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In The Purple Rose of Cairo, whimsy engages with futility to point out the difference between "the movies" and Hollywood. Cecilia (Mia Farrow), a waifish housewife in pre-war New Jersey (the film is set there, it seems, because Allen couldn't bear to make his beloved New York look depressed), keeps a seat warm at the Jewel Theater: life is sweeter projected. During her umpteenth time at "The Purple Rose of Cairo" (Allen's dead-on homage to what he calls the "champagne comedies" of the '30s and '40s), Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), one of "Cairo"'s characters, notes Cecilia's devotion and steps right off the silver screen to join her, instigating a cause célèbre. The head of RKO--"Raoul Hirsch" (Alexander H. Cohen)--and Baxter's real-life counterpart, "Gil Shepherd" (Daniels again), turn up to do damage control; when the inevitable happens and Shepherd encounters Cecilia, he is beguiled. Thus announces Cecilia's choice, plus the film's rhetoric: is the unconditional and reliable but finally too-elusive-to-consummate love that exists between us and our cinematic crushes preferable to the imperfect dalliances we have in reality? The Purple Rose of Cairo is the work of somebody who stocked his faith in movie magic and became disillusioned by the process once he got behind the camera, though not quite enough to forget the motion picture's cathartic potential. Woody's nostalgia-tinged reflection on his experiences in front of the camera, behind it, and as a member of the audience, the film is as funny, beautiful, and cruel as any portrait of obsession is bound to be. The last of Allen's collaborations with cinematographer Gordon Willis (who borrows a trick or two from the not-dissimilar Depression-era fantasy he shot three years earlier, Pennies from Heaven), The Purple Rose of Cairo is one of their finest, and it appears so on MGM's DVD release. Letterboxed at 1.85:1 in anamorphic widescreen, the transfer wasn't struck from a pristine print, but the colours (including the vintage greenish black-and-white used for the film within the film) have never been so succulent. The 2.0 mono sound is a tad brittle. A collectible insert rounds out the disc's package.-Bill Chambers