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Purple Rose of Cairo
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by Video Treasures
Sales Rank: 33660
Price: $9.99
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One of the high points of Woody Allen's career. Cecilia (Mia Farrow), a depression-era waitress married to a brutish husband (Danny Aiello), finds her only escape at the movies, her current favorite being a light comedy about an explorer among socialites, called <I>The Purple Rose of Cairo</I>. She sees it so many times that the main character, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), falls in love with her and steps off the screen to woo her. When news of this gets back to the movie studio, the producers send the actor who played Baxter (also Daniels) to convince Baxter to get back on the screen. The script is one of Allen's funniest, but underlying the whole story is a current of sadness that gives the movie's ending a surprising impact. Allen himself considers <I>The Purple Rose of Cairo</I> to be his personal favorite of his own films. A gem. <I>--Bret Fetzer</I>
Viewer Reviews
If there is one Woody Allen film that I think anyone can enjoy, it is `The Purple Rose of Cairo' (although `Hannah and Her Sisters' is quite universal too). There is something about the way that Mia Farrow's character Cecilia connects so well with the average human being, and the way that her love affair with screen character Tom Baxter feels so genuine even when it is impossible. I just can't help but feel this wonderful feeling of closure every time I watch this movie (which has only been a few times since I just recently have been turned onto Allen in general). I just feel such a raw connection to this movie, and I know that many have felt the same connection.
The film takes place in 1930's New Jersey and follows unhappily married Cecilia as she smothers her sorrows by frequenting the local movie theater to watch a film entitled `The Purple Rose of Cairo'. Cecilia's husband is abusive and unfaithful and her clumsy demeanor has just cost her her job. Feeling low and worthless she decides to watch `The Purple Rose of Cairo' once again to lift her spirits only to have her world turned upside down when one of the characters, archaeologist Tom Baxter, walks right off the screen into the theater and drags her out the back door. Tom is everything that Cecilia needs and she him, but their romance is ill fated. Hollywood is up in arms at the fact that Tom Baxter's all over the country are walking off the screen and the film is suffering since none of the other characters can function without things back to normal. Cecilia's husband begins to suspect something fishy with regards to his wife's newfound affair and the actor Gil Shepherd, who plays Tom Baxter, is desperately trying to convince his character to return to the film from which he escaped.
The film sounds like frothy fun, and it is fun, but it is also far from frothy.
`The Purple Rose of Cairo' is a very strong character study on the fact that all of us make a difference. Even a small character in a film is there for a reason and without him the rest of the world ceases to operate. It also shows the desperation in all of us to break free from the confines of expectation and just be our own person, instead of what the world has conditioned us to be. Cecilia wants to be like the characters in her favorite movies and Tom wants to be like the average Joe sitting in the seat in front of him. We all want what we can't have, but in the end have to find that balance that makes us happy.
Woody Allen is a classic director, and the more I watch of his films the more enamored I am by the creative genius that he was (and at times still is). I have never been a huge follower of directors, always being more of an actor's man than anything else, but recently I've been researching directors and their body of work and I must say that Woody Allen is one of the most impressive. A lot of people that I know are put off by Allen's style of filmmaking, but what I find most impressive about films like `The Purple Rose of Cairo', `Hannah and Her Sisters' and `Alice' is that they have so much of Allen's style while building themselves into another bracket altogether from his more famed work like `Annie Hall'. This is without doubt a Woody Allen film, but it is an Allen film that any and everyone can enjoy.
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