A Purple Rose of Cairo occurs as film-in-the-film, by having Jeff Daniels playing a dual role of Tom, a character in the film-in-the-film, & Gil, the actor world health organization portrayed Tom. Gil breaks a fourth wall, emerging from a black-and-white into the colorful real life on the other side of the theatre's proscenium. Tom is drawn away from a film by Cecilia (played by Mia Farrow), a film buff world health organization goes to the picture to escape her bleak Great Depression life and loveless marriage to Monk (played by Danny Aiello). A producer of a film finds retired that Tom has left the film, & he & Gil fly cross-united states to the New Jersey theatre where it happened. This sets higher an unusual love triangle involving Tom, Gil, and Cecilia.

a total of the scenes featuring Tom & Cecilia come placed at the Bertrand Island Amusement Park, which closed just before a film's production.

Allen's opinion
Inside a uncommon public appearance at the National Film Theatre just after a 9/11 terrorist attacks, Allen listed A Purple Rose of Cairo when one of exclusively two or three of his films that ended higher existence "fairly close to what I wanted to do" whilst he placed dead set write it. Allen provided extra detail all about a film's origins inside the comment he mass produced the year earliest, when you took a press junket for Small Time Crooks: Cast
Farrowing, Daniels, & Aiello play a leading roles. Actors swimming important roles in a film-inside-the-film include Van Johnson, Zoe Caldwell, John Wood, Milo O'Shea, and Edward Herrmann. Dianne Wiest and Glenne Headly (among others) play prostitutes whom Tom innocently encounters along a way.