365 Days. 365 Films.

This is probably the most absurd Allen film I’ve seen to date and yet it’s still loaded with social and political criticism bound by Allen’s classic wit. Allen’s character Fielding Mellish is dumped by his political activist girlfriend and in an attempt to win her back he travels to a small Latin American country, throwing himself half-heartedly into the countries revolution against it’s fascist leader.

This is a fairly early example of Allen’s written work, especially for the screen, since most of his work before this was written for the stage or for TV. This is evident in his use of physical comedy – something the later Allen fans may have only caught glimpses of in his more recent work. For me, Allen has an intelligent sense of humour and so the slapstick was a slightly frustrating replacement for what I’m used to with him, but it was funny nonetheless.

Bananas is not one of Allen’s best films although it isn’t as dated as it should be and the sense of humour is exactly as expected.