Play It Again Sam Analysis

Topics: Film director, Film, Woody Allen Pages: 2 (784 words) Published: November 4, 2008
Play it again, Sam is an excellent production, by far one of Woody Allen’s best movies. It tells the story of Allan Felix, a neurotic New York film critic who is left by his wife, since according to her he is an ‘observer, not a doer’. This devastating event makes him fall into a deep depression; consequentially, he gets corporal aid from his married friends, Linda and Dick. However, this help appears not to be enough, Allan’s love life seems going nowhere until he creates a special connection with Linda, which leads him into her arms. My opinion about this movie being excellent is based on several facts, which can be easily appreciated when watching this extremely controversial film.

The word ‘controversial’ should be emphasized when analyzing this movie, considering that the topics discussed in it were not commonly discussed or confronted in the mid nineties, time in which this film was released. This movie is considered polemic due to the obvious critiques towards the American’s daily life, which is achieved by mentioning different subjects such as, dependence. This theme is represented in a different way depending on the character we focus; with Allan, this topic is represented by the deep depression he falls into, which follows him though all the film. When focusing in another character, Linda in this case, her dependence is shown by her pill addiction. Finally Dick, he is a workaholic, his dependence takes him to the point when he starts comparing his love to his wife with an ‘economical investment’. These characters decide to depend on something so it is easier for them to be secure and comfortable, ignoring the problems surrounding them and escaping from reality.

Stereotyping is another main theme in this movie. When Dick asks Allan how he liked women, he describes a model type ‘Skinny, blond, good breasts’. This stereotype of perfect women is a consequence of the idol worshiping so characteristic of us, human beings. We all have someone we...
Continue Reading

Please join StudyMode to read the full document

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Essay about Analysis of the Sam Shepard's Play Buried Child

    ...American Nightmare In my paper I am going to analyze one of the Sam Shepards play. Its name sounds depressive but it completely fulfils the main idea of the play – Buried Child. From the information I read about the author I deduced that he wrote it on the basis of his own personal experience in his childhood. Sam Shepard grew up on the farm in California and was a member of a broken family because his father was an alcoholic. The play was firstly produced in the year 1978. From this and from the story itself implies my presumption that the whole story is set in the 1970’s when the USA was in a hard economic situation caused by the war in Vietnam. To be more concrete it is set in Illinois on the farm where nothing grow anymore. I think that only through the description of the characters you would be able to see the main points of why I titled my work American Nightmare. Dodge is supposed to be the head of the family but he is broken by things that happened in the past. He is an old dying man and he is paranoiac but he has a reason to be. He is considered poor man whom doesn’t like even his family. He failed in building his American Dream because his family is no more working and the farm he built up many years ago is left without any interest. He left everything after the biggest secret of the family happened. He killed his wife’s son but not without reason, as his son Tilden in the...

    Read More
    1185 Words 5 Pages
  • Analysis of a Play Essay

    ...Analysis of a Play In Edward Bok Lee's “El Santo Americano,” a professional wrestler kidnaps his wife and child as he drives to Mexico, hoping to reinvent himself and keep his family together. Clay is a disgraced professional wrestler who drives his wife and son with him to Mexico. There, he hopes to reinvent himself as a wrestler, and not be taken as a joke. He also hopes to improve his failing relationship with his family. It is revealed shortly into the play that Clay has in fact taken his wife and son by force, when Evalana tells him to stop so she can take a bathroom break, and Clay says “if I stop, you'll try to run again.” He also has brought a gun with him. As the story progresses, Clay pulls over, giving Evalana the “opportunity” to run away, to which she promises she won't. Clay then gives a long monologue revealing his wrestling life, including when he had finally won a match and the audience actually cheered him on, appreciating a “real” match as opposed to “so much phoney bullshit (they had seen) through the years.” More importantly, during the monologue, Clay reveals that he had won to give his wife and son something to believe in, and so his son could for once not “see his daddy get beat time and again.” During the long monologue, Evalana temporarily runs off, and Clay aims the gun at himself, eventually just putting it into his mouth. Evalana eventually reappears, and gives a...

    Read More
    552 Words 3 Pages
  • I Am Sam Analysis Essay

    ...Movie Summary & Analysis I Am Sam Summary Sam loves his daughter Lucy very much and tries very hard to keep her with him. Although, he is mentally-challenged and the court argues whether or not he should keep Lucy. They say he only has the ability of “a 7-year old” and doesn’t have enough money. He looks for a lawyer to help him get Lucy back, which she offers for free under the pressure of being seen by these women who gossip about her at work. She is super annoyed with him at first but eventually starts to understand and be nicer to him, so she helps him what to say at court. Lucy is with a foster family who eventually gives her back to Sam because they don’t think they can promise to give her the love she’s never had. They decide to be on Sam’s side in court & promise not to tell that Sam can’t take care of her alone. They win the argument and Sam and Lucy live together again. Main Character Description Sam: He is a mentally-challenged father who loves his daughter very much. He’s very caring, happy, and loves Ihop. He enjoys making paper cranes and other different shapes too. His job was working at Starbucks, and then he quits and works at Pizza Hut. Sam can also lose his temper quite easily as shown in the scene where he and Lucy eat at a different breakfast place and he throws a fit when she tells him they don’t have French pancakes with...

