Unlike the mythical story of the king who kills his father and marries his mother, “Oedipus Wrecks” is the tale of a man who wishes to kill his mother to hide his ancestry. In it, Allen once again demonstrates that family, heritage, and traditional values are essential ingredients in the creation of an authentic life.
After the seriousness of Another Woman, Allen’s excursion back into broad farce for his segment of the trilogy New York Stories comes as a refreshing change of pace. For the first time since Broadway Danny Rose, Allen himself plays the leading role in a story with strong comic overtones. In fact, “Oedipus Wrecks” (hereafter referred to as OW) owes its plot to a situation briefly mentioned in the earlier film.
At the beginning of that film, we see Danny attempting to comfort a man whose elderly wife remains mesmerized in a trance induced by Danny’s client, a hypnotist. Danny promises him that his wife will soon snap out of it, simultaneously offering him a free dinner if she doesn’t, hedging his bets by asking him if he likes Chinese.
In OW, Sheldon Mills (Woody Allen) is the victim of such a mix-up rather than an agent for its perpetrator. Engaged to a beautiful blonde named Lisa (Mia Farrow), Sheldon is attempting to restart his life after a failed marriage for which he is still paying alimony. Lisa, also making a new start, brings three children to their proposed union. On the face of things, Sheldon should be happy, but he isn’t. He still has one problem, a problem hinted at by the music accompanying the segment’s credits: “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad.”
When we first see Sheldon, he is talking to the camera:
I’m fifty years old. I’m a partner in a big law firm. You know, I’m very successful. And I still haven’t resolved my relationship with my mother.
At this admission, the camera shows us a shot of a man listening to him, and we realize that Sheldon is speaking not to us but to his psychiatrist (Marvin Chatinover). Once again, as in Annie Hall, a story is presented in the form of a therapy session.
Sheldon tells him about a recent dream in which his mother, Sadie (Mae Questal), dies. As he is taking her coffin to the cemetery, he hears her voice criticizing his driving and giving him directions. By starting the segment in this way, Allen sets the tone for the dreamlike scenario to come. We hear Sheldon complain about his mother’s constant criticisms of him. He ends his session by confessing, “I love her, but I wish she would disappear.” The story to follow will confirm the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.”
The primary conflict between Sheldon and Sadie is her contention that Sheldon is turning his back on his heritage. All of her complaints are attempts to force Sheldon to face up to the facts about himself, to accept the role he’s inherited by virtue of his background and ethnicity. She never tires of telling others that his real name is Millstein, not Mills. By changing it, she implies, he is denying his Jewishness and trying to pass as something he’s not.
She wants him to accept the truth about himself, like the fact that he’s losing his hair and that he was a bedwetter. Most of all, she wants him to accept her, to accept the fact that his mother is a pushy old Jewish lady whose goal in life is to make sure that he passes his heritage on to a new generation. The first time he brings Lisa to her apartment for dinner, Sadie criticizes everything about him, including his eating habits. She complains to Lisa that Sheldon thinks she’s too loud in public and that he claims she is always embarrassing him. She insists on showing Lisa endless pictures of Sheldon as a baby as she reveals humiliating details about his childhood.
Sheldon’s response to all of this is to become self-conscious and ashamed. Lisa, clearly uncomfortable, rightly fears that Mrs. Millstein doesn’t approve of her. During Lisa’s brief trip to the bathroom, Sadie seizes the opportunity to tell Sheldon:
SADIE: Look, look! Listen, Sheldon, don’t get married!
SHELDON: I don’t want to discuss it!
SADIE: I want to discuss it! What do you know about that? After all, where do you come to a blonde with three children? What are you, an astronaut?
This last comment implies that Sheldon is losing sight of his proper place in society. His aspiration to marry “a blonde with three children” is like “shooting for the moon or the stars”—it simply isn’t appropriate for a man of his background.
