MovieChat Forums > Stardust Memories (1980) Discussion > A Bit Confused...

A Bit Confused...

posted 12 years ago by velvetkevorkian610
3 replies | jump to latest

Alright, so I got home today and was a bit tired so I decided to sit down and watch a movie. I decided on this one, but now I'm kind of regretting trying to do so with a sleepy brain...

I was really having a hard time piecing this all together. Looking around on the board I've heard things about it being a satire of a movie I've never seen, about different scenes than I figured being the present time ones, and just a whole lot of stuff I'm kind of confused about...

I plan to rewatch this again sometime; but that might not be for a while since I have so many other movies queued up to watch. I'd like to say that I got SOMETHING out of my first viewing though, so could someone maybe help flush some of this out in a simple way? Give the most basic of explanations of how the timeline of all these scenes is supposed to fit together? I'd appreciate it a lot.

It's not over, everybody betrayed me! I'm fed up with this world!

[–] VictorMaitland 12 years ago

If you looked around this board some you probably already know that watching Fellini's "8 1/2" will greatly help you understand the style and logic of this film. "Stardust Memories" is definitely not a "sleepy brain" mood film to watch. There's so much going and it comes so fast that you have to really pay attention and lock into the logic.

The idea of a clear "timeline" in a movie like this is susceptible, everything is intentionally a seamless mix of the present, flashbacks,flash forwards, and fantasy.
On the most basic level:

- Sandy goes to film festival of his movies and is surprised by a visit from his French girlfriend who is having an affair.
- He also hooks up with a young fan of his films who is there with her boyfriend.
- The whole weekend he continues to reflect on his relationship with a destructive actress.
- Spontaneously he decides to go for a drive with the young fan and his car breaks down. They stumble upon a UFO convention and eventually his agent and French girlfriend find him there.
- He imagines that a crazed fan shoots him, but actually faints and wakes up in the hospital repeating the name of the actress to the French girlfriend.
- The police find an unregistered gun in his abandoned car and take him to jail.
- The french girlfriend leaves with her kids on the train as Sandy argues his love for her and they have a Hollywood kiss.
- It ends with all the characters from the movie(which is his life) watching the film version of his life.

I've only see it once so I'm probably missing some stuff. Similar to "8 1/2" this is a film that begs for repeated viewings.

[–] velvetkevorkian610 12 years ago

Thank you, that was very helpful. I have 8 1/2 queued up to watch pretty soon so once I get through with that I'll have to give this one another look. I'll go into it awake this time, though!

It's not over, everybody betrayed me! I'm fed up with this world!

[–] VictorMaitland 12 years ago

I was recently reading through a book of interviews with Woody Allen and this film came up.

Interestingly enough Woody says that starting from around the 11 minute mark, when Sandy sees the dead rabbit on the table that his maid is cooking, everything afterwards is a daydream. Sandy thoughts drift towards death for a moment because he sees the dead rabbit, which leads him down this "rabbithole" of self-reflection that we view for the rest of the film.

I think that helps to explain a lot about the logic of the film.