Purple Rose of Cairo Woody Allen\'s Film

Purple Rose of Cairo

Woody Allen's film The Purple Rose of Cairo is a Depression-era story about a lonely, daydreaming woman in New Jersey who she seeks refuge from the doldrums of her life at the movies. Mimicking the escapist films produced during the depression, The Purple Rose of Cairo works on two levels, both as a critique of escapist Hollywood films and a lovingly rendered embodiment of those very same films. By approaching its subject matter in this way, the film is able to pay homage to an earlier genre without falling into the uncritical trap of nostalgia.

The film begins on an afternoon like any other when, after her shift at the local diner, the main character Cecilia heads to the local cinema to see for what is evidently the umpteenth time a film called (like Allen's film itself) The Purple Rose of Cairo. The fictional Purple Rose of Cairo is an adventure-romance following the explorer Ted Baxter, as he searches Egypt for an ancient royal tomb allegedly containing within it a wealth of exquisite purple roses. This time, however, as Cecilia looks up wide-eyed at the screen, reciting lines along with the actors, an extraordinary things happens: the dreamy Ted Baxter addresses Cecilia and steps out of the screen. Cecilia and Ted leave the theater and progress through a traditional movie romance as Ted's absence from the movie causes problems. Eventually Cecilia must choose between Ted the character and the actor who plays him, ultimately choosing the actor (who proceeds to leave her).

The film both pays homage to and pokes fun at the nature of the relationship between art and the impressionability of the art-consumer, especially as that relationship is played out between Hollywood and its fans. As a satire of the formulaic Hollywood adventure/romance, the Purple Rose of Cairo within the film portrays actors who perform by rote the same society-types embroiled in the same scandals from one movie to the next. For Allen, this is a criticism and an affirmation of the Hollywood machine: the movies may be typical, predictable, maybe even sometimes stale, but they are also as reliable as an old friend. In Cecilia's case, she knows that she will find the emotional comfort and the nourishment her imagination needs in these films, because it is precisely their familiarity which provides her such comfort.

According to David Grimstead, the film performs this satirical analysis in order to ponder "the ways in which popular or mass or mechanical culture interacts with the lives of ordinary people who enjoy and consume it, are drugged and stimulated by it" (Grimstead 541). In other words, the film is an elaboration on the phenomenon that occurs on occasion when one finds oneself referring to characters from films or literature by their first names only, as if they were real people, or in Cecilia's case, real friends. However, what separates The Purple Rose of Cairo from straightforward escapist films, or even those which mimic these escapist films, is the fact that "what sets The Purple Rose of Cairo apart is the precision with which the levels of reality are characterized and distinguished, but also the existence of a disturbing grey area in between the levels" according to Michael Schwartz (Schwartz, 21). This is seen in the fact that although Ted is a fictional character, Cecile and Ted fall in love instantly, and Ted's absence from the fictional film has real consequences in reality. Ultimately, this is also the cause of Cecilia's eventual heartbreak; by conflating the actor with the character in her mind's eye, Cecilia believes that the actor will provide her with the same joy and comfort as the fictional character. Thus, the film questions the ultimate utility of escapist cinema while simultaneously enacting it.