Sheldon next tells his psychiatrist how Sadie embarrassed him by interrupting an important meeting when she appeared uninvited with his Aunt Ceil (Jessie Keosian) after a matinée of Cats. We see his horror as the two women come towards him down the long hallway. He tries, as always, to shush her before she embarrasses him again, but his mission fails. One of his senior partners, Bates (Ira Wheeler), urges Sheldon to rejoin the meeting, and Sadie loudly exclaims to Ceil (who is hard of hearing), “This is Bates, the one with the mistress.”
Sheldon’s agony is relieved by an event that occurs on a Sunday outing with Lisa, her children, and, at Lisa’s insistence, his mother. Sadie ceaselessly complains as the group is led to an outdoor table for lunch. While her complaints are humorous, we do wonder why Sheldon can’t give in for once and eat indoors as she demands.
It is during the following magic show that Sheldon’s wish comes true. Once again, magic plays an important role by symbolizing a character’s desire to control his environment. The magician (George Schindler) uses the name Shandu the Great, the name of the escape artist who taught Danny Rose how to wriggle free of ropes. Shandu calls Sadie out of the audience to be the subject of his “Chinese box trick,” in which he places her in a large box, sticks swords through it, and then reopens it to show that she has mysteriously vanished. Even though Sadie states clearly that she doesn’t want to take part in the trick, no one pays any attention, and she is forced into the act.
The trick goes smoothly until it is time for her to “magically reappear.” This she fails to do, amazing not only the audience but Shandu and his crew as well. At first, Sheldon reacts to this “miracle” hysterically, threatening to sue the theater and hiring a sleazy private investigator, although he rejects the suggestion that the police be called because, as usual, he is afraid the publicity will embarrass him. Echoing the gag from Broadway Danny Rose, Shandu offers Sheldon free tickets to a future show to make up for the loss of his mother.
As three weeks pass without Sadie’s reappearance, Sheldon tells his therapist that he’s never been so relaxed and happy. With his mother gone, all the stress has left his life. He is more productive at work, and best of all, his sex life has never been better. Overcoming his guilt, he calls off the search, happily accepting his good luck that Sadie disappeared without anything terrible having happened. He didn’t even have to attend her funeral!
Sheldon’s bliss is powerfully disrupted, however, when he hears loud noises coming from the street as he is shopping in a grocery store. When he emerges from the store, he is horrified to find his mother up in the sky, larger than life and telling all of New York about his shortcomings and her frustrations. This is his worst nightmare come to life. Now everyone in the city knows everything about him. Strangers on the street call him a “mama’s boy” or demand that he treat his mother better. Initially, Lisa tries to be supportive of Sheldon in his time of need, but when Mom calls her a kurveh (a prostitute) in front of millions of people, she is humiliated and warns Sheldon that she’s not sure how long she can take it.
At the advice of his psychiatrist, who acknowledges that science and rational thought stand helpless before this inexplicable phenomenon, Sheldon goes for help to a psychic named Treva (Julie Kavner). Treva claims to have mystical powers, rejecting Sheldon’s skepticism with assurances that if only he does what she tells him, she will be able to return Sadie to earth.
Over a period of another three weeks, we are shown a variety of humorous scenes in which Treva and Sheldon try one outrageous mystical stratagem after another. They humiliate themselves by wearing ridiculous masks and costumes as they dance, chant, and sprinkle various magic powders. Comic as they are, their efforts seem hopelessly artificial and contrived. The only authentic moment comes when Treva interrupts her attempts to bewitch Sadie’s apartment by playing a beautiful piece on her piano.
As time progresses, television newscasters tell us that New Yorkers have become accustomed to Sadie’s presence. We even see Ed Koch argue that she has a right to remain airborne; after all, she’s a help to the police in spotting crime. Only Sheldon and Lisa can not adjust to Sadie’s ongoing presence. When he sneaks out of his apartment one morning to avoid reporters, Sadie calls down to him, “Why are you running? They only want to ask you some questions.”
