I have had in mind writing this post for several weeks. Woody Allen has of course been in the news of late for all the wrong reasons. Even if has been a child molestor, this should still not taint his great body of work. Rapists, murderers, sodomites can make great artists. We should learn to separate the life and the work. I don't mean to be disingenuous - if the allegations are true, then he is by no means an honourable man.
When I bring the name 'Woody Allen' up when talking to another devoted cinephile, it summons the same reaction as when I bring the name 'Frank Zappa' with a devoted fan of classical music. I receive a bemused reaction. He has made some funny films, but what has that to do with the likes of Bergman, Tarkovsky, Truffaut, etc.?
Others see him as a one-trick-pony who churns out the same film year in and year out. Even though several of his films overlap, and there can be predictabilities in his scripts, there is a lot more variety and breadth than people acknowledge. Even if many of his films might superficially appear to be similar, there is often an a priori concept behind it - a desire to reinvent himself and try something new.
The persona of Woody Allen is deeply ingrained into the popular consciousness. The nebbish, neurotic New York intellectual who has spent years in therapy. For people of a certain temperament, he is the celebrity one most readily identifies with. For a quirky neurotic like myself, I can look at Woody Allen dithering on screen and think 'By God, this is me!' And I am not alone - he elicits the same reaction from swathes of nervous people.
I will run through my favourite films of his and give comments. Of course, one cannot forget his early years as a stand-up comedian, where he provided the world with a repartee of witty one-liners. The comedy was sharp and incisive, though it was always very gentle. His skit 'The Moose' has me in stitches.
His early films has been self-described as 'the early, funny ones.' My favourite of these would have to be Sleeper. A failed clarinetist who runs a grocery store awakes in a topsy-turvy Orwellian future. The film is strewn with great one-liners and the slapstick comedy is hilarious. The rest of the films from this period - Bananas, Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex - have their moments though feel as though they are novelty films. There are great moments, though several other scenes do not really hold together.
Allen would reinvigorate his comedic films with Love and Death. Although it is a comedy, it deals with the big themes of Russian literature. It is slapstick for lit undergrads. There are hilarious scenes between Keaton and Allen which spoof the writing of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. 'I don't love you, I love Sonya and Ulalov' and proceeds to list a number of endlessly long Russian names. (Often, the most cumbersome thing about the Russian writers is having to remember the names of the characters). If they happen to have run into some kind of mishap, Allen invariably turns to the camera and philosophises about the meaning of life.
The major turning point was, of course, Annie Hall. It is the first film where Woody Allen consciously wrote three-dimensional characters and where his film had a dramatic arc. That's not to say that it isn't littered with great jokes - it is. And, of course, you get the charming relationship between the two ditsy neurotics, Allen and Diane Keaton.
Allen made a major statement of intent when he made a film completely shorn of comedy - Interiors. It was a tribute to his idol Ingmar Bergman. (I haven't seen it.)
Then would come another classic, Manhattan. Since I saw the film, it is difficult for me to hear George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue without picturing New York shot in monochrome. In this film we get the intellectual enclave of New York, where refined people go to art galleries and discuss whether Mahler or Mozart were overrated. The initial sequences are exhilarating. Allen stutters onto a tape recorder notes for literary projects. They are all perfunctory until he arrives at a phrase he likes, the Gershwin climaxes and there is a montage of precipitous Manhattan skycrapers. My favourite scene in the film is when Allen considers what makes life living. For all the meaninglessness of the universe, Allen can still find a few items here and there that makes up for it.
I've heard a few people say that, following Manhattan, Allen became inordinately indulgent. For me, he was only getting started. My favourite period in his career are his films in the 80s.
Just as Interiors was his Bergman homage, Stardust Memories was his homage to Fellini's 8 1/2. We see a star comedian beleaguered by the media papparizi. It is a meta-fiction film that Allen would revisit in the future. People were put off by the narcissistic self-absorption, but the film is magical and playful.
Woody Allen would meet his next muse Mia Farrow and they would go onto make my favourite films of his. Zelig is about an eternal chameleon. Shot as a mockumentary, it champions individualism and going against the grain. The Purple Rose of Cairo is a masterful film about the pleasures of fiction and how it trumps reality. Too much fiction can still create torments. Mia Farrow goes to the cinema every day to watch the same film, besotted by the male lead. The fictional lead jumps out of the screen and they start a romance. This leads to the ire of the real actor who wants the character to return to the movie! Broadway Danny Rose is a quirky comedy about a failed manager of entertainment acts.
Hannah and her Sisters is a novelistic narrative about three New York sisters and their predicaments. The pacing of the narrative is deft and we get as much drama as we do laughs. Allen contemplates committing suicide, but attends a Groucho Marx film and concludes that life is too precious. Allen proved in this film that the best parts he writes are for women. The sisters in the film are the most fully-formed characters in his work. The film was his most substantial insight yet into his neurotic/intellectual New York milieu.
The same narrative structure was preserved for my favourite Allen film (and a top 20 all time entry), Crimes and Misdemeanours. Whereas earlier films felt somewhat contrived whenever he ventured into serious cinema, the existentialist elements fit snugly here. There are touches of Bergman here and there, but this is wholly Allen's film. An esteemed dentist arranges the murder of his lover who vows to bring his reputation to an end. This runs in parallel to another Allen character who has a failed career as a documentary filmmaker. Once more, despite the horrors and setbacks, the film is very life-affirming. Whereas Allen thought the ending of Hannah and her Sisters was a tad bit sentimental, here there is enough doom and gloom to counterbalance that. Allen also makes stellar use of Schubert's 15th string quartet.
His relationship ground with Mia Farrow ground to a halt (the repercussions of which still sprout out in the media today). The break-up is painfully evident in Husbands and Wives. Modelled on Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage, and shot with hand-held cameras, it feels like a fly-on-the-wall documentary of the acrimonious break-up. This is one of the few Allen films without the slightest semblance of the feel-good factor - it is harrowing from beginning to end. Whilst it does of moments of humour, it is very black.
Following this he made more light-hearted films which I think are very underrated: Manhattan Murder Mystery, Bullets in Broadway (another favourite), Mighty Aphrodite and Deconstructing Harry. Bullets in Broadway deals with the sheer shallowness and pomposity of the artist-as-genius. A gangster type writes a broadway hit which is wrongly attributed to an aspring playwright. Deconstructing Harry is another meta-fiction film which examines the creative process. There are a few skits which are racously funny.
Following 1997's Deconstructing Harry, Allen's films faced a gradual and steep decline. His working aesthetic - shoot quickly without rehearsel - now led to films which felt hackneyed and shoddy. The only exception for me has been Midnight in Paris, a whimsical jeu d'spirit wherein a literary enthusiast meets his literary heroes in 1920s. (I had a somewhat epiphanic experience when I saw the film in a cinema in Buenos Aires. I was so excited that I resolved to write a story on the experience, but it turned out turgid.) The critics were hasty to canonise Blue Jasmine, but to me it suffered the same problems as the rest of his late-period work - patronising, dated scripts and too much explanatory dialogue. Cate Blanchett gave an assured performance, but the film still felt like counterfeit currency to me.
However much I may despair over the quality of his recent films, Woody Allen's status as one of the greats in the history of the medium is incontestable. What I most like about his films is the comfort we find in fiction and stories (for instance, how seemingly innocent women fawn at the feet of nervous wrecks.) When you start watching a film and you hear the same new Orleans 1920s swing, you know you are about to enter a world which is so familiar yet so reassuring.
