Mia Farrow's character
What did she have to do with the rest of the movie? She isn't related to little Joe's family. Would the movie lose any story without her?
shareIsn't the title of the movie a clue that the people that the family listen to on the radio are important to the point of the movie? The radio personalities (especially Mia Farrow with her transformation and the bit of her past self that always remains with her, despite the polish she acquires) have sufficient impact on Joe that they require half the running time of the movie. Why not remove the Dianne Wiest character from the movie? With just a little rewriting, there's no Aunt Bea. But we would lose the impact of that character on Joe. Same with Mia Farrow's Sally White.
The movie is clearly not plot-driven, and anyone who requires a conventional "what-happens-next?" story might as well not even bother with this.
You may as well go to perdition in ermine; you're sure to come back in rags.
Sheesh, it was just one question about the plot. I watch tons of Woody Allen movies and I say this is my fourth favorite. Do you think the movie adds up all the way through?
Sheesh, it was just one question about the plot.What's this expression of impatience about? Did I respond in too much detail? Or did you mistakenly think I was referring to you in my last sentence, which isn't my fault if you did.
Radio Days is one of my favorite movies, maybe my favorite Woody Allen, so yes I think the movie adds up beautifully all the way through.
You may as well go to perdition in ermine; you're sure to come back in rags. share
The last sentence did sound harsh. Explain how it adds up please because this is one of my top five favorite Woody Allen movies. I love his nostalgic films, although Love and Death isn't nostalgic, but it's hilarious and filled with great joy.
shareSally is one of the links between Joe's world (she's a neighborhood girl) and the world of the radio. (Joe's decoder ring is another, and Aunt Bea's appearance on the quiz show.) She never entirely loses her working-class accent (she slips in the New Year's Eve scene), just as Adult Joe, the Narrator, never escapes the influences of (and his affection for) his youth in the old neighborhood. There's also a lot in the movie about making peace with what you have: Joe accepting his father's job, Bea facing being a spinster, even the moment where Dad understands his love for Joe more when the family lives through the tragic girl-down-the-well story. So, in the absence of a strong plot, there is a tension between reality and imagination, the old and the new, the drab and the glamorous, and Sally is the bridge.
You may as well go to perdition in ermine; you're sure to come back in rags.
Well said. I've always seen Sally as a "bridge," as well.
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I hold a PhD in horribleness.
I didn't really care for Sally's subplot, I didn't see that big a connection with the rest of the film (Joe's family and memories) and it was odd he'd have so many memories related to this one particular girl. It just felt like Woody wanted to make Farrow's character bigger, so kept writing scenes for her to be on.
shareIt wasn't that Joe had memories just of her, though she was a celebrity and many of the scenes with her were not actual memories of his, just stories to flesh out the nostalgic world and yes, move the "story" back and forth between the family and the radio people. It's just like the way we know stories now about really famous people, and can tell the stories without actually "remembering" them from when they happened.
Maybe it's because Mia F was such a big star, it felt like it was almost as much "about" her as it was about Joe, but this movie would not have worked if it had remained in the house on Rockaway for the whole time--the mixing of the glamor of the radio world, and how much more connected people were to radio back then than we are now, since we have TV supplying almost everything for us that radio did for them. You have to jump back and forth between what was going on with the radio celebrities--who were as famous as today's TV celebs--and a family of "regular people" who were affected by them, with the War going on around all of them.
It wasn't just Sally's "subplot"--the whole movie ends up on the roof, the same roof where her days as a celebrity began and where she returns to, in her own little bit of nostalgia.