He's told he's asking the wrong questions.

At the seminar, staying at the Hotel Stardust, he's surrounded by adoring fans, autograph hounds, academics, aspiring actors and screenwriters, groupies, and former friends from childhood. He takes an interest in Jack Abel (John Rothman), a cinema instructor at Columbia, because of his lovely girlfriend Daisy (Jessica Harper), whom he tries to seduce into escapism with him.

His movies (having psychological themes rather than political) remind him of his memories that he's transformed into fantasies. As a child he practiced magic tricks and pretended he could soar into the sky like Superman. Between screenings of his movies he answers inquiries from the audience; questioned about his atheism (though his Academy Award nomination was for a feature in which he had the role of God), he replies that he considers himself to be "God's loyal opposition."

His former French lover Isobel (Marie-Christine Barrault) accepts his invitation to the festival, leaving her husband and bringing along her two children. His former wife, Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling), now married and residing in Hawaii, appears in his remembrances of the best (a moment in jazz heaven of her looking up beatifically at him while listening to Louis Armstrong) and worst (accusing him of flirting with her 13-year-old kid cousin) of their days together: two days out of the month she could be incredibly fascinating, but otherwise a basket case.

Sandy attributes all success of fame, fortune, and female companionship to luck. Nevertheless, in this satirical film he isn't as funny as he used to be.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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