It’s the Woodman at his most hilarious.
Bananas, Woody Allen’s third outing as a writer/director, has perhaps one of the most darkly comic openings of all time. The film begins with the anticipated assassination of a Latin American dictator. The assassination in question is being broadcast live around the world and features Don Dunphy interviewing one of the assassins as if the whole thing was a sporting event or an awards show, even ending with Dunphy telling the gun-wielding man, “Good luck to you sir.” The humor may seem a bit twisted, but it represents a perfect combination of spoof and parody, two specific brands of comedy which are both hard at work here. Although Allen has made his name in film as a great writer of witty comedy, Bananas is one of the rare times where he seemed to give free reign to his sensibilities, allowing them to venture into genuinely offbeat territory in truly hilarious fashion.
Fielding Mellish (Allen) is the center of 1971’s Bananas, the story of a geeky product tester who falls in love with an impassioned activist named Nancy (Louise Lasser). When their relationship stalls due to Fielding’s lack of courage, he decides to prove his bravery to Nancy by traveling to the country of San Marcos, where he quickly gets swept up in the revolution spreading throughout the land.
This being a Woody Allen effort, one has to expect a script that’s chock full of the kind of jokes that have become trademark with the legendary filmmaker. “We fell in love,” Fielding says when describing his and Nancy’s early relationship. “I fell in love — she just stood there.” The brilliance of Allen’s comedic voice is how his jokes always work in sharp contrast to the situation at hand. When he’s told shortly after arriving in San Marcos that the revolution will start in six months, he exclaims, “Six months?! I have a rented car!” Even if some of Bananas’s lines dealing with political unrest ring a little too true in today’s world, Allen’s script is quick to bring it back to more innocent, potent humor. “How am I immature?” he asks Nancy as their relationship is coming to a close. “Well, emotionally, sexually, and intellectually,” she responds. “Yeah, but in what other ways?”
Funny lines aside, it’s the side splitting blending of parody and spoof which makes Bananas come alive. If Allen isn’t injecting the film with hilarious dialogue, he’s written straight situations and infused them with the most ludicrous of elements. The scene in which Fielding goes to tell his surgeon parents of his decision to go to San Marcos is one of the film’s highlights due to the fact that he does it while the two are actually performing surgery, with even their patient chiming in on whether or not his plan is a good idea. There’s a terrific sequence in which Fielding is invited to have dinner with the President of San Marcos, which comes complete with musicians who aren’t playing instruments and a bill at the very end of it. At Fielding’s trial, a black woman who turns out to be J. Edgar Hoover in disguise is called to testify, and the film ends with Nancy and Fielding’s eventual honeymoon being treated like a sports event and even features commentary from Howard Cosell. These moments are a few of the many contained in Bananas which carry enough power to rival the likes of Airplane! in their quest for the kind of zaniness that is all but impossible to resist.
Allen’s knack for timing and delivery were never on better display than they are in Bananas. The actor makes the most out of every joke he and co-writer Mickey Rose have loaded into the script and does all required to make sure every laugh hits home. Billed as the female lead, but saddled with what is more or less a supporting role, Lasser plays well off of Allen as Nancy. The two’s scenes together show a comfort and an ease that’s lovely to witness, almost making one wish the whole affair were solely about them and nothing else.
There have been a couple of theories regarding the significance of the film’s title. Some say Allen was having fun by setting the main action in a banana republic, while others say it was due to the fact that the film contains no bananas at all. Others still point to the wild and nonsensical set of rules by which the movie operates that gives its title its meaning. In the end, however, the movie is just so much fun that the origins of its moniker don’t much matter. It should be pointed out that even though Bananas contains a multitude of comedy from beginning to end, it never once shortchanges its main character. In fact, the film revels in the sweetness of Fielding’s story and the overall journey he takes in an effort to become the man he never knew he was. It’s because of this that when the moment comes where Fielding and Nancy are reunited after his time away, the encounter is tender and endearing as it is ultimately laugh-filled.
Bananas is now available on Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
