woody allen's STARDUST MEMORIES (1980)

one of the things that makes Woody Allen one of our most essential filmmakers is the self-reflexivity of his art, an almost desperately rare characteristic in American cinema. nowhere is this more evident than in Stardust Memories, in which he plays a director beleaguered by his transition from light comedy to serious film; his self-examination here extends beyond his typical preoccupation with his own personal neuroses (familiar to anyone who's seen more than a handful of his films) and into his experience as an artist, and even into the artifice itself. visually, the film is a shamelessly direct homage to Fellini's 8½, but any incumbent hubris is defused by a graceful self-consciousness. (at this point i've officially exhausted the "self" prefix.) Allen fills his frame with faces and characters straight out of a surrealist sketchbook, all hounding his director with banality and non-sequitirs as he attempts to navigate the landscape of a weekend tribute to his work, and he is repeatedly forced to deal externally with the questions about his life and work that surely plague him privately. and though this portrayal of his fans occasionally veers into meanspiritedness (Allen transparently insists that the film is not a dig at his own fanbase), it rings extremely true, and is consistently entertaining. his enthusiasts and detractors aren't the only source of his torment, though; the film's most stylistically and emotionally exhilirating moments center on three objects of his affection, each respectively embodying the past, present, and future. it's in these moments (many of them told in the random but fluid flashbacks he perfected in Annie Hall) that Allen's craft really stands up for itself amidst the story's unflinching look at what it means for an artist to earn and assert his maturity.