“Did you say you love me?” says Diane Keaton as Linda.
It’s very hard to deny some people’s gift. Woody Allen knows exactly how to turn love into the main psychological problem of a movie universe. It’s not only significant in its pure nature and complete, but also well-absorbed in the major theme: dreams.
Woody Allen introduces us to an insecure recently divorced 29 years old man and his dreams of being seductive like his idol, Humphrey Bogart. In a crazy dimension out of standard, this man named Allan Felix not only has his entire house decorated with Bogart in movies like “The Big Sleep”, “Across the Pacific” and “Casablanca”, but also has him as an imaginary friend.
Who would refuse love counseling by a man considered one of the most important actors of Hollywood Golden Age? And Allan needed everything he could get out of advices.
Those daydreams are increased when his wife, Nancy, decided to divorce him for they have been living in a passive way as she believed. Allan likes movies, art, literature and works as critic for a magazine. He enjoys living quiet, making fun of his sexual life and aspirin. Nancy is one of those “basic instinct” kind of blond that needs an active life, unusual trips and strong emotions.
She claims especially, as an argument for divorce, that Allan is a watcher or someone who watches people’s life more than lives his own.
“Play it again, Sam” essentially develops the consequences of the break-up in Allan’s life, his reactions, the search for forgetfulness and a new life. Something new that probably wouldn’t be possibly without ‘a little help of his friends’, characters of Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts.
The most wonderful thing about this movie is its imagination. Woody Allen played tricks with his character’s mind awfully well and turned it into something really special, like the man’s getting trapped in his own universe. Allan’s a person who constantly thinks, analyzes everything and Woody Allen managed to materialize it in the screen.
Every thought, every feeling and every laugh. It’s right there. I never laughed so hard about someone’s daydream before. The Bogey talks are great. Although it’d be fine to possess all that vanguard style, this movie has a deep message about being yourself, no matter what.
The first sequence is marvelous, in which Allan’s seated fascinated on a theater’s chair watching the end of “Casablanca”. Right during the beginning credits, takes are alternated between a frightened saying of Bergman and Woody Allen’s face, which in his glasses all that tension was reflecting.
It’s voyeur thing making into classic.