Woody Allen
Woody Allen has been writing and directing a new film project each a year for the last half a century, he has also acted in many of them, although in recent years he usually takes a smaller role, providing the comic relief or simply doesn’t appear at all. Even from behind the camera you know it’s a Woody Allen movie from the opening black and white titles, traditional jazz soundtrack and first lines of dialogue brimming with neurosis and one-liners filled with existential angst about balancing love and life in urban cities, predominately New York.
I had just turned 14 when my parents allowed me to stay up late on a school night to experience my first Woody Allen film. It was 1985 and we had yet to own a video recorder so this meant watching everything live or missing it. Around the same time I had discovered the films of the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, Danny Kaye, Peter Sellers, Mel Brooks and Monty Python so I watched Sleeper for the first time with an appreciation of parody, spoof and satire but had never seen the Woody Allen persona before and wasn’t entirely sure what to expect but I quickly warmed to Miles Monroe as he tried to come to terms with futuristic life after being cryogenically frozen for 200 years.
Sleeper, like Bananas before it, had a very thin plot, involving a cowardly klutz who ultimately wins the day and the girl, on which to hang gags of all shape and sizes. It wasn’t until 1975’s Love and Death that Allen started to introduce the philosophical themes for which his films would become synonymous, although its main concern is provoking laughs as it pokes fun at the great works of Russian literature from the Napoleonic era; it remains my favourite of his ‘early funny films’.
Whilst the influences of Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini are always apparent in Allen’s films he managed to create his own unique cinematic style with Annie Hall and Manhattan, between the ages of 15 and 18, I must have watched both of these films at least once a month; their focal point of not quite finding the ideal partner whilst keeping alive a romantic spirit provided me, as a somewhat bookish teenager going through a string of unrequited adolescent crushes, with real solace. With Manhattan began my own love affair with New York City and the pulsating tunes of George Gershwin and crisp, black and white photography of Gordon Willis still give me a rush whenever I revisit it.
Of Allen’s many films if I had to take one with me on a desert island I think it would be 1989’s Crimes and Misdemeanors here he manages to blend comedy and romance with a serious essay on crime and punishment, packing a dramatic punch reminiscent of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Opthalmologist Judah Rosenthal, a towering performance from Martin Landau, was raised in a strictly orthodox Jewish family. He believes the eyes of God see everything so when he uses his disreputable brother Jack’s mob connections to ‘rub out’ his blackmailing mistress, who’s threatening to destroy his world, he expects to receive divine retribution, however he doesn’t, in fact he prospers and is never linked to the death which is dismissed by the police as the result of a burglary; a serious subject but an equally funny and touching film, for me Allen at his best.
In the coming weeks I shall review Woody Allen’s movies in greater detail and I am hoping that financially troubled film studio, MGM, finalise a salvage deal with Warner Bros. and start to release his back catalogue on Blu-ray because these great movies deserve to be seen in hidef by a fresh audience.
