"The Purple Rose of Cairo" was the first Allen's movie I saw back in Moscow in the end of the 80s and it started my eternal love for his films. "The Purple Rose..." is wonderful, is one if Allen's greats - a perfect combination of poignancy and humor, romance and drama, reality and fiction. It is the movie-within-the–movie that blends sophisticated romance from the lives of rich and beautiful where the dashing main hero with bravery and chivalry written into his character always gets a girl and Depression Era New York City where a poor waitress tries to escape the realities of her joyless life in the movie theater. The story focuses on Cecilia (Mia Farrow), a waitress and a battered wife of an unemployed abusive man (Danny Aiello). Cecilia only feels alive when she watches her favorite movies that take her away from her dreary realities. One day, as she watches "Purple Rose of Cairo" for the 10th or maybe 15th time, the leading man Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) decides to leave the movie and be with Cecilia in real life. His screen partners are left confused and "trapped" in a scene they can't get out of. The live actor who plays Baxter is blamed by the film's producer for his character's rebellion and tries to get him back on the screen. Cecilia's husband finds out that his wife was seen with a good looking man instead of working as a babysitter in the evening. On the top of all, Tom Baxters in other theaters try to leave "Purple Rose of Cairo", too... It is not the first or last time Allen has played with the concept of the thin line (in this film, the silver screen) that divides film's world and reality but rarely has he created the film as sweet, gentle, sad, technically realized and simply terrific as "Purple Rose of Cairo".<br /><br />9/10