Movie Review: The Purple Rose Of Cairo (1985)

A fantasy, romance and comedy, The Purple Rose Of Cairo is a bittersweet celebration of movies as essential escapism.

The setting is New Jersey during the Great Depression. Cecilia (Mia Farrow) is trying to hold a job as a waitress while stuck with a useless husband in Monk (Danny Aiello). The movies are her one escape from a drudgerous life, and she studiously follows all the Hollywood gossip and watches every movie multiple times.

The latest show at the local theatre is the adventure romance The Purple Rose Of Cairo, featuring exotic foreign settings and swish Manhattan cocktail parties. Cecilia is impressed by charismatic star Gil Shepard (Jeff Daniels) playing the role of adventurer Tom Baxter. During one showing Tom notices Cecilia's dedication and walks off the screen and into the theater, insisting he wants to break free from the confines of his scripted existence and spend time with her instead. The other characters in his movie are left in limbo waiting for Tom to come back.

While Tom and Cecilia enjoy a whirlwind romance, the film's Hollywood producers and the actor Gil panic and descend on New Jersey, with Gil worried the runaway Tom will ruin his burgeoning reputation. Now Gil and Cecilia explore a romance, but Tom remains intent on winning the girl and finding a happy ending.

Writer and director Woody Allen conjures up a funny, romantic and magical story of the loving relationship between movies and their fans. In a compact 82 minutes, The Purple Rose Of Cairo captures all that cinema can represent in providing a bright spark and sometimes the only source of positivity during the worst of times.

Cecilia's marriage is a cycle of abuse and poverty and her menial job is about to crash with her next dropped dish. With the whole country drowning in an economic abyss, hope for a better future is in short supply. The dark movie theatre and films like The Purple Rose Of Cairo take her away from all that, to mysterious Egypt where a group of handsome rich friends meet dishy archeologist Tom Baxter, and they all come back to the bright lights and nightclubs of the big city. 

While all the joviality may as well be on a different planet from Cecilia's corner of New Jersey, the affordable silver screen images offer the perfect break from her misery.

Of course Hollywood needs Cecilia as much as she needs the entertainment, and once Tom steps off the screen and into her world, Allen embarks on a teasing run to outline the symbiotic relationship. Despite the mutual dependence, bridging the divide between fans in search of fantasy and characters in search of reality is no straightforward matter.

Allen cleverly introduces the complication of actor Gil protecting his reputation from his own creation. An unlikely love triangle takes shape, but when one lover is a fictional character and another is a professional actor pursuing stardom, the heartache risk is substantial.

But in the meantime the humour is persistent, most of it drawn from the stranded characters up on the screen, flummoxed by one of their own walking into the real world and with nothing to do except await his return. Meanwhile Tom Baxter knows only what his character knows, and his naive view of the world includes expecting a fade-out after kissing Cecilia.

And in the central role of Cecilia, Mia Farrow is elegantly soulful, carrying the weight of a depressed nation on her slender shoulders. Farrow sells the film's wild premise with ease, mixing incredulous fun with starstruck fandom while Cecilia's struggle in a grim and inescapable real world casts a long shadow.

Jeff Daniels is engaging in a dual role as an actor and his character. The supporting cast includes Van Johnson as one of the frustrated on-screen co-stars, and Dianne Wiest as a local tart who gets to teach the clueless Tom about brothels.

The Purple Rose Of Cairo is a mischievous love letter to a flicker of light connecting reality with fantasy, sustaining dreams through the darkness.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Do The Right Thing (1989)

A social drama with biting humour, Do The Right Thing takes a hard look at street-level race relations, and finds no heroes but plenty of boiling anger.

On a scorching hot day in a mostly black Brooklyn neighbourhood, Italian-American Sal (Danny Aiello) runs a popular pizza joint with his two sons Pino (John Turturro) and Vito (Richard Edson). Mookie (Spike Lee) is their laidback delivery guy, taking long breaks and mostly ignoring his hispanic girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez) and toddler son. Mookie's younger sister Jade (Joie Lee) appears to be the smarter of the two.

The neighbourhood is full of characters, including jovial drunk Da Mayor (Ossie Davis), overseer Mother Sister (Ruby Dee), and brooding boom box music fan Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn). DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) spins tunes at the local radio station. A Korean couple run the local grocery store, while three elderly black men spend their day chatting on the sidewalk. Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith) is mentally challenged and roams the streets selling pictures of Martin Luther King with Malcolm X.

Mookie's excitable friend Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) takes offence at Sal's "wall of fame" pictures, because no blacks are featured. He tries to organize a boycott of the pizzeria, with unintended consequences.

