Stardust Memories is a 1980 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen, who stars alongside Charlotte Rampling, Jessica Harper, Marie-Christine Barrault, and Tony Roberts.
Stardust Memories was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screenplay, but was not warmly received by critics on its original release, and is not among the most renowned works in Allen's filmography.
Allen, who denies that the work is autobiographical and has expressed regret that audiences interpreted it as such,[2] has cited Stardust Memories as one of his own favorite films.
His latest film ends with a surreal sequence in which a character (played by Sandy) is trapped on a train carriage surrounded by grotesque and unhappy figures.
During this encounter, Sandy begins losing touch with reality, imagining or hallucinating various figures from his life and films, as well as a group of extraterrestrials (who advise him to continue making comedies).
He accepts the award in person, and tells the audience that the one moment in his life where he felt truly happy and fulfilled was on a sunny morning in his Manhattan apartment, passing the time with Dorrie, reading and listening to Louis Armstrong's version of "Stardust".
Like many of Allen's films, Stardust Memories incorporates several jazz recordings including those by such notables as Louis Armstrong, Django Reinhardt, and Chick Webb.
The film's title alludes to the famous take of "Stardust" recorded in 1931 by Armstrong, wherein the trumpeter sings "oh, memory" three times in succession.
However, it is the master take that plays in the movie during the sequence where Sandy is remembering the best moment of his life: looking at Dorrie while listening to Armstrong's recording of the song.
Filming locations include: From the sleeve notes of MGM's 2000 DVD release: "Shot on location in the fall of 1979, Stardust Memories may look as though it takes place in a Victorian-style seaside hotel, but it was actually shot at the Ocean Grove Great Auditorium and the Methodist Episcopal Conference Center and Concert Hall in New Jersey.
Most of the interiors, including the bedroom scenes, were shot in a vacant Sears Roebuck building, but the crew also recreated a vintage train at Filmways Studio in Harlem.
[10] In Diane Jacobs' But We Need the Eggs: The Magic of Woody Allen, the director is quoted as saying: "[S]hortly after Stardust Memories opened, John Lennon was shot by the very guy who had asked him for his autograph earlier in the day.
The website's critics consensus reads, "Woody Allen throws himself a pity party with all the surrealistic trimmings of Federico Fellini in Stardust Memories, a scabrous self-portrait that rankles as often as it impresses stylisticly.
"[12] Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote the work "is [Allen's] most provocative film thus far and perhaps his most revealing" and certainly "the one that will inspire the most heated debate".
"[14] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and suggested that Allen "seems to have run out of creative gas.
[20] The film was listed 16th among Allen's efforts in a poll of Time Out contributors, with editor Joshua Rothkopf praising it as "a piece of self-referential hilarity in its own right.