Stardust Memories (1980)

Sandy Bates (Woody Allen) is a successful filmmaker although everybody seems to love only his early funny ones. He's the subject of a film festival. Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling) is the great passionate destructive love of his memories. He has two women in his life. Daisy (Jessica Harper) is a needy dark classical violinist. Isobel (Marie-Christine Barrault) is a loving blonde French woman. She has just left her husband and has 2 young kids. He struggles to find his true love.It's surreal. It's self-referential. It's interesting. It's funny. I'm not sure why critics and Woody fans hated it back in the day. Maybe the movie takes a few too many shots at his fans. It hits a little too close to home and I guess the people took the ridicule personally. It's got some absurdest fun and Woody is funny in this.

Stardust Memories seems to be a somewhat divisive Woody Allen movie. In it Allen plays a film director who attends a retrospective of his work at the Stardust Hotel. While there he is constantly harassed by fans who bestow unconditional devotion on him. His contempt for them is quite clear. It's this last bit that has made this movie so divisive amongst Allen fans. A few seemed to have taken some offence at this. Allen has been at pains to say that Stardust Memories isn't autobiographical at all. Well, no one can say for sure but to be perfectly honest a movie where Allen stars as a film director frustrated with a public who want him to make more funny films when he wants to make serious ones really sounds a little bit autobiographical but what do I know? Like several of Allen's movies this one is shot in black and white. It's one of his most interesting looking films. There are several comic segments taken from the movies in the retrospective scattered throughout the film. These are all beautifully conceived, funny and original. Their fantastical nature only adds to the interesting aesthetic, along with a beautiful montage of images of Charlotte Rampling towards the end. It's overall a visually bold film. The combination of comic fantasy, flashbacks and serious drama make for involving viewing.Overall, Stardust Memories is one of Allen's finest efforts. Its combination of the autobiographical and the inventive is very successful. It's a movie that probably deserves at least two viewings in order to fully appreciate it. Furthermore, it ends with a very nice little twist that just makes it even better.

The real brilliance behind Stardust Memories is - any reviewer naming its flaws would automatically find himself parroting the very reviewers Allen is mocking in the film itself. Too artistic? Too depressing? Not funny enough? Well, maybe. Although, as he points out himself in the movie, why should he be forced to make only funny movies? More to the point, Stardust Memories is somewhat fragmented and uneven, especially compared to recent masterpieces Annie Hall and Manhattan. You might also say that, Like Interiors, Stardust Memories suffers from too many stylistic references to other filmmakers - this time Fellini more than Bergman. But this time it works, as it's clearly part of the point, and it's pointed out in the film itself ("not exactly an homage, we just stole the idea outright").Despite a clear lack of balance and clarity, Stardust Memories is a Woody Allen classic, one that deserves much more attention than it usually gets, if only for being his first film that deals with filmmaking, leading to more recent semi-autobiographical works like Deconstructing Harry and Hollywood Ending. More importantly, it shows him more self-aware than ever before, coming to terms with a lot about himself, not unlike Fellini did in 8 1/2, which was Allen's obvious major influence in making it. And for fans of this magnificent creator, it's essential.

Let us start by getting to the heart of the matter.Stardust refers to an extremely naive romantic quality.By this yardstick,stardust memories are those romantic remembrances of the past which are an integral part of human consciousness.Old memories must be assessed on a timely basis in order to make sense of the life one is leading.This is precisely something which Woody Allen chose to depict in his film "Stardust Memories".In many ways,this film gives viewers an idea about Woody Allen's status in American cinema.We get to see through this film that he is neither a product of Hollywood studios nor a leading light of American independent cinema movement.He is quite simply an American director who has embedded a lot of European sensibilities in his films.Stardust Memories reveals that film directors like to lead different kinds of lives outside of their film making activities.It is a common fact that everybody would like to be associated with a film director in order to promote some social cause.This aspect has been nicely depicted by Woody Allen in this film.One word about Woody Allen's women characters.The women characters of "Stardust Memories" are not weak but they have also not been shown as strong willed women.In this manner their is a mysterious ambivalence concerning this film's women protagonists.Black and White format is a nice method chosen by Woody Allen as all our dreams,all our memories are invariably made up of black and white images.