PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM, one of the humor highlights of 1972, ranked 22nd at the box office, and along with ’72’s #13 hit, Everything You’ve Always Wanted To Know About Sex firmly secured Woody Allen, 36, into widespread popularity and industry clout. His fan base had been growing steadily, not just from holding leads as well as writing and directing in Take The Money And Run (37th in 1969) and Bananas (ditto, 1971) but thru plays, books and comedy albums. He didn’t direct this time—that was in the deft hands of Herbert Ross, but he adapted the script from his 1969 Broadway play (463 performances) and had the lead role. It was the first of eight screen collaborations with new-bursting star Diane Keaton, 26, who also blessed the year’s mega-hit/instant classic The Godfather. *

LINDA: “What were you thinking about the whole time we were making love?”   ALLAN: “Willie Mays.”   LINDA: “Do you always think about baseball players?”   ALLAN: “It keeps me going.”   LINDA: “Yeah, I wondered why you kept yelling “slide“.”

Stuck in mope hell after being divorced, magazine film critic ‘Allan Felix’ (Allen) is urged by his married friends ‘Linda & Dick Christie’ (Keaton & Tony Roberts) to man up and hit San Francisco’s swinging singles scene. Allan’s ingrained nervousness, epic clumsiness, and offbeat intellect blow one sure thing set-up after another. Best pal Dick can’t stop the drain-bound flow, but sympathetic Linda offers the sort of appreciation Allan needs and deserves: while Dick is absorbed with boring business deals, ignored Linda and hurt puppy Allan drift closer and closer together. Allan self-analyzes his situation in imagined dialogues with Humphrey Bogart, the definition of no-nonsense tough guy whose Lucky Strike & .45 caliber philosophy boils down to “cut-the-whining, dames don’t like it”.

DICK: “What? You got into a fight?”   ALLAN: “Yep.”   DICK: “With who?”   ALLAN: “Some guys were getting tough with Julie. I had to teach them a lesson.”   DICK: “Are you all right?”   ALLAN: “Yeah, I’m fine. I snapped my chin down onto some guy’s fist and hit another one in the knee with my nose.”

Allen, Keaton, Roberts and Jerry Lacy (delightful as Bogart) repeat their roles from the play, Owen Roizman (The French Connection, Network, Wyatt Earp) aces the cinematography (especially the black & white homage sendups of Casablanca) and Billy Goldenberg’s score is just right. In his third film, deadpan Roberts gets a good share of droll laughs; 32, he’d do five more pictures with Woody. Keaton is a natural; contrast her almost-soulmate sweetheart in this lark with the seriousness of her naive, web-caught placeholder ‘Kay’ in The Godfather. Allen does some of his most inspired physical comedy, and the anxiety shtick that he’d later run ragged was still fresh and amusing. Short (87 minutes), clever, observant, relatable, even touching, ‘Sam’ holds up well enough to “play it again“…

ALLAN: “That’s quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn’t it?”   MUSEUM GIRL: “Yes, it is.   ALLAN: “What does it say to you?”   MUSEUM GIRL: “It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.”   ALLAN: “What are you doing Saturday night?”  MUSEUM GIRL: “Committing suicide.”   ALLAN: “What about Friday night?”

With Susan Anspach, Jennifer Salt, Joy Bang, Viva (“What do you take me for?”), Michael Greene (“You’d look real good on the back of my chopper“), Diana Davila (‘Museum Girl’), Suzanne Zenor (“Get lost, creep.”), and Mark Goddard. Box office gross:$17,400,000.

* Odd (paired) Couples were a thing that year, funny or serious—What’s Up Doc?, Cabaret, Last Tango In Paris, Pete ‘n’ Tillie, Butterflies Are Free, The Heartbreak Kid, The War Between Men and Women.