Post by StevePulaski on Mar 5, 2018 22:18:08 GMT -5
Play it Again, Sam (1972)
Directed by: Herbert Ross
Directed by: Herbert Ross
Allan (Woody Allen, center) gets some pointers from a Humphrey Bogart ghost (Jerry Lacy, right) on how to make a move on Linda (Diane Keaton, left) in Play it Again, Sam.
Rating: ★★★
NOTE: Part of "Woody Allen Mondays," an ongoing movie-watching event.
Allan Felix (Woody Allen) is a film critic who adores Casablanca. The opening scene of Play it Again, Sam shows him watching the climactic moments between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman while he stares at the screen, mouth agape and completely transfixed. His lifelong goal is to have the confidence of Bogart's Rick and the swagger of Bogart himself. Even with all the films he's seen, he can't distinguish life from reality when it comes to playing a character — a struggle many of us film-lovers have.
Cut to Allan's personal life, which is as crowded as his apartment, lined with movie posters, memorabilia, and books. He has recently went through a divorce with his wife, Nancy (Susan Anspach), who told him she did not find him physically attractive nor sexually satisfying anymore, but implored him not to take offense. Naturally, Allan responds by attempting to overdose on Advil, and would probably be successful if it weren't for the support of his friends, Dick (Tony Roberts) and Linda (Diane Keaton in her first film with Allen), a long-term married couple. The two are committed to helping their friend by arranging several blind-dates between mutual friends and acquaintances to get Allan out of funk in which he's been since Nancy left.
Allan soon recognizes, after many failed dates, that it's Linda with whom he's in love. With that realization comes his mind inundated by juggling the motivations of three separate parties. One is his own, which is neurotic and brimful of self-doubt, the other is Bogart's (Jerry Lacy), who intermittently shows up to confront his self-conscious state, and the third is Nancy, less recurring, but appearing to keep him on a leash and clubbed into a corner. The latter two's "angel and devil" presence weighs on Allan, but the real enemy is himself. He is hopelessly awkward around potential suitors, and grossly inept at the slightest sight of an attractive woman. A highlight reel of his finest moments: the first woman Dick and Linda bring to Allan's pad sees him bumbling around, inadvertently destroying his furniture after bathing himself in Canoe after-shave, while another shoots him down on the dance-floor after he nervously shimmies his way over to her.
When Allan recognizes his feelings for Linda, he's torn between his personal morals to refrain from making a move but also overcome with the encouragement of a reappearing Bogart, who urges him to go in for a kiss when the two have an evening dinner alone. The result is a nimble sequence involving a back-and-forth with Allan going between talking with Linda and Bogart (who remains unseen to Linda), hopelessly meandering with the one while half-heartedly taking pointers from the other.
It's moments like these that make you swear Allen himself ghost-directed Play it Again, Sam after he hijacked control from credited director Herbert Ross then allowed him to keep his name at the respective position. The film looks and feels like an Allen film of the era, despite its polish and clear origins on a Broadway stage (Allen's play of the same name ran for most of 1969 and marked the beginning of his personal and professional relationship with Diane Keaton), which slightly conflict with other films made around this time. Play it Again, Sam doesn't have the outwardly manic exterior of Allen's Bananas, which came a year before in 1971, nor does it have an overarching subject like Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), which came out three months after this. It's tighter and funnier than both, simultaneously showing an evolution of Allen's slapstick routines while remaining with its feet firmly on the ground.
Play it Again, Sam shows the flaw in the male psyche, one that I can attest to, which has a man treating unavailable women with a casual, friendly demeanor and those where possible romantic interest could exist with a degree of awkwardness, or in some cases, disrespectful forwardness. For Allan, it's a lot easier to be himself in front of Linda than, say, a potential suitor because, in his mind, there's nothing to "gain" beyond the furthering of a friendship, as egocentric as that may be. With an attractive single woman, there's a myriad of possibilities that don't limit themselves to sex. With Linda, the buck stops when it reoccurs to Allan that she's taken, nonetheless by one of his best friends. This dichotomous display of confidence is one I haven't seen portrayed in too many comedies, much less ones that find a fine balance in depicting and deriding it ever so naturally.
Ross's film is a fun one, quick on its feet and pleasantly short, with a great performance by Lacy, who boasts a convincing screen-presence as Bogart. As a farce, it's quite effective, but as a send-up of Casablanca and masculine caricatures that permeate the minds of even those who know they're fictitious, I believe it's not given adequate credit. It's the kind of spoof that, if pitched in modern day, would send studio executives into asking the serious questions. "What if the audience doesn't get it?," would be the first one asked.
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Jerry Lacy, and Susan Anspach. Directed by: Herbert Ross.