Broadway Danny Rose

MGM Home Entertainment Dir: Woody Allen. 84 minutes, 1984

Most people would choose either Annie Hall or Manhattan as their favourite Woody Allen movie, but I prefer Broadway Danny Rose, a small but perfectly formed jewel that savours both New York, the director's favourite city, and Broadway in particular.

It is by no means his most ambitious effort but there is no other film about the lower reaches of showbiz that is quite so truthful, nor anything like as funny.

Woody plays Danny, a down-at-heel agent whose clients include singing parrots, skating penguins, blind xylophone players and Lou Canova, an over-the-hill singer who once had a hit song (about indigestion and called Agita).

Somehow or other, Danny has booked him at the Waldorf Astoria in the attempt to make his comeback. Unfortunately, the idiot won't sing unless his mistress, the widow of a mobster, is there too. And thereby hangs a tallish tale.

The singer is played superbly by Nick Apollo Forte, himself a none-too-successful crooner. Mia Farrow, then married to Allen, is the suitably garish mistress and Woody is Woody par excellence - a man with a lot to be modest about but who is clearly going to keep on trying until the end.

The film might only be black and white, but with ace cinematographer Gordon Willis behind the camera, that is actually a plus. On this occasion, I think, small is definitely best.