My offical review of the film Play It Again Sam
Woody Allen is in his mid-seventies now (as of the year 2010) and he has been making movies for over 40 years. So it's an interesting exercise to reach back to the beginning of his career again and remember how he made movies in his early years. It is sort of like a cinema-version of archaeology. You get to see him when he was fresh and new, and peek inside his creative mind its cinematic infancy.
This early movie was originally a Broadway play, and this movie-version of the play is structured in a similar way, with several distinct Acts, resulting in a relatively short movie, at around 90 minutes. This was before Woody directed his own movies, so he was under the guidance of someone else. He wasn't particularly young in this film. He was 37 years old when this was released, in the year 1972, even though his character in this film says he's 29. So he had been working for quite some time prior to this, mostly as a stand-up comedian and as a joke-writer.
This background in comedy is utilized in this film, with the story being played mostly for laughs. Woody plays the same kind of character he always plays, a nervous, insecure bookworm, akward around women, but full of deep thoughts, yet possessed of an infinite number of witty verbal throw-away lines. This film takes place in San Francisco, which I had forgotten about, since I didn't think Woody ever set foot outside of New York, until recently. He is recently divorced and his friends try to set him up with a long line of women, all of which fail miserably, until he finds love in an unexpected place near the end of the story.
Woody's character in this film is a devoted fan of Humphrey Bogart films from the 1940's, and the ghost of Bogart follows Woody around throughout the story. Only Woody can see him, and Bogart is with him on every date, giving him advice on how to act around women. Woody is nervous on a date, Bogart's ghost whipers advice in his ear, and of course Woody messes it up every time, in ways meant to go for laughs from the viewer. And this works most of the time, to the point where it gets a bit silly after a while.
I love the opening and closing scenes of this film. It opens with the final scene from the film "Casablanca", with no credits, just opening with this scene as the movie begins, with Bogart and Ingrid Bergman standing in the rain at the airport. The first time I saw this film was as a double-feature: the first film was the real film Casablanca, and as that film ended this last scene was blended with the opening scene of this Woody Allen film, as it it they were both one film. As the camera panned back and showed Woody in the audience watching Casablanca, the theater I was in erupted into applause, seeing our hero. It was a perfect way to blend the 2 films. The film ends with the same scene, though slightly altered, in a very creative way.
It has been pointed out to me that Nazis are always mentioned in every Woody Allen film. And, proving this true, the word Nazi does indeed occur in this very early film. It's a brief mention, in the context of a neurotic imagination of Woody's, but it's mentioned. I now listen for this word in all of his films, and I will be surprised if I ever see a movie of his where they aren't mentioned.
See this film to see Woody Allen as a pure comedian, playing mostly for laughs. Most of his films deal with themes of sexuality and God, in various combinations, with some comments about Nazis thrown in to the dialog. This film has the first and the third, but God is not mentioned at all in this film. So perhaps this was a later development. It's a fun movie, and the ending asks some poignant questions about if it's possible to be in love with more than one person at a time. I give it 3 out of 4 stars.