Ep. 5 The Purple Rose of Cairo
Well, we’re officially starting our SECOND month of Molly Movie Club! Thanks to everyone who has subscribed. We’re having a great time watching a new movie each week, and we hope you are too!
As we’ve mentioned, the theme for June is “Story Within a Story”. The first movie we’re watching is The Purple Rose of Cairo directed by Woody Allen. Neither of us had seen it before, and this movie took us by surprise! Some of the themes were very familiar to us - we’ve been talking about similar ideas for the last few years working on our comic. That made the experience of watching this movie a bit more emotional than it might’ve been otherwise (at least for Anna).
We discuss why we don’t see The Purple Rose of Cairo as a perfect film, but feel it’s impossible to ignore the brilliant ideas behind the story. Also, we both think that this movie features one of the most magical moments we’ve ever seen on the screen.
Thanks for listening, and we hope you enjoy the episode! We’ll see you in the comments.
Ep. 5 The Purple Rose of Cairo
I would also like to request that at some point we get a Tom and Cecilia drawing. I feel like Tom Baxter is a character just begging to be illustrated by Anna!
Thank you, this movie was a pleasant suprise.
For myself, I reject the notion that Gil Shepherd (the actor) was a scheming asshat. In my canon, he fell for Cecilia the same way he did as Tom Baxter (his onscreen character). If the magic between the cinema-Tom and Cecilia was strong enough to come out of the screen, obviously it is strong enough for the real-life character as well, given that Tom and Gil are so very much alike!
While it would make a fun and different (stronger even) movie if the actor and his character were thoroughly dissimilar —they are not. So, for me, it was some onset of rationality that returned to Gil when Cecilia left to pack her things, "oh my god what am i doing, is it worth changing my life over her — even though she's amazing, she's married and her husband is a tyrant". Thus he left to wonder forever how the life could've changed.
As for the dialogues, I very much noticed their theatrality, yet I found the one about husband hitting Cecilia splendid. This dialogue, being overly impossible and surreal, served to note that not only there is violence in their relations, but it is even "normalized" as everyday thing — all the while avoiding any display of actual painful, violent scenes to keep the movie light on its feet.
Yeah, this was fun. This one goes to the list to definitely watch again.