Allan Felix (Woody Allen) at 29 is a nerdy, neurotic movie columnist and feature writer for Film Quarterly who spends too much time watching movies. His idol is Humphrey Bogart and the film starts with the closing scene from CASABLANCA (1942). His wife Nancy (Susan Anspach) divorces him and explains, "You like movies because you're one of life's great watchers. I'm not like that, I'm a doer." She moves to New York to pursue her career. Allan asks, "I wonder if she actually had an orgasm in the two years we were married, or did she fake it that night?"
His close friends Dick Christie (Tony Roberts) and wife Linda (Diane Keaton) attempt to find him a girl friend. Shy Allan starts dating again, with awkward, pathetic, and disastrous results, until he relaxes. His attempts to be sexy and sophisticated result in klutzy insecure nervousness. He begins receiving advice on love from the ghost of Humphrey Bogart, played flawlessly by impersonator Jerry Lacy. Bogart tells him, "Dames are simple. I never met one that didn't understand a slap in the mouth or a slug from a forty-five" and "You're as nervous as Lizabeth Scott was just before I blew her brains out!"
Allan wants a woman who is tall, blonde, big breasted, and might like him. He says, "I'll get broads up here like you wouldn't believe: swingers, freaks, nymphomaniacs, dental hygienists." He takes a girl to a bar so they can "get high and watch the weirdos". Some of the patrons beat up cowardly Allan and steal his date. Allan tells Dick, "I had to teach them a lesson. I snapped my chin down onto some guy's fist and hit another one in the knee with my nose."
Eventually he falls in love with neurotic and hypochondriac Linda Christie. After they make love, she asks him what he was thinking about. He tells her baseball, and she replies she couldn't figure out why he kept yelling "Slide!". But the relationship is doomed, just as it is for Humphrey Bogart in CASABLANCA. The film's ending is a parody of CASABLANCA, as Allan explains to Linda that she must remain with her husband. He repeats a famous Bogart line, "If that plane leaves the ground, and you're not on it with him, you'll regret it--maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life...It's from CASABLANCA. I waited my whole life to say it."
Herbert Ross directed this delightful adaptation of Woody Allen's hit Broadway play. It opened on February 12, 1969, and ran for 453 performances. Allen and Keaton first met playing their roles on Broadway and this is Allen's first film with Keaton and also Tony Roberts. There is a running joke with workaholic Dick Christie and telephone numbers as he makes real-estate deals. An example: "I'll be at 362-9296 for a while, then I'll be at 648-0024 for about fifteen minutes. Then I'll be at 752-0420, and then I'll be at home at 621-4598. Yeah, right George. Bye-bye."
Also in the cast are: Jenniver Salt (Sharon Lake), Joy Bang (Julie), Viva (Jennifer), Susanne Zenor (Disco girl), Diana Davila (museum girl), Mari Fletcher (fantasy Sharon), Michael Greene (hood #1), Ted Markland (hood #2), and Tom Bullock (taxi hippie). Woody Allen wrote the screenplay. Billy Goldenberg wrote the music, borrowing from the themes of Max Steiner. Oscar Peterson composed "Blues for Allan Felix". Herbert Ross directed. Because of a strike by film workers in New York in the summer of 1971, the film was shot in San Francisco. The film was released May 4, 1972.
Overall, PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM is an entertaining, intelligent and hilarious film from one of cinema's best comedians. It explores the cultural phenomenon of people in modern society living their lives as a movie. The mix of one-liners, pathos, angst, observations on the human condition, and visual comedy is first-rate. Woody Allen does Marx Brothers-type slapstick comedy better than anyone. The plot, lines and pratfalls make it is one of Allen's consistently funniest movies, mixing humour with the serious issues of relationships and fidelity.
