Radio Days

Released 1987
Stars Mia Farrow, Seth Green, Michael Tucker, Josh Mostel, Tito Puente, Danny Aiello, Diane Keaton, Wallace Shawn, Dianne Wiest
Directed by Woody Allen

A sweet and clever combination of anecdotes and autobiography, Radio Days draws heavily on Woody Allen's childhood. Fittingly, the unfolding episodes are woven together by music--lovely hits of the 1940s like "In the Mood" and "That Old Feeling." Some episodes are built around radio itself (like the burglars who answer the phone in a house they're burgling and win a radio contest), and others center on the life of a young Jewish boy (Seth Green), clearly playing a version of Allen himself as a child). Though light in tone, Radio Days is an ambitious re-creation not simply of an era, but of radio itself. Nowadays radio is little more than a way to sell pop tunes, but it used to transmit dreams; watching this movie, you get a taste of how inspiring this simpler medium could be.

Summary by Bret Fetzer

Everyone should be able to make a movie about their childhood. How fun would it be to watch your parents, siblings, friends, extended relatives, and yourself in a movie about your childhood? It would be wonderful to wrap yourself in nostalgia like this and recreate your family experiences. We have home movies, but they lack the drama and comedy of a movie. The trick in making a nostalgic movie is to make the experience interesting to other people, and Woody pulls it off by giving us his large family and their relationship with the radio. He doesn't just recreate his childhood memories from the early 1940's, but he also recreates the world of radio. It's a lovely memory. --Bill Alward, May 5, 2003