Director, producer and writer Spike Lee's third feature film is a seminal achievement. Eschewing a conventional plot, Do The Right Thing roams the baking streets within a few small blocks of Sal's pizza joint, and finds a collection of people dependent on each other, superficially getting along and yet seething with barely contained rage fanned by hurling insults. Lee creates the conditions for a bonfire rich with fuel and ready to burn, just waiting for a spark.

Few of the characters, and none of the ethnicities, escape with a clear conscience. Most are operating within shades of grey, with individuals like Pino at the darkest end expressing outward racist thoughts, while Sal and Mookie are more tolerant and inclined to get along. Lee makes it a point to emphasize black on black discord, a community quick to turn on itself and put down people like Da Mayor. Between the various visible ethnicities the fences are also thick, the Korean store owners subjected to black abuse for having the temerity to start and run a business, and the battle lines between blacks and Hispanics drawn over music volume.

Towards the middle are the clutch of people seemingly resigned to their fate, depressing as it seems, and willing to spout either cushioned or more brazen contempt against each other. The middle ground can be nudged to either extreme, and the film explores the territory between Martin Luther King's pacifist dignity and Malcolm X's more hardline attitudes, represented by the exceptionally limited space between the Love and Hate rings on Radio Raheem's fists. Violence is the potential weapon, easy to reach for but unquestionably placing the ultimate goal further out of reach.

Do The Right Thing bursts with the colours of heat. Yellows and reds dominate as Lee creates a fiery palette, capturing scorching temperatures and equally hot tension. The neighbourhood hums to the tunes of Love Daddy, and he along with Mother Sister constitute the only two people willing to give love a chance, although their relative passivity risks being trampled.

In a film with hardly a narrative thrust, Do The Right Thing creates a remarkably gripping imperative to find a resolution. Undoubtedly the simmering tensions need an outlet, and Lee provides a sadly predictable climactic release valve. In the eternal story of communities struggling against forces of history, poverty, and limited opportunities, the wrong thing is easy to discern, but it's much more difficult to know what the right thing is. The one certainty is that at the end of each day, the sense of injustice will have increased on all sides.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Danny Aiello

All movies starring Danny Aiello and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Godfather, Part II (1974)

Once Upon A Time In America (1984)

The Purple Rose Of Cairo (1985)

Radio Days (1987)

Moonstruck (1987)

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Léon: The Professional (1994)

Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Léon: The Professional (1994)

A thriller drama, Léon: The Professional delves into the psyche of two lost souls to unearth the humanity within.

In New York City, Léon (Jean Reno) is a low profile but efficient hitman who fulfills assassination assignments on behalf of mafia front man Tony (Danny Aiello). Léon is uneducated and lives a lonely and well regimented life, his small plant the only thing he cares for. But he is friendly towards Mathilda (Natalie Portman), the 13 year old daughter of the family living in the next door apartment.

Mathilda's father crosses corrupt and psychotic Drug Enforcement Agency agent Norman Stansfield (Gary Oldman), and in the ensuing violence Mathilda's family is wiped out. She survives by taking refuge in Léon's apartment. The hitman is reluctant to take care of his unexpected visitor, but gradually they warm up to each other. She learns of his profession and insists that he train her to also be a killer so that she can pursue revenge. Meanwhile, she teaches him to read, and for the first time in his life Léon starts to care about someone.

Written and directed by Luc Besson,  Léon: The Professional features Natalie Portman's debut, an epic Gary Oldman villainous performance and an understated Jean Reno as a uniquely introverted assassin. With elegant action and character development mixed in just the right doses, the result is a captivating, and sometimes haunting, film.

Steering far clear of typical assassin characterizations, Besson creates in Léon an almost miserable man, a stranger in a strange land, out of place in New York City, unable to read, barely ever sleeping and living diametrically opposite from the glamour and riches often associated with efficient killing machines. Léon does not even care to receive the money he earns, Tony theoretically holding it for him.

Meanwhile Mathilda is suffering through her own hell, regularly beaten up by an abusive father who has gotten himself embroiled in the drug trade. Mathilda only cares about her innocent younger brother, and when he is hurt in the Stansfield-instigated bloodbath, the 13 year old girl starts to understand the appeal of revenge as a life calling.

Most of the film is occupied in nurturing the relationship between hitman and young girl, and Besson injects the full range of emotions. Léon goes against every instinct in his body to even open the door for Mathilda to escape with her life, and his second thought is to kill her why she sleeps to save both of them the trouble of creating a bond. From there they learn to care about each other, he assumes an imperfect fatherly role and she carries her infatuation towards a girl's immature ideas of love.

But with the out-of-control Norman Stansfield always nearby, the film is not short on action, and Besson includes plenty of exquisitely executed high-tension highlights, often in cramped surroundings, culminating in an all-or-nothing climax for all three main characters. Léon: The Professional is about learning to love, and plenty of education takes place under a hail of bullets.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.