Sleeper (1973)
Overview
The future, two hundred years later
In 1973, Miles Monroe goes into hospital for what should have been a routine operation. He wakes up two hundred years later.
The America he returns to in 2173 is an authoritarian state where technology controls almost every part of everyday life and Miles, having been absent for two centuries, is one of the few people without an identity recorded in the government's computer systems.
That makes him useful to a group of underground scientists who hope he can help the resistance. It also makes him a fugitive almost as soon as he has been revived.
His attempts to survive lead him to Luna Schlosser, played by Diane Keaton, and into a wonderfully ridiculous version of the future filled with robots, giant vegetables, instant gratification machines and increasingly elaborate attempts to avoid the authorities.
Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman use science fiction primarily as a playground for comedy. The technology may belong to 2173, but many of the targets — politics, conformity, health fads, sex and people's confidence that their own era represents progress — remain very recognisable.
Watch Sleeper
My Review
A future built for comedy
Sleeper has a particular place for me because it was the first Woody Allen film I ever watched.
I saw it on BBC Two when I was a young teenager, long before I had any idea how much time I would eventually spend watching and revisiting these films. What I remember most is how completely different it seemed from almost anything else I was watching at the time. It was strange, fast, ridiculous and very funny.
Looking at it again now, it still feels like a remarkably good place to have started. There are Woody Allen films where the comedy gradually emerges from the characters and conversation. Sleeper has something else in mind. It starts moving almost immediately and barely stops.
The science-fiction setting gives Allen and Marshall Brickman an enormous playground. Miles Monroe wakes up two hundred years after his own time and discovers a society in which almost anything can become a joke: medicine, politics, sex, food, technology and the supposed wisdom of the future.
What I particularly like is that Sleeper never becomes too interested in explaining its world. There is enough information to understand the dictatorship and the resistance, but Allen isn't trying to construct a completely convincing vision of life in 2173. The future exists because it gives him better opportunities for comedy.
And some of those opportunities are wonderfully silly. The robot disguise, the orgasmatron, the giant produce, the attempts to interpret twentieth-century history and eventually the extraordinary business involving the Leader's nose all have the feeling of ideas being pushed as far as Allen can take them.
There is also much more physical comedy here than people who primarily know his later films might expect. At times Allen seems closer to the silent comedians than to the neurotic New York characters with whom he would eventually become so strongly associated.
Bodies bend, machines malfunction, people fall over and carefully constructed situations descend into chaos. You can see the influence of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd in the way some of these sequences are designed, but Allen never feels as though he is simply imitating them. He has found a way of putting his own character inside that tradition.
Diane Keaton is crucial because Luna gives Allen somebody who can meet the absurdity rather than simply react to it. She begins as privileged, self-absorbed and completely comfortable with the society around her. As the situation changes, so does she.
The chemistry between Allen and Keaton already feels effortless. They can move from argument to physical comedy to something unexpectedly affectionate without the film having to change gear. There are glimpses here of why they would work so well together again.
I also love the look of the film. Instead of constructing a future almost entirely on studio sets, Sleeper uses extraordinary modern architecture in Colorado. Buildings that were contemporary in 1973 suddenly become convincing pieces of 2173 simply because Allen photographs them from the right angle.
Then there is the jazz. Putting energetic New Orleans jazz underneath a futuristic comedy is exactly the sort of combination that shouldn't necessarily work and somehow does. The music prevents the film from ever feeling cold or technological. While the characters are surrounded by computers, machines and futuristic architecture, the soundtrack remains exuberantly human.
Sleeper belongs firmly to the period people often describe as Allen's early comedies, but there are already signs of what is coming. Marshall Brickman is now writing with him, Diane Keaton is becoming increasingly important and the filmmaking itself is more confident.
Two years later would come Love and Death. Four years later, Annie Hall. Sleeper sits somewhere fascinating between those worlds: still gloriously silly, but increasingly assured about exactly how to turn that silliness into a film.
Perhaps inevitably, I still have a great affection for it. There are better Woody Allen films, and there are films I now return to more often, but Sleeper was the one that opened the door.
