Written and directed by Woody Allen. A Coney Island Neo Noir - Sort of A Streetcar Named Desire meets the Honeymooners with a dash of The Sopranos. Cinematography was by maestro Vittorio Storaro who shot the film in a kaleidoscope of carnival colors. It's offsetting at first but grows on you. Storaro gifted us with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972), Apocalypse Now (1979), The Last Emperor (1987) Dick Tracy (1990), The Sheltering Sky (1990). The vintage soundtrack was comprised by a selection of oldie goldies.
Between the late 1800's and roughly 1945 Coney Island was the largest amusement park in the US. Millions of visitors visited the three major attractions Luna Park, Dreamland, and Steeplechase Park. It was fed by four BMT subway elevated lines the West End Line, the Sea Beach Line, The Gravesend-Culver Avenue Line, and the Brighton Beach Line. The Coney Island smiling "Funny Face" logo, dates from Steeplechase Park which opened in 1897. In 1900 New York City condemned land to replenish the beach and also built a boardwalk. On the hottest summer days, over a million people would head to the cooling beaches of Coney Island. Dreamland Park opened in 1904 and burned down in a fire in 1911. Luna Park opened in 1903 but fell on hard times during the Great Depression. Steeplechase alone had kept itself financially profitable. In 1916, Nathan Handwerker started selling hot dogs at Coney Island for a nickel each the beginnings of the Nathan's Famous hot dog chain.
Coney Island's later attractions Deno's Wonder Wheel opened in 1920, the Riegelmann Boardwalk Amusement opened in 1923, the Coney Island Cyclone opened in 1927, and the Parachute Jump in 1939.
Steeplechase Park operated from 1897 to 1964. It was the first of the three original iconic large parks built on Coney Island, and was Coney Island's longest lasting park. Steeplechase park roller coaster has several side-by-side tracks in a dueling "racing" arrangement. Riders straddle horse-shaped single cars and launch simultaneously, as from a horse-race starting line.
"The Pavilion of Fun was encircled by a longer and much improved Steeplechase Ride, built at a cost of $100,000. Actually there were two race tracks, a high track and a low track, each with four horses seating two riders racing along guided rails parallel with each other. The slightly longer course, about 1700 feet with a higher starting point, was one lap around the building's exterior. The 1600 foot long inner track with a lower starting point, ran under the colonnade roof on the W. 16th side of the building and thus was protected from the elements. The rider's horses, drawn up a cable to an elevation of 22 feet at the start of the race, suddenly dropped downward along a 15% grade wooden track to gain speed. The riders then plunged across a miniature lake, while their momentum carried them upwards again to a height of 16 feet beyond the beach. The riders then descended through a tunnel and raced upwards over a series of dips representing hurdles until they reached the finish line far ahead. While heavier riders had the advantage, usually the horse on the inside rail won, especially on the shorter course.
The departing riders were then guided towards the Pavilion of Fun's Insanitarium and Blowhole Theater. There was no alternative. If they about-faced in the corridor, they wandered through a maze before returning by another route to the stage. A typical couple would enter the stage on their hands and knees through a low dog house where they would confront a cowboy, a tall farmer and a dwarf clown. There was no escape as they timidly filed past a railinged alley called the Comedy Lane. While they were distracted a system of compressed-air jets would blow men's hats off the unwary and send woman's heavy dresses swirling upward. It was a big deal in 1908 just to see a woman's ankles. One of the farmer's favorite tricks was to take a pair of prop bloomers hanging on the limb of hot-dog stage tree and offer them to the girl, on the theory that they had just blown off in the hurricane. In the distance, the crowd would howl.
Sometimes the clown prodded the man's buttocks with an electric stinger. He would leap in surprise just as the floor beneath him gave way. His gal would reach out to help, but she would be caught by surprise again with a blast of air and watch helplessly as her shirt soared above her waist. The embarrassed couple would hurry by six foot high playing cards, a tree with six foot long hot-dog branches and a dwarf clown who would swat them with a slapstick. Finally they would reach a moveable section of floor known as the Battleship Roll. Piles of barrels on either side of the gangway would begin to totter and appear to be tumbling down upon them as they scrambled for safety and escaped out into the anonymity of the crowd.
