RADIO DAYS - DVD review

Woody Allen has never disguised his love of the thirties and forties nor his love of old-time radio. I've never disguised my love of "Radio Days" as one of my favorite Woody Allen pictures. It's a sweet, lighthearted, nostalgic look back at an era before the tube, when voices were king, when comedy was innocent, and when music was still listenable. "Radio Days" may not have the depth or insight of films like his "Annie Hall," "Manhattan," or "Crimes and Misdemeanors," but blessed with a plethora of fine tunes, fine characters, and fine jokes, it's one of the most enjoyable things Allen's ever done. It may be purchased singly or in a six-disc box with five other Allen films of a similarly gentle nature: "Broadway Danny Rose," "Hannah and Her Sisters," "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy," "The Purple Rose of Cairo," and "Zelig."

"Radio Days" is unusual in three respects: (1) Allen doesn't appear in it; he only narrates; (2) it features two sets of vaguely interrelated characters; and (3) it doesn't follow a usual plot line but, rather, presents a series of linked anecdotes or vignettes, "radio tales" Allen calls them. The stories are set in Rockaway, NJ, from about 1938 to 1944. We know the time because Allen refers in the beginning to the Martian scare (presumably the Wells' broadcast) and refers at the end to New Year's Eve, ‘44.

The movie is about Allen as a boy, growing up with and being shaped by the magic of radio. If you aren't over a certain age, and obviously most readers of this site aren't, you wouldn't remember radio in its glory years or appreciate how it forced one to use one's imagination far more than today's children are called upon to do. As one of those lucky folk who got to spend the first eight or nine years of my life with radio in the late forties and early fifties, the end of the medium's "Golden Age," I remember those old radio programs as fondly as Allen does. Maybe that helps a person to appreciate the film just a little more, so be advised. The characters are Allen's Jewish family--his mom and dad (Julie Kravner and Michael Tucker), his Uncle Abe and Aunt Ceil (Josh Mostel and Renee Lippin), his Aunt Bea (Dianne Wiest), and his grandparents, all living under the same roof. Juxtaposed to this loving but mundane, middle-class family are the glamorous celebrities who inhabit the world of radio, stars like the pair of sophisticated gossip talk-show hosts, Roger and Irene Daily (David Warrilow and Julie Kurnitz); the radio secret agent, Biff Baxter (Jeff Daniels); the quiz show emcee (Tony Roberts); and the radio superhero, the Masked Avenger (Wallace Shawn).

Needless to say, none of the so-called glamorous people are quite what they seem to be on the air, the voice of the Masked Avenger ("Beware evildoers everywhere!") turning out, for instance, to be little Wallace Shawn. I remember from my own childhood how disappointed I was when one of my favorite radio actors, William Conrad, didn't make it into the television version of "Gunsmoke," Conrad being considered too large and heavy a man for the role of Marshall Matt Dillon, a part that eventually went to James Arness. How I missed Conrad's wonderfully masculine baritone voice.

The one transitional figure in "Radio Days" is the cigarette girl, Sally White (Mia Farrow), who eventually becomes a famous radio star after getting a break in the business from a gangster friend (Danny Aiello) and afterwards taking diction lessons. The funniest stories include one about a pair of burglars who answer a phone call from a quiz show while they're robbing a house and win the grand prize for the people they're burgling. Then there's one of "Bill Kern's Favorite Sports Legends" about the baseball pitcher who keeps losing limbs but still pitches and wins games because he's "never lost his heart," a story that gets so farfetched it makes Monty Python's Black Knight seem almost believable. That baseball tale still leaves me in tears (of laughter). And then there's a great line: "A ventriloquist on the radio? How do you know he's not moving his lips?" And without giving too much more away, there's an incident with a buxom substitute teacher that must be every boy's dream.

The movie ends on a string of poignant, somewhat sentimental notes: the broadcast of an attempted rescue of a little girl trapped in a well; the news of the War ("What a world. It could be so wonderful if it weren't for certain people," an observation as apt today as it was so long ago); and a rooftop gathering of radio celebrities on New Year's Eve. Their last lines sum up Allen's conviction that while the various media--radio, television, movies--may shape our ordinary lives, the fame of those involved in the media may be more fleeting than we think. I've continued to cherish those final words of Biff Baxter and the Masked Avenger as they look back on the year gone by and look ahead to their own destinies: "Another year is past." "It passed so quickly. Where do they all go?" "So quickly and then we get old." "I wonder if future generations will ever even hear about us? It's not likely. After enough time, everything passes." Allen is determined, through his art, his movies, that some things shall not simply pass in time, and when they're films as lovely as "Radio Days," they'll not be entirely forgotten.

Finally, I mentioned earlier the tunes of the time. For some of us, just their titles bring back fond memories. Again, those of a certain age may safely pass along to the next paragraph. Allen uses, to name a few, "September Song," "Carioca," "Begin the Beguine," "All or Nothing at All," "Mairzy Doats," "Take the ‘A' Train," "In the Mood," "Dancing in the Dark," "Paper Doll," "Donkey Serenade," "If I Didn't Care," "White Cliffs of Dover," "You'll Never Know," "Night and Day," and a host of others. They alone evoke a mood, a feeling, for an era that words can't express, so they're playing constantly in the background.

Video:
Allen is kind of an old-fashioned filmmaker who has never gone in much for up-the-minute, state-of-the-art technical wizardry in picture making or sound. The image quality, as a result, is pretty ordinary, a 1.74:1 ratio screen size, with colors rich and natural but delineation that's a bit rough and grainy. Nighttime scenes are especially troublesome, seemingly filmed through a fish aquarium looking out.

Audio:
As usual for a Woody Allen picture, the audio is Dolby monaural, good for dialogue and little else.

Extras:
As for bonus items on the disc, well, these are few and ordinary, too. English, French, and Spanish are offered as both spoken language and subtitle options; there's a four-page informational booklet insert; a mere sixteen scene selections; and a pan-and-scan theatrical trailer. Obviously, the film's the thing here, and fortunately it's all one needs.

Parting Thoughts:
When the cosmopolitan talk-show host, Roger Daily, tells Sally the cigarette girl he loves her, even though he's wed to his co-host, she says, "If you meant that, you'd marry me." He replies, "I can't do that. Our ratings are too high." Everything passes, yet everything stays the same.