Stardust Memories (1980)

This is the most narcissistic film by Woody Allen I’ve seen to date. It’s pretty much a 90 minute self-indulgent fair of how Allen saw his career as of 1980. Cinematically and all that mumbo-jumbo this is a good film; it has a lot going for it including script, visuals and cast. At times the film is way too busy. That was probably Allen’s intention because he was depicting how he is always being bombarded by people talking at him, not to him. A line in particular I liked that was repeated: “we enjoy your films, in particular the early funny ones”. The scenes with one of his love interests having a meltdown was well done, consisting of jump-cuts of an extreme-close-up of her face.

Like always it’s not believable that all his love interests would actually be interested in Allen, physically. He’s an awkward guy, and he obviously exaggerates it in his films, as a gimmick. Not to say that a lot of people don’t act the same way in their head, it’s just sometimes too much to see it in a film.

Overall, like the DVDs leaflet says, this film is misunderstood. The narrative is non-linear making it easily confusing; you pretty much need to watch it knowing that the next scene will probably not link directly to the current scene. Watching Stardust Memories, I was reminded of La Dolce Vita, maybe it’s an homage to the critically recognized Fellini film? I haven’t checked any sources yet so I’ll find out soon; I just didn’t want other people’s opinions to taint my thoughts on the film.

Stardust Memories is worth checking out if you want to get a hyperbole of Allen’s psychologically deconstructive style. It just occurred to me that perhaps the non-linear narrative is a representation of Allen depicting how a person’s thoughts tend to be scattered, until organized and presented through an outlet. From this, it can be taken that Stardust Memories stands out from his other films because it takes a more literal approach to Allen’s egoism. It’s sure to not disappoint.