woody allen's BROADWAY DANNY ROSE (1984)

i'm an enormous fan of Woody's, and was terrifically pleased to rediscover Broadway Danny Rose, which i saw during my initial infatuation with his work but apparently didn't pay close enough attention to. it is still, as i had perceived, a resonably modest comedy by his standards (more subdued than his early work but less intellectually ambitious than his late 70s output) and in some respects a warm-up for the emotion-driven storytelling of Purple Rose Of Cario and Hannah And Her Sisters, but it's also light, lovely, and heartfelt little film. Danny Rose isn't particularly smart, but he's virtuous and oddly dignified, and though all these things are uncharacteristic of typical Woody roles, he gives one of his best performances as a result. It's also in BDR he first uses the deft conversational framing device he revisits in later films (though never more successfully.) But most striking is the film's gorgeousness - Gordon Willis handles this comparatively light comedy with the same skill and attention to detail with which he approached the headier Stardust Memories and Manhattan, and the result rivals both, and reinforces BDR's role as the the bridge between the second and third phase of Woody's career.