This may be less a John Cusack film than a Woody Allen film, but it's far enough against type for Cusack that I think it's interesting to include it in this short compendium. I could just as easily file this review under my "Modern Classics" heading. This film almost made my list of the top 5 Woody Allen films. So close!
Of all of Woody Allen’s films, Bullets Over Broadway might be the most underrated. And though John
Cusack is just one in a long line of actors to basically perform the Woody role
on screen, his is probably the best. Not only does he get the mannerisms, the
rhythms of speech, and the mania one hundred percent right, but somehow he
makes the role his own. It’s less straight imitation than internal adaptation.
Cusack plays budding New York playwright David Shane in
the 1930s (one of Allen’s most preferred epochs). He’s just finished a new play
– his third – and his producer Julian (Jack Warden) finds financing in a rather
unusual place. Well, maybe not so unusual given the time period and economic climate.
A mob boss named Nick Valenti (Joe Viterelli) agrees to foot the bill with one
caveat – his ingénue girlfriend gets to star. Jennifer Tilly plays the girl,
olive, a dancer with experience limited to musical revues. Tilly play the
airhead to perfection in one of three Oscar-nominated performances in the film.
Though Mira Sorvino won the same award the following year playing another Allen
female lead with sub-par intelligence, Tilly is so convincing here it’s hard to
believe she’s acting.
Allowing Olive the key role of a psychiatrist in his play
is David’s first compromise after avowing that his art would go on stage in its
purest form (meaning his own vision). What David quickly discovers is that art,
if you want any commercial success, inevitably involves some compromise. This
is why his friend Flender (Rob Reiner) is able to stake a claim to being a true
artist – because none of his plays have been produced. After all, most of the
great artists were never appreciated during their lives, he tells David.
The other two great performances are provided by Dianne
Wiest and Chazz Palminteri. Wiest is Helen Sinclair, an aging theater diva
whose mannerisms of theatricality may have been inspired by Norma Desmond.
Palminteri plays Cheech, a goon working for Valenti and bodyguard to Olive.
Though he’s a simple button man with a gambling problem, he has an incredible
ear for dialogue and an innate understanding of dramatic form. Palminteri plays
him as a strong-arm thug with a great sense of pride in what he produces as he
begins to help David with rewrites and grows incensed at Olive as she butchers
his work. Cheech is a reminder that deep down everyone yearns to create and
some have the gift while others don’t.
Helen presents another set of problems for David. She
recognizes that David’s play needs adjustments and using her experience, star
power, and feminine wiles, manipulated David into altering her character from
frigid and sexless to tempestuous and humid. Her machinations cause David to
fall in love with her, which probably won’t be very pleasing to his girlfriend
(Mary-Louise Parker). The question that haunts David, and comes up repeatedly
with Flender, is whether a person falls in love with the artist or the man.
This issue is a little bit flat and ultimately remains underexplored in Allen’s
screenplay (he also shares writing credit with Douglas McGrath).
That is probably the one weak spot in an otherwise great
screenplay. It’s without a doubt one of Allen’s most purely entertaining films,
replete with acerbic wit and classic one-liners combined with a 1930s gangster
sensibility. Had he not been up against PulpFiction the same year I don’t see how Allen would have lost the Original
Screenplay Oscar.
Also noteworthy are early screen roles for “The Sopranos’”
Tony Sirico as another of Valenti’s henchmen, and Jim Broadbent as an increasingly
rotund stage actor who takes the male lead in David’s play. Tracey Ullman fills
out the remainder of the stage cast.
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