The Purple Rose of Cairo

In 1935 New Jersey during the Great Depression, Cecilia is a clumsy waitress who goes to the movies to escape her bleak life and loveless, abusive marriage to Monk, whom she has attempted to leave on numerous occasions.

The latest film Cecilia sees is a fictional RKO film, The Purple Rose of Cairo. It is the story of a rich Manhattan playwright named Henry who goes on an exotic vacation to Egypt with companions Jason and Rita. While in Egypt, the three meet archaeologist Tom Baxter. Tom is brought back for a "madcap Manhattan weekend" where he falls head-over-heels for Kitty Haynes, a chanteuse at the Copacabana.

After Cecilia sits through the film several times, Tom, noticing her, breaks the fourth wall, and emerges from the inner film's black-and-white world into the full-color real world on the other side of the cinema screen. He tells Cecilia that he is attracted to her after noticing her watching him so many times, and she takes him around her New Jersey town. Later, he takes her into the film and they have a great evening in the town within the film. The two fall in love. But between these two events, the character's defection from the film has caused some problems. In other copies of the film, others have tried to exit the screen. The producer of the film learns that Tom has left the film, and he flies cross-country to New Jersey with actor Gil Shepherd (the "real life" actor playing the part of Tom in the movie). This sets up an unusual love triangle involving Tom, Gil, and Cecilia. Cecilia must choose between them and she decides to choose the real person of Gil rather than the fantasy figure of Tom. She gives up the chance to return with Tom to his world, choosing to stay with Gil and have a "real" life. Then she finally leaves her husband.

But Gil's professions of love for Cecilia were false—he wooed her only to get Tom to return to the movie and thereby save his own Hollywood career. Gil abandons Cecilia and is seen quietly racked with guilt on his flight back to Hollywood. Having been left without a lover, job, or home, Cecilia ends up immersing herself in the frothy escapism of Hollywood once again by going to the movies. Cecilla sits by herself in the theater watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance to "Cheek to Cheek" in Top Hat, ultimately losing herself in the charm of the film.

Michael Keaton was originally cast as Tom Baxter/Gil Shepherd, as Allen was a fan of his work. Allen later felt that Keaton, who took a pay cut to work with the director, was too contemporary and hard to accept in the period role. The two amicably parted ways after ten days of filming and Daniels replaced Keaton in the role.[5]

Several scenes featuring Tom and Cecilia are set at the Bertrand Island Amusement Park, which closed just prior to the film's production. Many of the outside scenes were filmed in Piermont, New York, a village on the Hudson River about 15 miles north of the George Washington Bridge. Store fronts had false facades reflecting the depression-era setting. It was also filmed at the Raritan Diner in South Amboy, New Jersey. Woody Allen shut down the Kent Theater on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, the neighborhood he grew up in, to film there.

In a rare public appearance at the National Film Theatre in 2001, Woody Allen listed The Purple Rose of Cairo as one of only a few of his films that ended up being "fairly close to what I wanted to do" when he set out to write it.[6] Allen provided more detail about the film's origins in a comment he made a year earlier, during a press junket for Small Time Crooks:

Purple Rose was a film that I just locked myself in a room [to write].... I wrote it and halfway through it didn't go anywhere and I put it aside. I didn't know what to do. I toyed around with other ideas. Only when the idea hit me, a long time later, that the real actor comes to town and she has to choose between the [screen] actor and the real actor and she chooses the real actor and he dumps her, that was the time it became a real movie. Before that it wasn't. But the whole thing was manufactured.[7]

In 1991, Jeff Daniels founded the Purple Rose Theatre Company in his hometown of Chelsea, Michigan. The theatre takes its name from The Purple Rose of Cairo.[18]

• "Cheek to Cheek" (1935) – written by Irving Berlin; vocals by Fred Astaire
• "I Love My Baby, My Baby Loves Me" (1925) – music by Harry Warren; sung by Jeff Daniels with Loretta Tupper on piano
• "Alabamy Bound" (1925) – music by Ray Henderson; played by Cynthia Sayer; sung by Jeff Daniels
• "One Day at a Time" – written by Dick Hyman; sung by Karen Akers[19]

• The Purple Rose of Cairo at IMDb 
• The Purple Rose of Cairo at AllMovie
• The Purple Rose of Cairo at Box Office Mojo
• The Purple Rose of Cairo at the American Film Institute Catalog
• The Purple Rose of Cairo at the TCM Movie Database
• Roller coasters, Aristotle, and the films of Woody Allen. a 2001 article from the Literature Film Quarterly
• Woody Allen 2001 interview at the National Film Theatre