Most great artists need a few films to come into form. One of the great examples is the extremely prolific Woody Allen, whose early films like “Sleeper” and “Love and Death” were leaps and bounds goofier than “Annie Hall” and his later masterpieces.
But then even before those was “Bananas.” The immediate difference is the lack of the classic Allen typeface, Windsor, to open the credits of the film. These big bubble letters alone show a more animated, musical film than the sophisticated wordplay of the later ones. Allen actually proves himself to be a very gifted slapstick comic here, but he’s definitely not at home quite yet, and “Bananas” lacks some of his other films’ narrative elegance.
Allen plays an unhappy product tester who one day starts dating a political activist (Louise Lasser, one of Allen’s wives) going door to door for petition signatures. Unlike in “Annie Hall,” Allen is not the smartest person in the relationship. In fact, he’s a putz, and she breaks up with him claiming that he could never be a daring leader.
But prior to them breaking up, he booked tickets to a fake Latin American nation currently in a state of political upheaval. The government plans to murder Allen and blame the rebels, but he’s rescued by the rebels and lives with them until the dictator is overthrown. When the new leader proves to be mad with power as well, Allen himself steps in as the dictator of the nation, donning a fake beard and military garb. Hilarity ensues.
Most of this is pretty dumb. Gags like a harp player actually being in the closet when the emotional music kicks in is an old hat bit that someone like Mel Brooks did a lot better at around the same time. There’s also the joke where the clerk yells in front of an embarrassed Allen buying a porn magazine, “What’s the price of Orgasm?”
But then there’s the opening scene, which is as daring as anything Allen’s ever done. He gets Howard Kossel to provide play-by-play commentary for the assassination of the Latin nation’s current president, asking him questions like “How do you feel,” just as he’s at his last breath. Movies today aren’t this knowingly cartoonish and cynically upfront about death and the media.
If nothing else, we can see some great style and bravura in all of Allen’s dopey gags. His movies always looked like art house productions, with careful framing in the Academy aspect ratio and not like sketch comedy routines in a Mel Brooks movie. This is not a great film of his, but it arguably has more innovative flair than movies he’s made in the last 20 years.