James Wolcott
“In Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo, Mia Farrow is the Poor Little Match Girl of the Depression, a hollow-eyed waif whose bones have been picked clean and bared to the biting cold…. When she's not dodging head shots [from her husband], Cecilia clears tables at a diner, where her daydreaming and jumpy nerves lead to a clatter of broken dishes….
“…. Mia Farrow functions here the way Bernadette Peters functioned in Pennies [from Heaven]: as a guiding vision of virginal purity, a lilac angel who dwells among weeds….
“…. [In the movie-within-the-movie] Delilah, drawing a bath for her stuck-up employer, asks, "Wouldst you be wantin' the big bubbles or the ass's milk.” The hitch is that this romp [ the movie-within-the-movie] has such daffy charm that we feel let down whenever we're dumped back into the Depression with that little rag doll Cecilia. We don't want to stand in the soup lines--we want the big bubbles. But Woody Allen keeps emptying the bath.
“He certainly drains the tub on Mia Farrow, leaving her with nothing but a long, doting close-up. Allen's camera is tense and protective of Farrow in Purple Rose, and there's something creepy about that protectiveness. In his previous film, Broadway Danny Rose, Allen paird Farrow with an Italian vulgarian, played by Nick Apollo Forte; here she is married to a low-life vulgarian… whose snores fill the house. Evelyn Waugh once said of another writer that watching him grasp the English language was like seeing a chimpanzee handle a Sevrés vase, which is what Mia Farrow is in Purple Rose--a delicate vase being pawed by an ape.
“…. [N]early all of the other characters in Cecilia's world are just as doughy and ill-bred…. No, the message is that Cecilia is too fine for this coarse world, too easily beguiled, and without the Wood Man to embrace her (Allen doesn't appear in Purple Rose), she has no kindred spirit to call her own. Farrow looks wonderful, but her characterization is finally too sickly sweet and Victorian. In The Purple Rose of Cairo, Allen cups her in his palm as if she were a fluff of feathers about to expire. Perhaps if he released her into the air, she would blaze into new, healthy life. Woody Allen bandages Mia Farrow's wing in Purple Rose, and he doesn't let her fly. Or sing.”
James Wolcott
Texas Monthly, March 1985
“…. Mia Farrow functions here the way Bernadette Peters functioned in Pennies [from Heaven]: as a guiding vision of virginal purity, a lilac angel who dwells among weeds….
“…. [In the movie-within-the-movie] Delilah, drawing a bath for her stuck-up employer, asks, "Wouldst you be wantin' the big bubbles or the ass's milk.” The hitch is that this romp [ the movie-within-the-movie] has such daffy charm that we feel let down whenever we're dumped back into the Depression with that little rag doll Cecilia. We don't want to stand in the soup lines--we want the big bubbles. But Woody Allen keeps emptying the bath.
“He certainly drains the tub on Mia Farrow, leaving her with nothing but a long, doting close-up. Allen's camera is tense and protective of Farrow in Purple Rose, and there's something creepy about that protectiveness. In his previous film, Broadway Danny Rose, Allen paird Farrow with an Italian vulgarian, played by Nick Apollo Forte; here she is married to a low-life vulgarian… whose snores fill the house. Evelyn Waugh once said of another writer that watching him grasp the English language was like seeing a chimpanzee handle a Sevrés vase, which is what Mia Farrow is in Purple Rose--a delicate vase being pawed by an ape.
“…. [N]early all of the other characters in Cecilia's world are just as doughy and ill-bred…. No, the message is that Cecilia is too fine for this coarse world, too easily beguiled, and without the Wood Man to embrace her (Allen doesn't appear in Purple Rose), she has no kindred spirit to call her own. Farrow looks wonderful, but her characterization is finally too sickly sweet and Victorian. In The Purple Rose of Cairo, Allen cups her in his palm as if she were a fluff of feathers about to expire. Perhaps if he released her into the air, she would blaze into new, healthy life. Woody Allen bandages Mia Farrow's wing in Purple Rose, and he doesn't let her fly. Or sing.”
James Wolcott
Texas Monthly, March 1985
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