Radio Days (1987)
Directed by Woody Allen

Film Review

Woody Allen takes a rose-tinted walk down memory lane in this shameless nostalgia fest, in which he draws heavily on his own experiences of growing up in a poor district of New York.  Allen does not appear on screen but he narrates everything that happens, which is essentially a series of largely unconnected vignettes depicting his family life and the scurrilous exploits of radio celebrities and wannabes of the period.  Nowadays, it is hard to imagine how important radio was before television and the internet came along and made it virtually obsolete. In the 1930s and '40s, radio was not only the primary source of information for most households, it was also the main medium of mass entertainment, a veritable dream machine, the heart and soul of every home.

With his customary wit and wisdom, Woody Allen reminds us of the importance and magic of radio in its golden age, peppering his affectionately crafted anecdotes with uplifting songs and music of the era.  Whilst the film has immense charm and is occasionally hilarious, it doesn't quite gel into a coherent whole and lacks the punch of the other great films that Allen made around this time.  Radio Days is an affectionate tribute to an all but forgotten era in which the spoken word had supremacy over the moving image and people just seemed to get along a good deal better than they do these days (perhaps because the universality of radio helped to bring some measure of social cohesion).  The world that Allen conjures up is an alluring one, but is it really how things were or just a trick of the memory?  Nostalgia is how we choose to remember the past, not so that we can relive our lives but so that we may recast them as a cosy fantasy.  Allen's account of Depression Era America may be a fabrication, but it is comforting to see it portrayed in such a warm and humorous way (the highpoint being nationwide panic over an alien invasion engineered by a young Orson Welles).  Whatever challenges life throws at us, our dreams will always see us through, even if we can no longer rely on radio to brighten our days and gift-wrap all our memories.

Film Synopsis

Joe looks back with nostalgia to his days as a pre-adolescent living with his parents in the Rockaway district of the Queens area of New York City.  It is the mid-1930s and the radio holds an important place in the lives of Joe and his family.  Whilst Joe's Aunt Bea is frantically searching for a man to spend the rest of her life with (to be cruelly disappointed every time she finds a promising candidate), Joe experiences his first adult awakening, when his new teacher turns out to be a woman he saw posing naked through an open window.  As the poor folk of Queens try to make the best of their humdrum lives, a cigarette girl named Sally White is out to make a name for herself in the better off part of the city.  Despite her evident lack of talent and appalling New York accent, Sally is determined to make her fortune as a radio star, but her big break is thwarted when those inconsiderate Japs decide to bomb Pearl Harbour.  Ah, happy days...