Radio Days **** (1987, Mia Farrow, Dianne Wiest, Seth Green, Julie Kavner, Josh Mostel) – Classic Movie Review 2150

Writer-director Woody Allen’s episodic 1987 movie is a loving tribute to the radio heydays of the 40s is one of his best, most relaxed and winsome films. The film looks back on one American family’s life during the fabled golden age of radio, with Allen using both the music and memories form his past to tell his story.

Allen’s cherishable repertory company of the Eighties is dressed to charm in the magic glow of Santo Loquasto’s marvellously evocative sets and Carlo Di Palma’s miraculously luminous vintage-era-style cinematography. It won Best Production Design (Santo Loquasto) and Best Costume Design (Jeffery Kurland) at the 1987 Bafta Film Awards.

Allen goes for sweet nostalgia rather than an incisive edge in conjuring up the different country of the past, and he narrates the movie as Joe, who explains how the radio influenced his childhood in the days before TV. Seth Green plays the young Joe, who lives in New York City in the late 1930s and early 1940s. 

Radio Days stars Mia Farrow as an aspiring radio star named Sally White, Dianne Wiest as Joe’s Aunt Beam Julie Kavner, Josh Mostel, Michael Tucker, Wallace Shawn, Danny Aiello, Jeff Daniels, Tony Roberts, Diane Keaton and Kenneth Mars. Also in the cast are Tito Puente, Kitty Carlisle Hart and Renée Lippin as Aunt Ceil.

Each member of Joe’s Jewish-American family lives modestly in Rockaway Beach but finds in radio shows an escape from reality through the gossip of celebrities, sports legends of the day, game shows, and crooner.

Most of the stories take place in the glitz and glamour of Manhattan, so the movie is packed full of sweet Manhattan memories, while the Manhattan melodies of the period enchant. The soundtrack features songs from the 1930s and 40s, an integral and seamless part in the plot, with Orson Welles’s famous 1938 CBS radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds playing an important role.

These were the days!

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2150

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/