Eventually, Sheldon interrupts an absurd dancing ritual involving monk’s habits, candles, and chanting, to tell Treva that he thinks she’s a fraud and that he wants to give up. Crying, she confesses that she has never really had any occult powers. She also reveals that she wanted to believe:
TREVA: I always have hopes! I always think that there’s more to the world than meets your eye, hidden meanings, special mysteries. Nothing ever works! Ever!
SHELDON: Look, maybe you’re right. Don’t get so upset, you know, after all, my mother is floating around up there!
Treva goes on to admit that she started out to become an actress, but when she couldn’t get any work, she became a waitress, until some astrologer told her that there was a fortune to be made in the occult field, “that people flock to it because their lives are so empty.”
Sheldon comforts her and tells her it isn’t her fault that they failed. With his usual contempt for the West Coast lifestyle, he tells her that if she had moved to California, by now she would probably have “a swimming pool and your own church!” As he consoles her, he starts to realize how much he likes her. He agrees to stay for a typically Jewish meal of boiled chicken and potato pancakes. After dinner, Sheldon praises Treva as “a marvelous storyteller,” and we begin to see that without the artificial trappings of the psychic, she is a sweet Jewish girl who loves nothing better than taking care of a man in the traditional way. Their mutual attraction is palpable as Sheldon excuses himself to go home. Entranced by one another, Sheldon and Treva have great difficulty saying goodnight. Treva reinforces her image as the traditional Jewish woman by giving him some chicken and pancakes to take home with him for a snack later.
When Sheldon returns to his apartment, he finds a letter from Lisa telling him that it’s all over between them, that she just can’t take it any more. “It’s funny,” she writes, “you wake up one day and suddenly you’re out of love! Life is odd. All the best to you, Lisa.” Sheldon throws down the letter, disgusted that Lisa did not even have the courage to break up with him in person (whereas, on the other hand, Treva is able to admit her failings honestly and to his face). Sheldon finds himself unwrapping a drumstick and holding it up to his nose to smell, as rich broth drips from it and romantic music swells loudly on the soundtrack. He looks around him with an expression of awakening realization, concluding with a small smile (Isaac’s smile from the end of Manhattan), as he finally discovers his true destiny.
The film’s last scene begins one morning as Sadie calls down from the sky to awaken him, only to discover that, for once, he has anticipated her desires by coming onto his balcony to see her. Leading Treva by the hand, he introduces her as his new fiancée. When Sadie sees Treva (dressed attractively for the first time) and hears her voice, she realizes that Sheldon has finally accepted his heritage and found a nice Jewish girl. Having at last achieved her goal, Sadie leaves the sky and reappears on a sofa, back to her normal self and complete with photo album. Sheldon watches with a smile of happy resignation as Sadie tells Treva all of Sheldon’s failings, and Treva responds by playing the game as it should be played, clucking appropriately and glancing at Sheldon in mock outrage.
In “Oedipus Wrecks,” as in Radio Days, Allen asserts the value of maintaining the ties of family and heritage. At its outset, Sheldon disguises his identity behind a phony name, hides his mother out of fear of rejection, and pursues a shallow relationship with a woman capable of abandoning him when he needs her most. In the course of the tale, a miracle forces Sheldon to realize that he can find happiness only by unashamedly returning to the values and customs of his heritage.
When we first see her, Treva has disguised herself even more thoroughly than Sheldon. Wanting to be an actress, she plays the part of the screwy psychic, trying to tap into the mysteries of the universe by means of rituals and disguises totally alien to her own culture. Only at the end, when she fully explores her identity as a Jewish woman, is she able to bring Sadie back down to earth.
As for Sadie, with all her mishegoss (wackiness), she is the most honest and the wisest of them all. Having assured the continuity of her heritage, she will now be able to fulfill the role she was truly born to play: a loving Jewish grandmother!
Despite its sincerity and good humor, OW paints too simplistic a solution to the problems of contemporary life. With its fatalistic determinism, OW denies the freedom and creativity which Allen has valued so highly in other films (e.g., Manhattan). We will have to turn to his next effort, Crimes and Misdemeanors, for a serious examination of this conflict between freedom and tradition.