Slideshow
BROADWAY DANNY ROSE
U.S., 1984
Directed by Woody Allen
With Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Nick Apollo Forte
Approx. 84 mins. 35mm.
“BROADWAY DANNY ROSE, like all of Allen's best movies, is a New York movie. It starts at the Carnegie Deli, with comedians sitting around a table trading Danny Rose stories, and then it flashes back to the best Danny Rose story of them all, about how Danny signed up this has-been alcoholic tenor and carefully nurtured his career back to the brink of stardom. Riding the nostalgia boom, Danny takes the guy and books him into Top Forty concerts, until finally he gets him a date at the Waldorf — and Milton Berle is in the audience, looking for guests for his TV special. Except the crooner has a complicated love life. He has a wife, and he also has a girlfriend. He wants Danny Rose to be the 'beard' and take the girlfriend to the concert. Otherwise he won't feel right. But then the crooner and the girl have a fight, and the girl goes back to her Mafioso boyfriend, and Danny Rose winds up at a mob wedding with a gun in his face.” – Roger Ebert
Reviews
“The jokes are firmly embedded in plot and characterisation, and the film, shot by Gordon Willis in harsh black-and-white, looks terrific; but what makes it work so well is the unsentimental warmth pervading every frame.”
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out
“Allen's perfect as a small-time, good-hearted Broadway talent agent, giving his all for a roster of hopeless clients.”
– Variety
“Woody Allen attends to his neglected lovability factor in this tiny, anecdotal comedy.”
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader