A couple of my friends don't like him. It's not that they don't rate him. They find his persona annoying. I respect my friends and while I don't deny their feelings, and while I accept that there's a few aspects, conventions about Woody's films that I find grating, I still think, overall, that he's not just a great director (one of cinema's finest) but I guess people forget that was also an influential stand up comedian.
His early appearances, performances and pieces, be they short stories and plays always seemed to capture that absurdist type humour that owed as much WC fields, as it did the Marx Bros., Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin and whether he knew it or not, Milligan, Peter Cook and Monty Python. This rare interview footage from Granada catches Allen in full flow
Much has been said of the 'early funny films' which Allen I'm sure found grating when he was producing filmic masterpieces such as Annie Hall and Manhattan. These films are still important and relevant, given the comic lulls much later in Allen's career.
While his own cultural and social background were important to his development, where he is one in a long line of Jewish comedians that have influenced much of the landscape of 20th and 21st century comedy from The Marx Bros., to Senfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm and NOT fucking Adam Sandler, his love of Chekhov and Ingmar Bergman, have no doubt on some level found their way in his films. Funnily enough it's when Allen comically and purposefully apes Bergman for comic effect that works more effectively than when he attempts his own version in films like Interiors.
My own journey into the works of Woody Allen began probably in the late 80s, watching BBC 2's habitual season of Woody Allen films. I can't recall which was the first Allen film I saw, probably his first feature as a director, Take The Money and Run, then Sleeper, Bananas and Play it again, Sam. I didn't rate Everything You Always To Know About Sex... much although the scene where he's being chased by a gigantic tit, is still burned into my memory. Out of his early funny films Sleeper, a Rip Van Winkle tale updated into a sci-fi frolic, is the funniest. I had a trailer editing assignment at Media Studies at college so I chose Sleeper and there were so many gags, it was difficult to put a trailer together. Thirty seconds turned into almost four minutes. It really was difficult to insert jokes about totalitarianism, future advances in medicine, health food, human cloning ( the great leader is cloned from a nose), 2001:A Space Odyssey pastiche, godfather pastiche, robots, Jewish tailors, recreational drugs, sex aids ( the orgasmatron could be invented by apple in the future) and all kinds of gags about the then present, such as one gag about boxing pundits designed as a torture device.
Not long after, I picked up a selection of his writings for The New Yorker called Without Feathers. Some of the lines in there floored me. Again the humour was absurd, sophisticated, daft, zany and visual. It's not difficult to understand why he's one of the world's most quotable individuals.
In most film lists, polls and what have you, the film that often comes out on top is Annie Hall, naturally with good reason. This doesn't of course take anything away from the likes of Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Stardust Memories, all of which are very strong films most directors would kill to have made. With Annie Hall though it's like everything is there that you want in a Woody Allen film, a perfect balance of the absurdist, early funny films, the Bergman meditations on relationships, the introspective, intense emotional and sexual relationships, the self analysis, the distrust of education, technology, the countryside, the digressions into the past, the blurring perspectives of the past and childhood ( many of the flashbacks portray a very odd memories and images, many which you doubt existed), knowing jokes about anti-semitism, pretentious New York liberals and artists. It's all here, complete with the Allen persona.
Ah the Allen persona, a whiny little, hyper sensitive geek. I feel this is what some people don't like, maybe more so than the vanity of casting himself opposite Diane Keaton or as the love interest for some young attractive, intellectual and cultured girl. Or when the shit hit the fan over Soon-Yi. I don't know. While you might suggest Allen shares similar traits as his characters he'd hardly have the time to write and direct one film a year if he was so hyper sensitive.
What I enjoy about his early television appearances his his energy and confidence and optimism. It's heartening really.
The interesting thing about YouTube is not just the discovery of his old stand up material or television appearances but some the more bizarre spots and adverts that maybe he'd rather you forget but I think they're endearing. Of course boxing a kangaroo is nothing you can imagine Larry David ever doing but I think for all of today's political correctness we can deduce from the footage that no animals or Jewish comedians were harmed.
Then there are these odd advertisements he made for Japanese television.
Later on there were more films that had something going on for them, the expressionism of the Brechtian, The Trial-like Shadows and Fog and aspects of Deconstrucing Harry and Everyone Says I Love You weren't without merit.
Scarlett Johanssen, Martin Landu, Larry David, Madonna, John Malkovich, Max von Sydow, Michael Caine, Sean Penn, Samantha Moton, Penelope Cruz, Charlotte Rampling, Diane Weist, that kid from Spiderman, Natalie Portman and many more. Few directors can boast of working with so many stars and actors. Woody Allen is good on your CV. You've arrived. And yet Hollywood isn't that interested enough to fund/distribute his films. He has to go to London, Venice, Barcelona or Paris. Perhaps his last two films will fittingly be filmed in Stockholm and New York. A fair amount of his films failed to have that spark for me. The dialogue isn't as sharp, the characters I don't find as interesting. The last Allen film I enjoyed was Small Time Crooks. Apparently his recent Midnight in Paris has done well for itself.
I saw The Artist the other day. And while I couldn't deny the heart and detail that had gone into the film, it also reminded me of a couple of Allen films, Zelig and The Purple Rose of Cario.
As with many of Allen's films, central to many of them is the love of cinema. In Play it again, Sam, cinema is a place to escape to, in Annie Hall the movie theatre is linked to his characters guilt and hostility. In Hannah and her sisters, cinema becomes gives his depressed character hope and optimism. In Stardust Memories cinema and the act of film-making is a constant battle for balance between the expectations of his fans and the film studios. Everything he does is full of self-awareness and self-analysts but in the midst of it all, always there is Allen's love of cinema as a entertainer, educator, a community, a family. Cinema Paradiso and Be Kind Rewind could be Woody Allen films, such is their respect to the medium.
I leave you with the ending of Stardust Memories.
