Pauline Kael
“Mia Farrow seems just naturally stylized. Weightlessly beautiful, and with a considerable acting technique that she draws upon without the slightest show of effort, she might have been created for the camera. She's both real and unreal--she has a preternatural glowing sweetness…. [Cecilia] works in a diner and finds solace in the pictures that come to the Jewel Theater…. It's the dreamy-souled Cecilia who's the jewel in this movie….
“…. Cecilia, like [Buster] Keaton as that projectionist [in Sherlock, Jr.], isn't very vivid. (If she were, she wouldn't need to make these crossings [into the movie screen.] In her neatly buttoned brown coat, she's a little brown mouse. But she's also self-possessed…. Mia Farrow's role is written so that she's like the frail, big-eyed waifs that Janet Gaynor and Loretta Young used to play, but she has a sturdy, independent side….
‘There's a central piece of miscasting: as Cecilia's husband, Danny Aiello is too heavy and loutish…. You don't want her to have to go home to this bruiser's surplus gut and his thick, Victor McLaglen arms. (Our image of him makes the resolution of the film cruelly harsh.) It's difficult to know how much of the subtext is intentional….
“…. The film is far more Keatonesque than Chaplinesque. Mia Farrow has her plangency, but she's also a hardhead, like Keaton, and with something of his resilience and individuality. (She's the only beauty to have survived Diane Arbus's camera.) But though Woody Allen isn't like Chaplin--he doesn't make you cry--he has a naturally melancholic, depressive quality. It's his view of life; the movie casts a spell, yet at the end it has a bitter tang. It says that sweetness doesn't get you anywhere. And though in acting terms Mia Farrow carries off her Chaplinesque moment of reconciliation to fate, I think it's a mistake. Woody Allen's full vision here could take a less tidy, airier finish--he needed to pull something magical out of a hat….
“…. But it has a small, rapt qualtiy, and I think it's Woody Allen's finest creation. It's scaled to Mia Farrow's cheekbones. And it has a surprising warmth.”
Pauline Kael
The New Yorker, March 25, 1985
“…. Cecilia, like [Buster] Keaton as that projectionist [in Sherlock, Jr.], isn't very vivid. (If she were, she wouldn't need to make these crossings [into the movie screen.] In her neatly buttoned brown coat, she's a little brown mouse. But she's also self-possessed…. Mia Farrow's role is written so that she's like the frail, big-eyed waifs that Janet Gaynor and Loretta Young used to play, but she has a sturdy, independent side….
‘There's a central piece of miscasting: as Cecilia's husband, Danny Aiello is too heavy and loutish…. You don't want her to have to go home to this bruiser's surplus gut and his thick, Victor McLaglen arms. (Our image of him makes the resolution of the film cruelly harsh.) It's difficult to know how much of the subtext is intentional….
“…. The film is far more Keatonesque than Chaplinesque. Mia Farrow has her plangency, but she's also a hardhead, like Keaton, and with something of his resilience and individuality. (She's the only beauty to have survived Diane Arbus's camera.) But though Woody Allen isn't like Chaplin--he doesn't make you cry--he has a naturally melancholic, depressive quality. It's his view of life; the movie casts a spell, yet at the end it has a bitter tang. It says that sweetness doesn't get you anywhere. And though in acting terms Mia Farrow carries off her Chaplinesque moment of reconciliation to fate, I think it's a mistake. Woody Allen's full vision here could take a less tidy, airier finish--he needed to pull something magical out of a hat….
“…. But it has a small, rapt qualtiy, and I think it's Woody Allen's finest creation. It's scaled to Mia Farrow's cheekbones. And it has a surprising warmth.”
Pauline Kael
The New Yorker, March 25, 1985
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