Brand new factory sealed no frills dvd from Deuce Entertainment starts up automatically, no menus or special features. Licensed by MGM these do have decent quality and good sourceprints though. Out Of Print (OOP) in all formats and no longer being produced.

Everything about Cecilia (Mia Farrow) is tinged with sadness, including the time--the depressed 1930's--and the place, a drab little New Jersey town. Her husband, Monk (Danny Aiello), a big, short-tempered lug, is out of a job and not looking for work. When he's had a few beers, he's inclined to push her around a bit. Cecilia: "All you do is drink and play dice and I wind up getting smacked." Monk: "I always warn you first." Cecilia is even a failure as a waitress in the town's single, very greasy spoon.

One day, after going through a bad patch at the diner and with Monk, she is sitting in the Jewel Theatre, watching something called the PURPLE ROSE of CAIRO for the umpteenth time, when the film's handsome, pith-helmeted character named Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), steps down from the screen and into Cecilia's life. As a true Surrealist, she accepts the illogical as the natural order of things. So does the exuberant Tom, who exclaims after their first kiss, "How fascinating! You make love without fading away!"

The other characters in the film-within-the-film, abadoned when Tom Baxter left the story, cannot proceed. The members of this stranded cast, sit around on the screen in various stages of boredom and panic. The actor who plays the headwaiter in the movie welcomes the chance to step out of character and do a little tap dance.

Meanwhile, the films producer and a small army of Hollywood executives descend on the town. One man suggests that if Tom Baxter won't go back onto the screen, they should withraw the picture from release and take the loss. They then summon Gil Shepard, the "actor" playing Tom Baxter, in attempt to persuade Cecilia to persuade Tom to return to the movie. As the complications multiply and become increasingly weirder, only Cecilia keeps her wits about her.

Although Mr. Allen does not appear in the film, he has written and directed a magical slip through the looking glass of cinematic convention and creates an intoxicating comic fable about life, love, illusion and hope.