Remember the Classics

‘Bananas’ (1971)

Before becoming better known for his thoughtfully autobiographical films, Woody Allen could craft an insane comedy with the best of them.

Though “Bananas” is disguised as a parody on the tumultuous political history of Cuba, it’s really just an excuse for Allen to engage in a series of exceedingly silly sight gags—something that the movie announces from its beginning, where the assassination of the first “El Presidente” of the South American country of “San Marcos” is excitedly accompanied by Howard Cosell and ABC’s Wide World of Sports. It’s not so much an excuse to bypass a proper plot as it is a desire to recall the glory days of Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers.

Chaplin fans will be pleased to see a familiar desperation in Allen’s hero, Fielding Mellish, as he tries so hard to correct an impossible situation without incident, even going so far as to copy the Little Tramp’s ballet moves to provide distraction. The scenes that do speak, speak without end, in that same way that Groucho would peddle around scenes by himself, throwing out puns at high gear, unconcerned about whether or not you laughed—even though you always did.

Not to accuse “Bananas” of being unoriginal, of course. To sustain such a system—where a skeletal plot surrounds omnipresent comedy—is hard enough to carry attention for 15 minutes, much less 80. “Bananas” succeeds so well because its good-to-bad joke ratio is unusually high for such a nonsensical movie, perhaps even higher than in a Monty Python film, which depends on some willingness to submit to silliness to work. “Bananas” seizes the viewer’s attention, no matter what mood he is in, and bombards him with comedy until he is forced to play along. A mere cross-section of the jokes: A state dinner hosted by a dictator is immediately followed by a bill, divided up amongst the guests. The baby carriage from “Battleship Potemkin” comes in out of nowhere during a battle scene. Foreplay is accompanied by the 1812 Overture. And, of course, the use of that ever-reliable image of comedy: a pair of white-coat asylum orderlies, armed with an oversized butterfly net while chasing an escapee. Scenes only operate in sensical terms within themselves, as separate worlds that cease to be once their comedic purpose has been fulfilled.

Oh, but the plot! How easy it is to forget. Mellish works at a “very large corporation” as a product tester (Allen’s screenwriting ploy to try out a few funny Rube Goldberg devices) when he meets Nancy (Louise Lasser), a politically active young woman who’s always attending demonstrations and trying to get you to sign this or that. They date briefly, but unfortunately, she dumps him soon thereafter for a lack of direction in life and an “inability to be a leader.” Distraught and seeking escape, Mellish decides to vacation in the never-really-heard-of-it-before South American country San Marcos. The resident vicious dictator (Carlos Montalban) considers him to be the perfect candidate for a murder on which to frame the local insurgents, but Fielding manages to escape, only to fall into the hands of the rebels themselves and join their cause as a means to return to America.

Allen’s starring role in his own directorial work, soon to become a staple of his films, does not operate so much as a desire to “put himself into his work” in “Bananas”—at least not in the same way as he plays in “Annie Hall” or “Manhattan.” Here, it’s just his way to bring himself in on the fun that he’s written. Although Allen’s brilliant later works often require that you indulge him in his narcissism to some degree, “Bananas” doesn’t require much precedent to enjoy it, and for that reason alone it may be one of his finest efforts.