RADIO DAYS

"He deserves an enema" 

RADIO DAYS (1987) is Woody Allen's valentine to the Golden Age of American radio. This is an era, having been born in 1956, that  I know about only through books and recordings. But Allen grew up in the late 1930s and early '40s and brilliantly captures the look and sounds of a lost day and time. 

Allen plays Joe, the adult narrator of this sweet exercise in nostalgia while Seth Greene portrays Joe onscreen as a youth. Joe lives in Rockaway Beach with his large, extended family, all of whom are regular radio listeners, each one enjoying his or her favorite program. Young Joe is enamored of the MASKED AVENGER show, only to learn years later that the square jawed hero of the adventure program was played by a short, bald actor (Wallace Shawn). 

Joe's family is portrayed as a working class Jewish clan who bicker and fight amongst themselves but are ultimately a tightly bound family unit who truly love each other. Their lives of unrequited love and dreams yet to be achieved are contrasted with the glamour and style of the celebrities that are heard on the radio shows, swells in the studio by day, and later, part of the see and be seen crowds at  impossibly stylized night clubs. Radio, as Allen presents it here, is truly the stuff that dreams are made of, whether for young Joe or ditzy cigarette girl Sally (Mia Farrow), who dreams of becoming a radio star, an ambition that she finally realizes through a colorful series of events.

Allen uses such now legendary radio touchstones as Orson Welles's  WAR OF THE WORLDS 1939 Halloween broadcast and the sudden news bulletin of the attack on Pearl Harbor ("Who's Pearl Harbor?" Sally wants to know), to build comic scenarios around. Joe and his young friends spy upon a naked woman in her apartment, later to discover she's their substitute teacher ("We are all, without a doubt, going straight to hell"), and muse about their favorite female movie stars. One lad favors Rita Hayworth, another Betty Grable while a third has the hots for Dana Andrews ("Dana Andrews is a boy? With a name like Dana?")

The cast is excellent. Allen uses a lot of his regular players to great advantage, often in just bit parts and cameo appearances. The cast includes Danny Aiello, Jeff Daniels, Larry Davis, Julie Kavner, Diane Keaton, Kenneth Mars, Josh Mostlel, Don Pardo, Tony Roberts, Michael Tucker, and Dianne Wiest. 

The art direction by Santo Loquasto received a well deserved Academy Award nomination. His brilliant recreation of New York and surrounding environs is spot on. Carlos Di Palma (another regular Allen collaborator), gives his cinematography a slightly golden hue when depicting the fabulous night clubs and Radio City Music Hall ("It was like entering Heaven") while Joe's home is shot with a subdued color palette. 

But it's the music that is the real star of RADIO DAYS. Tons of great, big band songs are heard throughout the film and provide touchstones and memory markers for many of the characters. Like Joe says, whenever he hears "Marzy Doats" he can't help but remember the time his neighbor had a nervous breakdown and ran out into the street in his underclothes brandishing a butcher axe. 

 Joe admits that he can't help but romanticize the past but that's no crime.

 

We all do. 

And Woody Allen does so beautifully in RADIO DAYS. 

Highest recommendation.