Cast & Characters
Miles, Luna and the people of 2173
Woody Allen
Miles Monroe
A Greenwich Village health-food shop owner and clarinet player who wakes after two centuries of cryogenic preservation and discovers that the future is considerably stranger than he expected.
Diane Keaton
Luna Schlosser
A wealthy artist who begins the film perfectly comfortable with the society of 2173 before Miles completely disrupts her life.
John Beck
Erno Windt
A member of the underground resistance fighting against the authoritarian government that controls the American Federation.
Mary Gregory
Dr. Melik
One of the doctors responsible for reviving Miles and attempting to recruit their unexpected visitor from the twentieth century.
Don Keefer
Dr. Tryon
Another member of the medical team involved in Miles's revival and the resistance movement.
Bartlett Robinson
Dr. Orva
One of the scientists trying to understand and rehabilitate the bewildered man who has suddenly arrived from 1973.
Music & Soundtrack
New Orleans jazz in the year 2173
One of Sleeper's best ideas is musical.
Instead of accompanying its futuristic world with electronic or orchestral science-fiction music, Allen fills the film with energetic traditional New Orleans jazz.
He also plays clarinet himself.
Music was recorded live with musicians from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the New Orleans Funeral and Ragtime Orchestra, with sessions at Preservation Hall in New Orleans and Michael's Pub in New York.
The result gives Sleeper an extraordinary sense of movement. The jazz frequently behaves like accompaniment to a silent comedy, pushing the physical action forward and giving the film much of its speed.
Selected music
Pieces heard in Sleeper
'Tain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do
Heard at the beginning of the film and immediately establishes the deliberately old-fashioned musical world.
Canal Street Blues
A classic piece of early New Orleans jazz and a perfect match for the film's frantic physical comedy.
Ice Cream
A 1920s song that became a favourite within the traditional New Orleans jazz repertoire.
Wolverine Blues
Another early jazz standard whose energy fits naturally with the film's slapstick sequences.
Till We Meet Again
Performed by Woody Allen in the film.
Locations
Colorado becomes the twenty-second century
Much of Sleeper's future was already standing in Colorado.
Rather than relying entirely on traditional science-fiction sets, Allen and production designer Dale Hennesy found modernist buildings around Denver and Boulder that could convincingly become the architecture of 2173.
The result is one of the most visually distinctive films of Allen's early career.
Sculptured House
Charles Deaton's extraordinary curved residence became the location most closely associated with the film. Its futuristic appearance was so memorable that it is still widely known as the Sleeper House.
National Center for Atmospheric Research
I. M. Pei's Mesa Laboratory provides some of the film's most convincing futuristic architecture, including exterior scenes associated with the medical complex.
Mile Hi Church
One of the film's best background jokes turns this modern building into a futuristic McDonald's, complete with an absurdly enormous number of hamburgers supposedly sold.
Denver Botanic Gardens
The gardens and their distinctive modern architecture appear within the film's version of the future, another example of real Colorado design doing the work of an elaborate science-fiction set.
Brenton House
Charles Haertling's striking modernist residence becomes another piece of the film's unusual architectural landscape.
Varner House
Another contemporary Colorado home incorporated into the futuristic world rather than disguised behind conventional studio scenery.
Beyond Colorado
California
Additional filming took place in California, including Culver City, Los Angeles and Monterey County.
Locations associated with the production also include Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park and Rancho San Carlos in Carmel Valley.
Awards & Recognition
Science fiction takes the comedy seriously
Sleeper received unusual recognition for a comedy because the science-fiction community embraced it as enthusiastically as comedy audiences did.
Hugo Awards
Best Dramatic Presentation
Winner
Credited to director Woody Allen and writers Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman.
Nebula Awards
Best Dramatic Presentation
Winner
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America also recognised Allen's futuristic comedy.
Writers Guild of America
Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen
Nominee
Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman were recognised for their original screenplay.
AFI's 100 Years…100 Laughs
Number 80
Selected
The American Film Institute included Sleeper among the 100 funniest American films.