    Read More
    688 Words 3 Pages
  • Character Analysis of Sam Spade Essay

    ... Sam Spade the Anti-Hero We often look back upon Sam Spade, the protagonist in The Maltese Falcon, as the first example of the modern day detective. This modern day detective is the gruff Man who keeps his wits about him, always gets the ladies, and cracks the case in the end. Sam Spade does fit into this category and it is for that reason that Sam Spade can be properly categorized as an anti-hero. While Sam Spade is indeed the protagonist of the novel, he is by no means a hero in the traditional sense of the world. One of Sam Spade’s most notorious lines that place him into the anti-hero category is when he says, “I hope they don't hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. Yes, angel, I'm gonna send you over. The chances are you'll get off with life. That means if you're a good girl, you'll be out in 20 years. I'll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I'll always remember you.” (Hammett 211). This one action by Sam Spade truly sets him apart as the anti-hero because it was so revolutionary for the time. Many readers were used to the idea of the hero saving the day for everyone, or even sacrificing himself to save his lovely lady. This would fit nicely into the mold of Philip Marlowe from The Big Sleep. Sam does explain his logic, however, when he says, “I won’t play the sap for you.” (215) This one line is very significant because it justifies...

    Read More
    1098 Words 5 Pages
  • I Am Sam Analysis Essay

    ...“I Am Sam” is about a man named Sam Dawson who has the mental capacity of a child. He works at a Starbucks and had a daughter named Lucy with a homeless woman who abandoned the two the moment they left the hospital and Sam is left to take care of Lucy all on his own. Sam is shown to be doing a proficient job of taking care of her as she grows with the help of his friends but as she reaches age 7, Sam's limitations start to become a problem. At school Lucy intentionally holds back to avoid looking smarter than him. Once further complications occur and Sam is claimed to be incapable of taking care of Lucy the authorities take her away. From then on Sam seeks help in a successful but cold hearted lawyer by the name of Rita Harrison who eventually gives into taking his case pro bono. Through the course of the movie Sam teaches Rita about the value of love and family and how there is no difference in it whether someone is mentally disabled or not. I found “I Am Sam” to be very uplifting and believed that its depiction of a character with a mental disability was very well developed. It is clearly stated in the film that Sam has a form of autism spectrum disorder which makes his mental capacity unable to surpass the age of seven. Evidence of this is shown by Sam only knowing how to read the children’s book “Green Eggs and Ham” to his...

    Read More
    840 Words 4 Pages
  • There Is A Way To Be Good Again Analysis Essay

    ... “There is a way to be good again.” This is a lesson that I personally learned from The Kite Runner, and I truly believe it to be true. In the book, Amir went through his whole life feeling guilty about all of the wrong and cruel things he did to his friend Hassan. When Rahim Khan called Amir and told him that he could in fact be good again, Amir went out of his way (to another country) to fix what he had done. This is a lesson that we can all apply to our lives in more ways than one. Everybody has something to feel guilty about. This can be something as small as turning in a paper or assignment late to something as big as murdering someone (although hopefully this is not as common). Things like this can bring us so much guilt all throughout our lives, and we just want to feel like we have gotten the punishment we deserve for whatever we did wrong. This is shown when Amir and Hassan are by their special tree, and Amir is trying to get Hassan to throw fruit at him and be mean to him. This is because Amir wants to feel punished for what he did. He thinks it will make him feel better. However, we do not always get the punishment that we deserve. We can also see this in the same scene at the tree. This is shown when Hassan refuses to throw anything at Amir or be mean to him in any way. This is where the quote comes in. “There is a way to be good again” implies that we can do something to make up for the wrong we have done. Of course...

    Read More
    767 Words 4 Pages
  • Analysis: The Primitiv Again Essay

    ...primitive emotions of ego-loss and communitas, which are alien to critical thinking and democracy. Rituals should be restricted to the symbolic provinces of existent communities of freely associated individuals and never determine the nature of the entire public space. Is it the conflict of the ritualistic outbreak of religion-as-ideology and the morality of traditional religion-as-faith? Indeed, the social transformation process encompasses the inherent quandary associated with the objective necessity of modernism. The infill layers of critical traditionalism and critical modernism cannot be ignored in this context. This emancipates a profound gap in the transition from traditional to modern in perpetuating the principles of morality. Again, it opens up the critical aspects of the theoretical and historical foundations of the liberal-democratic state in India. Secularism in India is a product of the pre-colonial traditions of anticlericalism and anti-superstition transformed by colonial encounter. The religion was reformed and modernized to make it a part of the morality of Indian nation state. Now, how to imbibe the philosophy, symbolism and theology of tolerance intrinsic in the various faiths within the ambit of modern secular state? The Gandhian “moral maturation” based on Sarvadharma Sambhav may be an integrative process of assimilation which can also smudge the demarcation between the traditionalist, religious and the secularists. Before...

    Read More
    1024 Words 5 Pages
  • Inside And Back Again Analysis Essay

    ... Inside and Back Again essay Refugees are everyday people who are forced to flee their homes because they are afraid to stay in their home country. When they flee, they may leave behind family members, friends, a home, a job, and special possessions. In the nonfiction texts “children of war” by Arthur Brice, “Refugee children in Canada; Searching for Identity by Ana Marie and Alice Colak, and the novel Inside out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai, the common experiences of refugees are shown. The refugee experience presented in both nonfiction and historical texts portray individuals whose lives are turned inside out by violent disruptions or challenging life circumstances. The refugee experience is also characterized by the long journey each person travels to bring his or her difficult life back again. When refugees such as Ha and her family make the decision to flee, their lives can turn inside out. A refugee being or turning inside out means that your inner self has been turned outward. In “Refugee children in Canada; Searching for Identity” Sanela, a young refugee, is experiencing life inside out in America, “Sanela was placed in a position that seemed to overwhelm her. Between her practical duties of taking care of her younger sister and brother, learning a new language, adapting to a new culture, and worrying about the future, she had neither the time nor energy.” Sanela is inside out, she is in a whole new environment...

    Read More
    1082 Words 5 Pages

Popular Essays

Become a StudyMode Member

Sign Up - It's Free