Bullets Over Broadway (DVD)

Bullets Over Broadway is a 1994 film written by Woody Allen with Douglas McGrath and directed by Woody Allen. The film recieved seven Academy Award nominations including best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Art Direction and nominations for three members of the cast. It is regarded by many to be the best film Allen turned out in the nineties.

Bullets Over Broadway is a period comedy set in the roaring twenties and revolves around ...
...Our Fathers'...

Bullets Over Broadway is one of the stronger Allen entries in the nineties and has probably held up better than some of the more forgettable films he directed during that decade. A great strength of the film is the period setting. Allen has always had a great interest in the twenties and a world of jazz clubs, Broadway and gangsters riding on cars. Great care was taken in Bullets Over Broadway to recreate this era right ... more

Bullets Over Broadway is a 1994 film written by Woody Allen with Douglas McGrath and directed by Woody Allen. The film recieved seven Academy Award nominations including best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Art Direction and nominations for three members of the cast. It is regarded by many to be the best film Allen turned out in the nineties.

Bullets Over Broadway is a period comedy set in the roaring twenties and revolves around a struggling playwright called David Shayne (John Cusack) who considers himself to be a major (although so far largely undiscovered) artist. Despite his pretensions Shayne is a failure and never seems to have anything published or purchased until his loyal and supportive producer Julian Marx (Jack Warden) finally finds someone willing to put on his new play 'God Of Our Fathers'. The only problem is that the financial backer is mobster Nick Valenti (Joe Vitrelli). In return for backing the play, Valenti wants a plum role for his ditzy chorus-girl mistress Olive (Jennifer Tilly). Despite his doubts and moral convictions about the purity of his art, Shayne is persuaded that he must take this rare chance to get his work on Broadway. He puts together a stellar and eccentric cast including the grand and regal has-been Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest) and British stage veteran Warner Purcell (Jim Broadbent).

Once underway the production becomes more and more troubled. Olive can't act to save her life and her mobster bodyguard Cheech (Chazz Palminteri) begins to exert more and more influence over 'God Of Our Fathers'...

Bullets Over Broadway is one of the stronger Allen entries in the nineties and has probably held up better than some of the more forgettable films he directed during that decade. A great strength of the film is the period setting. Allen has always had a great interest in the twenties and a world of jazz clubs, Broadway and gangsters riding on cars. Great care was taken in Bullets Over Broadway to recreate this era right down to the cars and fashions. It's also quite a colourful film which makes it stand out because Allen is known for his fondness for shooting on overcast days in order to give his films a moody overcast feel in places. The end result is a film that is stylish and great to look at.

Bullets Over Broadway is a gently amusing film rather than laugh out loud funny with a great deal of enjoyment coming from the wonderful cast put together for the film. John Cusack is excellent in the type of role that Allen himself would have played if he was a few decades younger. At the start of the film Shayne is incredibly precious and pretentious. He hasn't sold out because his art is too important. We see his philosophy and viewpoint gradually evaporate as he has to make a series of concessions. He allows the helium voiced Olive to take a lead role to get the play on in the first place and then Cheech starts gradually taking over the play. It slowly dawns on everyone that the mobster Cheech is more talented than the artist Shayne, probably because he has real experience of life. "I hate teachers," says Cheech after Shayne says that he studied playwriting under numerous teachers and read every book. "Those blue-haired bitches used to whack us with rulers. Forget teachers."

It was a clever idea to have the mobster hitman turn out to be more artistically talented than the playwright and take over the play. Cusack is very good as he gets incredibly annoyed to begin with then gradually more philosophical as more of his previous convictions slip.

Woody Allen's point in Bullets Over Broadway is that, because of the temptation of fame and money, art can easily end up being a gigantic compromise.

Chazz Palminteri is really good as Cheech and won a Best Supporting actor nomination for his performance. Cheech begins by threatening Shayne everytime he tries to cut Olive's lines ("Let's avoid confusion. She'll get some lines, or I'll nail your knee caps to the floor") and ends up running the whole thing. "What am I? A f*****g idiot? They taught me how to read and write in school before I burned it down," says Cheech after being asked if he is now writing the play. Palminteri and Cusack have a great scene in a pool hall where Cheech describes his life as a gangster and his poor and violent background. Shayne's poor arty friends suddenly seem like a complete joke.

Dianne Wiest won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as the faded but still formidable Helen Sinclair. Wiest has a lot of fun as this hammy faded superstar and a running joke where she stops people saying "Don't speak!" in a grand theatrical manner. Helen is soon seducing Shayne under the mistaken impression that the young playwright can refloat her career to its former glory and lives the whole of her life as if she's onstage. It's a great comic performance by the quirky Wiest who has always been one of Allen's favourite actresses.

There are a lot of amusing backstage shenanigans in Bullets Over Broadway. Jim Broadbent is always good in anything he turns up in and this film is no different. Broadbent is a British stage veteran roped into this chaotic and eccentric production and has a tendancy to overeat whenever he suffers from stress. When he makes a play for Olive and Cheech finds out this weakness becomes more pronounced than ever. Jennifer Tilly is of course perfectly cast as the helium voiced airhead Olive. She has some funny banter with all the cast as she ruins the play with her hopeless acting without really noticing. It's quite a nice idea to have Cheech go from protecting her role as a bystander to then being driven mad by her when he has more input into the play. And of course, having Olive play a psychiatrist attempting to intervene in a marriage breakdown in Shayne's gloomy and serious play, is just funny and another of the clever situations Allen wrings from the setting and story.

Supporting cast members include Rob Reiner (who has some funny lines), Jack Warden and Mary-Louise Parker.

To sum up, Bullets Over Broadway is an amusing period romp packed with amusing one-liners and clever theatrical situations. It's fun to be taken out of Allen's usual New York into a world of mobsters and over the top stage actors and the director does an excellent job with the look of the film.

It's not up to the Allen classics of the seventies and eighties but certainly one of his better nineties efforts.

Woody Allen doesn't do extras so don't expect much beyond a trailer and scene selection. 

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