THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (Orion 1985) MGM Home Video

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) is one of director, Woody Allen’s most sublime and diverting romantic comedies. The film stars, then wife, Mia Farrow as Cecilia – a drudge married to philandering spouse, Monk (Danny Aiello) and working her fingers to the bone at a greasy spoon to keep body and soul together during the Great Depression. To ease her sadness and disillusionment with life, Cecilia makes a nightly pilgrimage to The Jewel; her local movie house to indulge in the glamorous escapism that only Hollywood can provide. The latest film playing at The Jewel is The Purple Rose of Cairo – a gaudy romantic comedy, starring matinee idol, Gil Shepherd (Jeff Daniels) as that film’s fictional character, Tom Baxter; an Egyptian explorer. However, Cecilia’s dead-end luck is about to change when Shepherd’s fictional self – Tom – noticing Cecilia has seen the movie at least five-times from the front row – suddenly takes on a life of his own. He emerges from the silver screen, much to the shock of theater patrons, and steals away with Cecilia into the night.

The two become inseparable; Cecilia, the dreamer and Tom, the physical manifestation of her dreams. Naturally, studio execs will not stand for this – especially when similar odd events begin to unfold in other theaters across the country. Suddenly, the line between art and reality is blurred. What to do? Well, to save his career, Gil journeys to Cecilia’s town to confront his fictional self – Tom - and force him back into the movie. The plan is to restore order to the narrative structure of this fictional B&W movie, turn off the projector and then burn every existing print of The Purple Rose of Cairo – thereby ending the magic forever. However, the question remains, why would Tom want to go back to a two-dimensional existence when his newly discovered three-dimensional escapades with Cecilia are so much more rewarding? There is something immediate and genuine about Farrow’s sad-eyed performance as this frump, so put upon by life she would rather choose to forget herself in this make-believe of a darkened theater than explore options on how to make her own life better in the real world. As the audience, we can recognize the disparity between life and art – truer still during those terrible cash-strapped years in America, and recognize Cecilia’s life as colorless and inescapable as that shimmering and magically monochromatic fantasy-scape is wonderful and wish-fulfilling up there on the big screen. We would all wish for a little fictional Hollywood stardust to enter our lives!

The screenplay by Woody Allen revels in poking fun at this duality, the struggle between his movie within a movie, and, 'reality' meant to be faced apart from those shimmering images, once the houselights have come up, is perfectly pitched to daydreamers everywhere. In the end, The Purple Rose of Cairo suggests the chasm between movie art and reality is too great a span to endure – a stark truth Cecilia is unable, or perhaps unwilling, to face. The final shot of Mia Farrow sitting inside the darkened theater, observing Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers twirl about their art deco proscenium, with all of the desperate wonderment of a daydreamer stripped of her one magical moment, now caught in half-tormented eyes, is an image of heartbreaking proportion, intimately felt and, once seen, forever recalled. Woody Allen's career has been so full of such introspective tapestries of life, preserved on celluloid, that perhaps we have all come to expect work of such high caliber as merely par for the course. In any other film-maker’s canon, The Purple Rose of Cairo would long ago been considered a career-defining masterpiece.

There are other noteworthy performances in this movie. But the show decidedly pivots on Farrow’s transcendent quality, conveying love’s purity and a devout faith in the escapist legacy of American movies. That Cecilia must eventually surrender its mythology, as well as the monochromatic lover of her own heart’s desire, having emerged from the screen, is perhaps the most bittersweet reality of all. But that does not stop Cecilia from returning to The Jewel even after its main feature has been changed. Farrow’s performance, as stand-in and our collective representative for that basic human desire to find perfection – or, at least, romance and peace in our lives, is a struggle at best, to be wrecked by the realization all magic is fleeting, even if it becomes indelibly etched in our renewed passion to vainly seek it out in life. Whatever the truth of the movie, even the overt lies they tell us, we are distinctly better for the experience of having lived vicariously through them.

One can only hope that with the sad retirement of indie-Blu-ray label, Twilight Time, The Purple Rose of Cairo will find its way to another third-party distributor in the very near future. The TT disc is adequate, but currently retailing for an exorbitant price. And the TT disc is far from perfect. Age-related damage is everywhere. Despite these anomalies, the overall quality of the 1080p transfer is organic and pleasing, if, with a heavier than usual amount of film grain. The vintage sepia-esque quality of the color photography is accurately reproduced; ditto for cinematographer, Gordon Willis’ mastery of the vintage B&W sequences – that shimmer with all the finesse of a vintage 30’s screwball comedy. There remains some moderate black crush, and a few long shots appear quite soft. But otherwise, this is a passable, if hardly exceptional mastering effort. In keeping with Woody Allen’s minimalist approach to sound recording – considering it an ‘essential evil’ – we get a DTS 1.0 mono here. Alas, no extras here – a genuine shame.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

5+

VIDEO/AUDIO

2.5

EXTRAS

0