Sandy Bates (Allen) is a successful filmmaker who is completely stressed out
with burden of success (leeches, pestering fans, strains on relationships, fake
people, etc.), but worst of all he's unhappy. He's invited to a weekend film
festival of his movies and during the festival he can't get a moments peace from
the fans (one gets into his room late at night) and while trying to salvage his
relationship with Isobel he finds himself attracted to the damaged Daisy (the
wonderful Jessica Harper) but also haunted by memories of his past love
Dorrie.STARDUST MEMORIES is one of those films that gets even better with repeat viewings. I'm most definitely not a Allen expert, but I feel that a lot of people don't really see SM correctly. I have nothing to back up my theory but I believe (and I don't think this is a spoiler) that if you pay attention at the beginning of the film Bates is dreaming about Dorrie when the maid screams. He runs into the kitchen and sees the dead rabbit. At that point he looks at it and he goes into another dream. It immediately cuts to him arriving at the film festival (that he already stated he wasn't going to) and everybody is exaggerated and grotesque. It's all a fantasy. Then later, still in the fantasy, his fondest memory could very well be a scene from one of his movies. We never really get enough information about his relationship with Dorrie to tell whether it's real or not, but I like to think that it is a scene from a movie. Which is sad when you think about it...his fondest memory is a scene from a movie.
If you are a fan of Cinema then you owe it to yourself to watch STARDUST MEMORIES. It's better than I could ever express and a nice stepping stone into the films of Bergman and Fellini. Highly recommended.
Sharon Stone's film debut.
I might be out on a limb here, but is this scene a nod to WISE BLOOD?
