Broadway Danny Rose

Although the laughs are tempered with a seedy undercurrent and a lump-in-the-throat ending, Allen has rarely been funnier. Read full review

Allen is expert at playing life's victims, but he never was more persuasive. Even when he is striving hopelessly to retain the one client with a chance for stardom, Danny Rose retains a certain dignity. Woody Allen remains the most original and daring comedy artist in films today. [16 Jan 1984]

Richly enjoyable on its own terms: modest, funny and sad. It is Woody Allen at the top of his art. [28 Jan 1984, p.D1]

This story is not about consummation, but about reconciliation; it's a recognition that we want wrongs to be righted, that good will prevail, and that the faithless will be punished or reformed. Read full review

Danny Rose may be his most Chaplinesque film, and therefore his most dangerous: the fine line that Allen (like Chaplin) walks between sweetness and sentimentality has never been finer. [30 Jan 1984, p.69]

Broadway Danny Rose proceeds so sweetly and so illogically that it seems to have been spun, not constructed. Mr. Allen works with such speed and confidence these days that a brief, swift film like this one can have all the texture and substance of his more complicated work. Read full review

Splendidly viewed through Gordon Willis' gleaming black and white cinematography, the story of Danny Rose, narrated by a group of aged comics reminiscing at the Carnegie Deli, becomes a bittersweet examination of dreams that don't come true. [27 Jan 1984]

Broadway Danny Rose uses all of the basic ingredients of Damon Runyon's Broadway: the pathetic acts looking for a job, the guys who get a break and forget their old friends, the agents with hearts of gold, the beautiful showgirls who fall for Woody Allen types, the dumb gangsters, big shots at the ringside tables (Howard Cosell plays himself). It all works. Read full review

It sounds like what it is: a modest, workable story for a modest, workable picture. And that's one of the things that make Broadway Danny Rose so likable. The film's very lack of presumption lifts it above the common run of noisy farces and pretentious romances so plentiful these days. [09 Feb 1984, p.29]

Broadway Danny Rose mixes the old, bitter Allen with the new, mellowed Allen, still a great comedy writer and comedian but now a better story-teller and better actor. He seems to plan films in orderly progressions, so they'll fit right into retrospectives without any shuffling. [27 Jan 1984, p.19]

It’s a fairy-tale, a glittering New York fable told in a silvery black and white, laden with nostalgia for times and oddities long gone from the hallowed halls of Broadway. Another Allen gem. Read full review

The jokes are firmly embedded in plot and characterisation, and the film, shot by Gordon Willis in harsh black-and-white, looks terrific; but what makes it work so well is the unsentimental warmth pervading every frame. Read full review

A charming comedy shot in black and white that mixes several varieties of the New Yorkers that Allen loves so well. Read full review

Broadway Danny Rose is a delectable diversion which allows Woody Allen to present a reasonably humane, and amusing gentle character study without sacrificing himself to overly commercial concerns. Read full review

It seems meant to recapture Allen's lost audience: the verbal wit is fast and frequently hilarious, and the grating self-pity that has come to mar his films has been tempered. Read full review

Shot in grainy black and white, the material is rather unformed. It's dim and larval, like Danny. Allen leaves us in the uncomfortable position of waiting for laugh lines and character developments that aren't there. The picture has a curdled, Diane Arbus bleakness, but it also has some good fast talk and some push. Allen plugs up the holes with gags that still get laughs; he remembers to pull the old Frank Capra, cutrate Dickens strings, and he keeps things moving along.

The aim is oddball romantic comedy, with himself and Mia Farrow embodying a funny-grotesque mismatch; unfortunately, the obligatory demonstration of attraction and compatibility between these characters escapes Allen; the affair degenerates into a mawkish botch. [27 Jan 1984, p.D1]