| The Purple Rose of Cairo | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Woody Allen |
| Written by | Woody Allen |
| Produced by | Robert Greenhut |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Gordon Willis |
| Edited by | Susan E. Morse |
| Music by | Dick Hyman |
| Distributed by | Orion Pictures |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 82 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $15 million |
| Box office | $10.6 million[2] |
The Purple Rose of Cairo is a 1985 Americanperiodfantasyromantic comedy film, written and directed byWoody Allen. Set inDepression-era New Jersey, it starsMia Farrow as a film lover who flees her abusive husband (Danny Aiello) after a film character (Jeff Daniels) falls in love with her and enters the real world. It is inspired bymetafictional works such as the filmsSherlock Jr. (1924) andHellzapoppin' (1941) and the playSix Characters in Search of an Author (1921).
The Purple Rose of Cairo was released on March 1, 1985 byOrion Pictures. It won theBAFTA Award for Best Film, while Allen received several screenwriting nominations, including at theAcademy Awards, theBAFTA Awards, and theWriters Guild of America Awards. Allen has ranked it among his best films.
In 1935 with theGreat Depression in full swing,New Jersey waitress Cecilia struggles with her stressful job and abusive marriage to her unfaithful husband Monk, whom she struggles to leave. After losing her job, she distracts herself by going to the movies, where she finds herself rewatchingThe Purple Rose of Cairo with a particular focus on archaeologist side character Tom Baxter, who falls in love with aCopacabana singer in the film's story.
Baxter notices Cecilia watching him and develops an attraction to the point where he addresses her directly and steps out of the film to run off with her, to the chagrin of the other, also sentient characters of the film. While Cecilia and Baxter grow closer as they spend an evening on the town together, the film's characters refuse to perform with him gone. The theater manager calls the film's producer and Baxter's actor Gil Shepherd is informed, who comes to town to fix the problem.
Shepherd runs into Cecilia and has her take him to Baxter, who refuses to return to the film as other versions of him across different screenings also start to rebel. Monk hears about Cecilia and Baxter's exploits and confronts them. Baxter beats him in a fair fight, so Monk hits him from behind, and a disgusted Cecilia refuses to leave with him. Baxter is accosted by a prostitute and taken to abrothel, but he remains faithful to Cecilia. Shepherd charms and kisses Cecilia, but she turns him down in favor of Baxter.
WhilePurple Rose producers plan to destroy its copies once they get Baxter back inside, he and Cecilia get engaged as he returns to the theater and takes her into the film. Inside, he defies his pre-written romance and shows Cecilia the film's world, only for Shepherd to arrive at the theater and profess his love for her. The men argue over her and she chooses Shepherd, loving Baxter but preferring to live in the real world.
Baxter reluctantly returns to the film, while Cecilia finally leaves Monk for good, believing she and Shepherd will run away toHollywood together. He has already left, his seduction a ploy to get Baxter back into the film, though he appears guilty on the return flight. She sits forlornly in the theater watchingTop Hat, but the sight ofGinger Rogers andFred Astaire dancing to "Cheek to Cheek" captures her attention and she begins to smile.
Michael Keaton was originally cast as Tom Baxter/Gil Shepherd because Allen was a fan of his work. Allen later felt that Keaton, who took a pay cut to work with the director, was too contemporary and hard to accept in the period role. The two amicably parted ways after ten days of filming and Daniels replaced Keaton in the role.[3]
Several scenes featuring Tom and Cecilia are set at theBertrand Island Amusement Park, which closed just prior to the film's production. Many of the outside scenes were filmed inPiermont, New York, a village on theHudson River about 15 miles north of the George Washington Bridge. Store fronts had false facades reflecting the depression-era setting. It was also filmed at the Raritan Diner inSouth Amboy, New Jersey. Woody Allen shut down the Kent Theater onConey Island Avenue in Brooklyn, the neighborhood he grew up in, to film there.
In a rare public appearance at theNational Film Theatre in 2001, Allen listedThe Purple Rose of Cairo as one of only a few of his films that ended up being "fairly close to what I wanted to do" when he set out to write it.[4] Allen provided more detail about the film's origins in a comment he made a year earlier, during a press junket forSmall Time Crooks:
Purple Rose was a film that I just locked myself in a room [to write]. ... I wrote it and halfway through it didn't go anywhere and I put it aside. I didn't know what to do. I toyed around with other ideas. Only when the idea hit me, a long time later, that the real actor comes to town and she has to choose between the [screen] actor and the real actor and she chooses the real actor and he dumps her, that was the time it became a real movie. Before that it wasn't. But the whole thing was manufactured.[5]
On its opening weekend,The Purple Rose of Cairo earned $114,095 from three theaters in the United States and Canada. Its total gross in the United States and Canada was $10,631,333.[2]
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes,The Purple Rose of Cairo holds an approval rating of 93%, based on 41 reviews, with an average score of 8/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Lighthearted and sweet,The Purple Rose of Cairo stands as one of Woody Allen's more inventive—and enchantingly whimsical—pictures."[7]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 75 out of 100, based on seven critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[8]
Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars, writing, "The Purple Rose of Cairo is audacious and witty and has a lot of good laughs in it, but the best thing about the movie is the way Woody Allen uses it to toy with the very essence of reality and fantasy."[9]Time Out also gave the film favorable appraisal, writing, "the star-struck couple, Farrow and Daniels, work wonders with fantastic emotions, while Allen's direction invests enough care, wit and warmth to make it genuinely moving."[10]Vincent Canby ofThe New York Times wrote some of the most glowing contemporary praise, stating, "My admiration for Mr. Allen extends to everyone connected withThe Purple Rose of Cairo—all of the actors, including Mr. Daniels, Mr. Aiello, Dianne Wiest and the players within the film within; Stuart Wurtzel, the production designer, and particularly Gordon Willis, the director of photography, who has great fun imitating the look of the movie Cecilia falls in love with, as well as in creating a style fitting to the depressed times that frame the interior film. ... I'll go out on a limb: I can't believe the year will bring forth anything to equalThe Purple Rose of Cairo. At 84 minutes, it's short but nearly every one of those minutes is blissful."[11]
The film was recognized as one of the "All-Time 100 Best Films" byTime magazine.[13]
In 1991, Jeff Daniels founded the Purple Rose Theatre Company in his hometown ofChelsea, Michigan. The theater takes its name fromThe Purple Rose of Cairo.[14]
