Stardust Memories

Stardust Memories is a 1980 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen and starring himself, Charlotte Rampling, Jessica Harper, Marie-Christine Barrault and  Sharon Stone in her film debut. The film is about a filmmaker who recalls his life and his loves - the inspirations for his films - while attending a retrospective of his work. The film is shot in black and white and is reminiscent of Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963), which it parodies.

Stardust Memories was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy written directly for screen, but was not warmly received by critics on its original release, and is not among the most renowned works in Allen's filmography. The film has nonetheless been re-evaluated to some extent, with modern reception more often positive than negative. Allen, who denies that the work is autobiographical and has expressed regret that audiences interpreted it as such, even considers it to be one of his finest, alongside The Purple Rose of Cairo and Match Point.

Plot
The film follows famous filmmaker Sandy Bates, who is plagued by fans who prefer his "earlier, funnier movies" to his more recent artistic efforts, while he tries to reconcile his conflicting attraction to two very different women: the earnest intellectual Daisy and the more maternal Isobel. Meanwhile, he is also haunted by memories of his ex-girlfriend, the unstable Dorrie.

Cast

Themes
Allen has asserted that Stardust Memories is not an autobiographical work. "[Critics] thought that the lead character was me," the director is quoted as saying in Woody Allen on Woody Allen. "Not a fictional character but me, and that I was expressing hostility towards my audience. That was in no way the point of the film. It was about a character who is obviously having a sort of nervous breakdown and, in spite of success, has come to a point in his life where he is having a bad time."

The conflict between the maternal, nurturing woman and the earnest, usually younger one, is a recurring theme in Allen's films. Like many of Allen's films, Stardust Memories incorporates several jazz recordings including those by such notables as Louis Armstrong, Django Reinhardt, and Chick Webb. The film's title alludes to the famous take of "Stardust" recorded in 1931 by Armstrong, wherein the trumpeter sings "oh, memory" three times in succession. However, it is the master take that plays in the movie during the sequence where Sandy is remembering the best moment of his life: looking at Dorrie while listening to Armstrong's recording of the song.

The film deals with issues regarding religion, God, and philosophy; especially existentialism, psychology, symbolism, wars and politics.  It is also about realism, relationships, and death.  It refers to many questions about the meaning of life. It also ruminates on the role that luck plays in life, a theme Allen would revisit in Match Point.

Production
Filming locations include:
 Asbury Park, New Jersey, USA
 Belmar, New Jersey, USA
 Deal, New Jersey, USA
 Hoboken, New Jersey, USA
 Neptune City, New Jersey, USA
 Ocean Grove, New Jersey, USA

From the sleevenotes of MGM's 2000 DVD release: "Shot on location in the fall of 1979, Stardust Memories may look as though it takes place in a Victorian-style seaside hotel, but it was actually shot at the Ocean Grove Great Auditorium and the Methodist Episcopal Conference Center and Concert Hall in New Jersey. Most of the interiors, including the bedroom scenes, were shot in a vacant Sears Roebuck building, but the crew also recreated a vintage train at Filmways Studio in Harlem. To reproduce the movement of a rail car, the whole train was mounted on jacks and gently jostled back and forth."

Reception
In Diane Jacobs' But We Need the Eggs: The Magic of Woody Allen, the director is quoted as saying: "shortly after Stardust Memories opened, John Lennon was shot by the very guy who had asked him for his autograph earlier in the day... This is what happens with celebrities: one day people love you; the next day they want to kill you."

Aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports a 68% approval of Stardust Memories, with an average rating of 6.7/10 from 28 reviews. Janet Maslin wrote the work "is [Allen's] most provocative film thus far and perhaps his most revealing" and certainly "the one that will inspire the most heated debate". Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four and called it "a disappointment. It needs some larger idea, some sort of organizing force, to pull together all these scenes of bitching and moaning, and make them lead somewhere." Gene Siskel gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and suggested that Allen "seems to have run out of creative gas. The film doesn't have much of a premise." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote that the film "has no dramatic shape or resonance, and the incidental laughs are few and far between." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times was positive, calling the film "both extremely funny and extremely affecting ... Allen's growth as an actor and as a filmmaker in confident command of his medium is one of the several remarkable readouts from this film." Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote, "In 'Stardust Memories' we get more of the same thoughts over and over—it's like watching a loop. The material is fractured and the scenes are very short, but there was not a single one that I was sorry to see end. 'Stardust Memories' doesn't seem like a movie, or even like a filmed essay; it's nothing."

In a joint article, The Daily Telegraph film critics Robbie Collin and Tim Robey listed it as Allen's 10th greatest film and wrote; "slammed at the time, it's a retrospective knock-out, thanks to its ambitious structure, vinegary gags and the searing monochrome photography, courtesy of Gordon Willis". Sam Fragoso of IndieWire also ranked it among Allen's best works, lauding it as "an extraordinarily realized portrait of artistic stagnation". The film was listed 16th among Allen's efforts in a poll of Time Out contributors, with editor Joshua Rothkopf praising it as "a piece of self-referential hilarity in its own right."

In October 2013, Stardust Memories was voted by the Guardian readers as the eighth best film directed by Woody Allen.

Box office
Stardust Memories opened in North America on September 26, 1980 to an onslaught of bad reviews. At 29 theatres, it grossed $326,779 ($11,268 per screen) in its opening weekend. The film failed to attract more than Allen's loyal fanbase in the long run, and it grossed  $10,389,003 by the end of its run. The film's budget was $10 million.

Soundtrack
 "Hebrew School Rag" (Dick Hyman) by Dick Hyman
 "Just One of Those Things" (Cole Porter) by Dick Hyman
 "You'd Be So Easy to Love" (Cole Porter) by Dick Hyman
 "Tropical Mood Meringue" (Sidney Bechet) by Sidney Bechet
 "I'll See You in My Dreams" (Isham Jones and Gus Kahn) by Django Reinhardt
 "Tickletoe" (Lester Young) by Lester Young with Count Basie and His Orchestra
 "Three Little Words" (Harry Ruby, Bert Kalmar) by The Jazz Heaven Orchestra
 "Brazil" (Ary Barroso, S.K. Russell) by Marie Lane
 "Palesteena" (J. Russel Robinson and Con Conrad) by The Original Dixieland Jazz Band
 "Body and Soul" (Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Johnny Green, and Frank Eyton) by Django Reinhardt
 "Night on Bald Mountain" (Modest Mussorgsky) by Vienna State Opera Orchestra
 "If Dreams Come True" (Irving Mills, Edgar M. Sampson, and Benny Goodman) by Chick Webb
 "Just One of Those Things" (Cole Porter) by Dick Hyman
 "You'd Be So Easy to Love" (Cole Porter) by Dick Hyman
 "One O'Clock Jump" (Count Basie) by The Jazz Heaven Orchestra
 "Sugar" (Maceo Pinkard and Sidney D. Mitchell)
 "Sweet Georgia Brown" (Ben Bernie, Kenneth Casey and Maceo Pinkard)
 "Moonlight Serenade" (Glenn Miller) by Glenn Miller
 "Stardust" (Hoagy Carmichael, Mitchell Parish) by Louis Armstrong

References

External links

 
 
 
 

Category:1980 films
Category:1980s comedy-drama films
Category:American comedy-drama films
Category:American black-and-white films
Category:American films
Category:English-language films
Category:Films about film directors and producers
Category:Films about filmmaking
Category:Films directed by Woody Allen
Category:Films shot in New Jersey
Category:Films with screenplays by Woody Allen
Category:United Artists films
Category:Films produced by Robert Greenhut