Volare

"Volare" is a lovely, romantic Italian song that was wildly popular in this country in the 1950s and early '60s. Dean Martin had a hit with it and practically every old-school pop singer, Italian-American or not, sang some version of it. In fact, it was so overused that for a while it became something of a joke. Woody Allen's latest movie, To Rome With Love, which is set in Italy, opens and closes with "Volare." I suspect Allen chose it both because it's a beautiful song and because it once had been a joke. I saw To Rome With Love in a smallish, pretty full theater, and as the song began at the start of the movie, most of the people in the audience spontaneously sang along. I know that sounds unlikely, but they really did. How hilarious, right? (It reminded me of how funny and refreshing it was to hear Dean Martin's version of "That's Amore," long after the song's heyday, at the start of Moonstruck in 1987.) BTW, To Rome With Love, which tells four or five mostly unrelated Rome-set stories, is a lot of fun in a facetious sort of way. The subject of the film is our collective fantasies.

Short & Bittersweet

Writing About the Movies
This week, we watched The Purple Rose of Cairo, which I hadn't seen since it opened way back in 1985. It holds up. In fact, it's still one of my favorite Woody Allen movies. (And I believe it's Allen's favorite movie among the ones he's made.) So funny at times, and yet so sad at others. I didn't remember that it's only 82 minutes. Allen packs a lot in there, yet it doesn't feel rushed in the least. I love the ending. Just a prolonged shot of Mia Farrow's face as she watches an Astaire-Rogers musical. She's entranced, and yet this simple shot is heartbreaking after what has preceded it. It's the last film that we're seeing in this class and a great way to go out.

Slapstick?

American Film Comedy

Evidently, Sleeper was a big hit with this class. Lots of positive feedback during the discussion. Even the somewhat dated parts of the film (i.e., where there are topical references to "things" like, say, Howard Cosell) somehow didn't matter. Reading the students' papers, however, revealed that some students really seemed to like the movie's slapstick humor (which they compared to that of Buster Keaton), while others didn't care for that aspect of the film. Still, I'd say that as of 2012, Woody Allen is still relevant.