So by this point we all know I love Goodfellas and Martin Scorsese. With that in mind, I would have to say that Woody Allen is pretty much on the opposite end of my movie spectrum. A movie like Manhattan is not exactly my cup of tea, and I swear it’s not just because nobody gets shot. (Believe it or not, I’m perfectly capable of loving a movie with no killing.) But despite my dislike for Woody Allen movies, I had some hope for Radio Days, and I actually kind of liked it and its “snapshot-of-life” storyline. I think it helped that Woody Allen doesn’t actually appear in the movie outside of his narration.
Putting aside my bewilderment by the continuous appeal of Woody Allen, it’s now time to talk about family. I was surprised to see so many similarities in terms of family in Goodfellas and Radio Days. The scene in Radio Days in which the narrator explains all of the people in his family reminded me of the wedding scene in Goodfellas where Karen tries to explain all of the people in Henry’s “family”. The sense of clutter and confusion made me laugh during both movies, since I know I probably sound like that when I try to explain my Modern Family-esque family (although eventually you kind of get used to explaining why your siblings range in age from 46 to 17).
What these ethnic families have in common is that each has one major thing keeping them together. With Goodfellas it is clearly the ties of the mafia, and with Radio Days it is the radio. The radio plays out as the soundtrack to the Unnamed Woody Allen Family’s life—many of Joe’s most vivid childhood memories are remembered because they were accompanied by a particular song on the radio. I really liked that scene because it was another thing I related to in the movie. Pretty much every car trip of my childhood was accompanied by my dad’s wretched Tom Waits albums on the car radio, so I can never hear those songs without thinking about my parents and our car trips. I might even say that I’ve grown somewhat fond of those wretched songs because of the memories attached to them.
I’ve heard stories about the “radio days” from my dad, who was born in 1945 and grew up without much TV. He’s told me about how the radio was such a communal thing back then—as shown in Radio Days, there were a wide variety of programs and there was something for everybody. Additionally, the radio tethered people to what was happening in the world at the very moment it was happening. Based on this, I would say that Radio Days really captures the way that radio programming and the presence of a radio in most households established a sense of community among the people who had one, transcending even the biggest differences in ethnicity and personality.