Meanwhile those who have already been made fools of, watching from beyond the glare of the floodlights got to watch the next victims of this endless parade. Tilyou even offered seats below for those who wished to linger to watch the show and roar with laughter. Amazingly there were rarely any complaints. It was if patrons realized that the monkeyshines that they just endured was precisely what they came to Coney Island to see and experience. " ( by Jeffrey Stanton)
Coney Island
Wonder Wheel stars Kate Winslet as Ginny Rannell, she is Humpty's wife, Richie's mother, and Carolina's stepmother. She's a cross between Blanche DuBois and Alice Kramden she's an ex actress and closet alkie tragically looking for love in a crumbling "dreamland" second marriage. She "acts" as a waitress in a clamhouse on the boardwalk. Her second marriage was one of convenience to alkie on the wagon, Humpty Rannell (Jim Belushi) a Coney Island carousel operator. Did they meet at some AA meeting? Who knows. Humpty has the looks and some mannerisms that are a dead ringer for Jackie Gleason's in The Honeymooners. They live in a space near The Wonder Wheel that housed at one time a freak show or some other Coney Island attraction. It's quite appropriate since it still houses a freak Ginny's son Richie (Jack Gore) from her previous marriage who is a budding pyromaniac. His punctuating creative blazes provides some of the humor in the film.
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| Moma's little pyro |
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| Richie (Jack Gore) |
Mickey Rubin (Justin Timberlake) is the summer beach life guard for "bay seven" a section of ocean along the boardwalk. He is a wanna be playwright and the film's raconteur.
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| Mickey Rubin (Justin Timberlake) |
The tale and incidentally the film, Rubin tells us, starts with the arrival of Carolina Rannell (Juno Temple), who is Humpty's quite beautiful grown daughter from his first marriage. At that point in time Rubin has been playing hide the sausage "under the boardwalk" with Ginny (Kate Winslet) every chance they can while Humpty spend hours with his buddies fishing off the pier at Sheepshead Bay.
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| Carolina's first appearance |
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| Carolina Rannell (Juno Temple) |
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| Ginny Rannell (Kate Winslet) |
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| Humpty Rannell (Jim Belushi) |
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| Nick (Steve Schirripa) |
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| Angelo (Tony Sirico) |
The dialog in the first meeting between father and daughter after five years is some forceful screenwriting and I was very impressed with Belushi's delivery in the scene.
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| She found this-this greaseball exciting. He wasn't even good-lookin'! He was a punk. |
Carolina: I was twenty. I didn't know better. I'm sorry.
Humpty: Why didn't you go to the police?
Carolina: I told the police too much, that's the problem.
Humpty: Why the hell you open your mouth?
Carolina: The police told me that I could be looking at five years if I didn't cooperate.
Humpty: What the hell do you know? Since when do you know what happens inside the rackets?
Carolina: How could I not know? Can't be married to one of those guys and not pick up on what's going on.
Humpty: Jesus Christ! I told you not to marry that racketeer! I told you he was all mobbed up. He stank of murder. She found this-this greaseball exciting. He wasn't even good-lookin'! He was a punk.
I need a drink!
Ginny: Forget it, Humpty.
Humpty: I need one, goddammit!
Ginny: Calm down.
Humpty: Jesus Christ. God damn it, she could've married a few guys from school, from the neighborhood, all of 'em. Decent kids. We raised her nice. Your mother and I we broke our backs
out of workin' so you could go to college and-and you know, you didn't. You threw it all away! Look at ya-- you're such a beautiful girl! You had your pick.
Carolina: I loved Frank, okay?
Humpty: And all the guys you hand-picked for me, they were-- dull, colorless, boring guys. All of 'em, honest men, every one of 'em. Christ! Your mother's last dying request on her deathbed was that you didn't run off with that slime, Frankie Adatto. You wouldn't give her that one bit of satisfaction, would ya? You wouldn't let her die in peace.
Carolina: I loved him. I was twenty, I... I wanted more. More.
Humpty: More. More what?
Ginny: Jesus, Humpty. There's a world out there.
Humpty: This does not concern you. All I know is you lost your head. Your head was in the clouds
over that gutter guinea that flashy, cheap, flashy little wop. You didn't think I knew he carried a gun up here? Huh? He'll know... He'll know you came here.
Carolina: No. It's the last place he'll look. He knows how you feel about me.
Humpty: Yeah. You mean he knows how much he hated me for callin' it the way I saw it. Christ.
I counted on you when she died. I was lost. You dumped me for that trash.
Carolina: That's why he wouldn't think I'd come here. He knows that we haven't exchanged words in five years 'cause bad blood between us ran too deep.
Humpty agrees to take her in on the condition that she save her doe and go back to school. Ginny gets Carolina a job as a waitress at the Clam House where she works. All is well until Mickey runs into Ginny and Carolina on the boardwalk. Mickey's dilemma is that he falls hard for Carolina while still boinking her stepmom Ginny.
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| Love at first sight |
It goes Noirsville when Carolina begins to confide in Ginny about the details of her encounters with and her evolving feelings for Mickey. The icing on the cake is when the two mob Guidos show up on the boardwalk.
Noirsville
All the performances are bathed an expressionist glow of carnival colors, infusing some sequences in orange and red others in blue and indigo. Vittorio Storaro provides a wonderfully hypnotic expressionism in what's essentially a Kitchen Sink Carney/Coney Island Noir. 8/10
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