• Woody Allen returns to Fellini and returns to black and white photography with 1998’s Celebrity. Instead of 8 ½ (Stardust Memories) or Amarcord (Radio Days) this is Woody’s La Dolce Vita. Much is made of Woody’s love for Ingmar Bergman (Celebrity was shot by Sven Nykvist- one of their three feature collaborations) and rightly so- but there is as much Fellini in Woody’s work as there is the great Swedish master.
  • The cast assembled is incredible- the lead is Kenneth Branagh. Branagh plays Lee Simon- a Woody surrogate and it is a fine job by Branagh. Simon is going through a midlife crisis. Judy Davis (just a few years off her peak in the early 1990s) his ex-wife and she gets quite a bit of screentime. Joe Mantegna (ditto with Davis- he peaked in the early 1990s) and Winona Ryder (again- this cast would be impossible to get in 1992) also have some room to work- but everyone else from Leonardo DiCaprio (fresh off Titanic the year before), Charlize Theron (first archiveable film), Melanie Griffith, Sam Rockwell to JK Simmons only have a line or two- which makes sense because this is La Dolce Vita– a tour of many sins and nights in the city (New York City instead of Rome—but still crowds and paparazzi – not a flattering look at society). Many of them are playing versions of themselves- Theron is a model- DiCaprio plays a Hollywood heartthrob and sort of young out of control brat.
  • This was Nykvist’s last year of working- sadly he was going blind during the production.
  • Celebrity opens with “You Oughta Be in Pictures” by Rudy Vallée—fitting Woody’s penchant for nostalgia no matter the era he is covering (here its turn of the century/millennium).
  • The celebrities: a priest on television, the John Lennon Jesus quote, the Andy Warhol quote on fame, a model, a painter, a cosmetic plastic surgeon, Charlize Theron as the sort of Anita Ekberg character temptress.
  • There is a great verbal sparring fight in a gazebo at night between the ex-couple played by Branagh and Davis—shot in a long take as the camera floats out to the water.
  • A stuttering Branagh using the line “polymorphously perverse” just like Woody did in 1977’s Annie Hall– it is a miss here. What does work as a joke is making fun of arty pretentious directors who make black and white films.
  • Davis plays the new Mia Farrow role in Allen’s universe, the female neurotic—but the film makes a formal miscue by breaking from Branagh’s story and seven days of sin to take us to Davis’ plight.
  • It almost goes without saying that this does not touch La Dolce Vita. With Woody’s aims at satirizing fame and Hollywood it also lacks the bite of Altman’s The Player– perhaps Ready to Wear from Altman is closer in quality.
  • Recommend- but closer to the fray than the top 10 of 1998