Review of Bullets Over Broadway (1994) by Manny C — 01 Feb 2008

Allen's tribute to theater and the 1920s Broadway, as well as one of his most purely entertaining films. Over cinema's last 40 years, no filmmaker's work has been linked as closely to his personal life as Woody Allen's.

1992's Husbands and Wives focused on troubled marriages, and showed Allen's character infatuated with a much younger woman. One year later, Manhattan Murder Mystery was the kind of light comedy Allen hadn't made in years, and seemed to indicate a desire to return to simpler times.

Another year later came Bullets Over Broadway, another comedy, but it wasn't no simple escapade. Hilarious as it is, it's also a sly bit of satire, concerning the 'showbiz', and self-mockery, an indication that Allen the artist acknowledges the weaknesses of Allen the man.

Beneath all the laughs, all the brilliant dialogues and lines, there's a moral question framed by Rob Reiner's character's hypothetical question of which you would save from a burning building: the last copy of Shakespeare's works, or some anonymous person? "The artist creates his own moral universe", he says, but David Shayne, the main character played by John Cusack, turns of the story work against that notion.

Better to be a good man than a great artist.