Woody Allen revisits his familiar themes, via "La Strada".

Rating: 10/10 (6 May 2001)

With "Sweet and Lowdown", Woody Allen revisits his familiar themes and interests: amorality of the artist; the flawed and lost protagonist; pre-1950's music (in this case, 30's jazz), and love once found, rejected and lost.
Interestingly, Allen hangs his themes on a reworked vision of "La Strada", Federico Fellini's 1954 masterpiece. Allen has created a reverse image of Fellini's classic. Whereas "La Strada" is uncompromisingly bleak, "Sweet and Lowdown" is light, breezy, and comedic. Allen's tale revolves around the male lead, Emmitt Ray (Sean Penn), a caddish jazz guitarist. Fellini's story is more involved with it's female lead, Gelsomina, a simple-minded innocent. (Ray's counterpart in "La Strada" is the brutish strongman, Zampano, played by Anthony Quinn). Allen most closely follows Fellini in creating Hattie, a mute who is, like Gelsomina, an innocent. Hattie (Samantha Morton) is the mirror image of Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina), right down to her similarly broad facial expressions. Woody even throws in an "in the know" joke: because Gelsomina is often food deprived in Fellini's film (in fact, does she ever eat?), Allen has Hattie stuffing her face constantly. Both characters, in each film, draw out our sympathies (Gelsomina more profoundly, however). Each film presents too the sadness of the too late realization that true love once granted and held, can be lost.
The gravity of love lost, the remarkable and poignant portrayals by Sean Penn and Samantha Morton, and the wonderful music throughout, elevate "Sweet and Lowdown" in Allen's canon, making it more substantial than has generally been acknowledged.