Capital Celluloid 2012 - Day 1: Sunday Jan 1

Sleeper (Allen, 1973): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.20pm
This film also screens on Jan 7 & 18 at the cinema.


There's a Woody Allen season running at the NFT (all the details here) and here's one of the undoubted highlights - after all, we all know his early funny ones are the best. This one is bloody hilarious. If memory serves there are no traces of the world as we know it now in 2173 in this movie other than a sighting of a McDonald's restaurant which appears in a scene as the fugitive Allen races past. A wonderful touch in a film sprinkled with great gags.


Chicago Reader review:


'Woody Allen takes a 200-year snooze after an ulcer operation and wakes up in 2173, where he finds, to no one's surprise, Diane Keaton (as sphinxlike as ever), a Volkswagen, and a good number of Richard Nixon jokes. Like all of Allen's early films, this 1973 release is an ungainly collection of one-liners and misdirected sight gags that hardly qualifies as a “movie.” But as a stand-up routine it's a scream. With John Beck and Mary Gregory'
Dave Kehr

Even the trailer here is terrific.

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