Sleeper - Wake up call
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Jazz-loving Woody Allen contributes his own musical score to one of his early classics, Sleeper. Selwyn Harris revisits the film that was overlooked at the time but stands up remarkably well after all these years.Sleeper (1973) comes from what is generally perceived as the first phase of Woody Allen’s directorial career before he started to take comedy more seriously. It’s certainly the best of his films from this period and arguably one of the high points of his career. Sleeper draws on both the genres of futuristic sci-fi (it’s loosely based on H.G. Wells’ novel When the Sleeper Wakes) and silent era comedy à la Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. But there’s also the winning combination of superbly witty dialogue, N’Orleans jazz soundtracked slapstick and biting satire, the likes of which we haven’t seen from Allen since. In other words it’s a film in which he plays his best hand. He’s stretching himself too, moving out of his comfort zone (in terms of the sci-fi theme) but at the same time playing to his real strengths. Sleeper has a fantastical, surreal dimension that is sadly missing from the soporific, provincialised Allen of late.
The doctors who resuscitate Miles send him on a mission to uncover the government’s secret Aires project, his lack of identity importantly making him untraceable. But Miles protests: “ I’m not the heroic type. I was beaten up by Quakers”. He is told though that if he is captured his brain will be rewired and Allen replies: “My brain! It’s my second favourite organ”. The funny lines keep coming. Along the way Miles discovers the futuristic delights of the orb – a silver ball that briefly handled, has a similar effect to taking an ecstasy tab – the orgasmatron, a pathetic little robotic guard dog called Rags, super size bananas and Luna, a goofy, pretentious bohemian-turned-revolutionary, played wonderfully by Diane Keaton, with whom he falls in love with.
Typically Allen has a pop at the bohemian trends of the day, such as the obsession with health food (“Where are all my friends?” “You must understand that everyone you knew died 200 years ago”. “But they all ate organic rice!”) and turns the tables on current notions “tobacco is one of the healthiest things for your body”, alleges one doctor. In fact it’s an example of the satire resonating well today all the more so with the media’s current obsessions in this area. It’s a film that has dated amazingly well.
As with most of his films up until recently Allen writes, directs and takes the central acting role in Sleeper. But it stands out as the only film in which he has contributed a music score. An enthusiastic amateur clarinet player since he was 15 years old, Allen’s affinity with the jazz life is suggested in a scene in which he is assembling his clarinet: “I couldn’t make enough money playing jazz so I had to open up a health food place” he says to Luna. He then follows it with a typically absurdist gag: “I always thought to play jazz you’ve got to be black. I’m a mulatto. My father was black and my mother white…and vice versa.”
Allen played every Monday night at Michael’s pub on New York’s East Side with the New Orleans Funeral & Ragtime Orchestra before it closed (and is apparently now playing Carlyle Café). In the 1990s on a whim Allen said he would love to play clarinet around Europe and before he knew it he was whisked off on a 20-date tour of major concert halls with a professional New Orleans band. International documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple followed him and documented it on Wild Man Blues (1998) (Jazzwise 12). Besides the concerts, the film highlights Allen’s distrust of celebrity and demonstrates how close his life resembles that of his art.
This is an extract from Jazzwise Issue #123 to read the full feature and receive a Free CD Subscribe Here ...