I don't know whether to be happy or sad that you wrote this, Scott! I guess it mirrors my feelings for Woody -- I still have such warmth for his earlier films (even if their cinematic mores often veer into awkwardness/ugliness in our modern times -- I try my best to just say "It was a different time") and always will, but at this point, one doesn't even have to resort to his personal problems for not liking him -- one can simply not like him for all the terrible movies he's made in the last ten years, period!
His last good movie was Blue Jasmine, though I haven't seen that since I saw it then, and frankly, I'm afraid to. It's a fine line between great acting and great hamming...you can go over that line quite easily, especially the better actor you are (i.e., crossing over to the ham side, Blanchett in Benjamin Button, Hopkins in Legends of the Fall -- goodness, I still laugh whenever I think of him writing down his words on the blackboard hanging around his neck).
I'm sorry you had to watch these last four films. I've only watched a portion of Wonder Wheel and just couldn't make myself watch more than half an hour of it. I think you are 100% right -- by still making movies that are in his own stasis, he's staving off the grim reaper. Woody may be staying alive, but his movies are already dead -- and have been for quite some time...
Sorry to nitpick re: Wonder Wheel, which sounds just awful, but Kate Winslet is 48 and Justin Timberlake is 43. I don't doubt that Woody Allen views that as "May-December," but it's kinda more "July-August," no?
OMG, that's a good nitpick! For some reason, I think of them as being from different generations, but you're right. The film certainly frames it as an older, married woman seeing a young lifeguard, but I should have paused for a second to consider that July-August gap.
I've seen every Woody Allen film (other than COUP DE CHANCE but that will be rectified soon) and I was content to see mediocrities every year in exchange for a really good one every five years. MATCH POINT is a terrific character study that turns into a slow burn thriller, BLUE JASMINE is devastating, and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is simply wonderful.
But then we stopped getting anything great to balance it out. CAFE SOCIETY and IRRATIONAL MAN have their moments (Irrational Man could have been very good with a conventional male lead, to make the ending more of a shocker) but they're not great. A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK has some good scenes that you didn't mention -- Cherry Jones's monologue is fantastic -- but it's pretty forgettable.
I'd love to see a great Woody Allen film again so I'm hoping COUP DE CHANCE impresses me more than it does you. I also think it's more productive to just hope that Woody Allen (or Eastwood, who also gets kinda sneered at for his annual films) gives us something special or memorable, rather than lining up to scoff. I take your point that it might be better to fully develop his ideas, but we have more great Woody Allen movies than we do Charles Laughton movies!
I've also been vaguely intrigued by ghostly specter of recent Allen offerings, playing in local theaters without any sort of critical discussion online. But like you, Scott, I wasn't intrigued enough to get past how mediocre the past few decades were before the scandals gained traction. Thanks for confirming I missed what I assumed I was missing.
The mindset of writing and directing one alright-enough movie a year, instead of a legit GOOD movie every once in a while - again, kind of fascinating in concept, but not for the viewing experiences.
It also speaks to how modern film is (for better or worse) seen more as a collaborative art. Allen's of an era where there was a higher premium on autership for its own sake, whether or not it got results.
I saw WONDER WHEEL when it was briefly in theaters — and largely out of a sense of obligation going back a quarter-century to 1993’s MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY, when I started my streak of catching all of his films as they came out. I came by RAINY DAY and RIFKIN courtesy of my library, though, and if I do bother with COUP DE CHANCE, it will be under similar circumstances. Long gone are the days when I would drive several hours to catch the likes of VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA in the Chicago suburbs.
FWIW, I think COUP DE CHANCE is the most watchable of the four, pretty good until the ending, though I suspect Woody's understanding of the nuances of French culture are probably about as sharp as his take on the British working class of CASSANDRA'S DREAM.
I feel like Woody has always cultivated this self-image as a cloistered artist toiling away in his hermetically sealed world, indifferent to the tides of cultural relevance or critical opinion. So even back when I was a huge fan of his, I always thought of his work as a "take it or leave it" kind of deal. He was one of the few filmmakers I deeply admired that I had zero interest in meeting or talking to in person. He just seemed like this machine that cranked out a movie every year, and it might be good or bad, but watching it never felt like I was interacting with the filmmaker's internal world the way it did with other writer-directors.
That's very well put. He has always put an arm's length distance between himself and his audience, though I think a film l like HUSBANDS AND WIVES breaches that barrier a bit. I guess for me it's the lack of effort and follow-through on his later works that's been galling.
My guess is that he was knocked off his stride a bit by the vehemently negative reaction he got for STARDUST MEMORIES all the way back in 1980 (to the point that he took an unheard-of year off directing). That movie seemed to be an attempt to communicate a bit more of a personal POV to his audience, who took real offense to it (and as they appeared to be characterized as Felliniesque grotesques, it'd be hard to blame them), as did a lot of the critics who, to this point, were solidly on his side. Whatever the reaction, he never got that close to his audience again.
(Not that he was ever really that warm to them, even at his most beloved. I can go all the way back to a 1969 appearance on the DICK CAVETT SHOW [which aired the day I was born, as it happens] where you can see him getting rather testy with the crowd's amused reactions to his clarinet playing. He tried to play his reactions off as jokes, but there was a definite how-DARE-you tone which is hard to miss, especially to modern eyes.)
Scott, there hasn't been any mention here of DECONSTRUCTING HARRY, but I've always felt that one--maybe a notch below HUSBANDS AND WIVES in terms of quality--did some digging of a personal nature. Even if he only cast himself at the last minute when no one else was available, the character he plays can't help seeming like a dark portrait of his--and many writers'--worst tendencies. (I still mourn for that other, lost universe where Norman Mailer or Dustin Hoffman took the lead instead.)
I thought that for a while too, but eventually twigged that it was really a poison pen letter aimed at Philip Roth. Woody was close friends with Roth's ex, Claire Bloom, so that tracks for me. Also, he cast Roth's most famous cinematic surrogate, Richard Benjamin - who hadn't appeared in front of the camera in some time - in the first of the vignettes. So I'm wondering if there's much, or any, serious self-criticism involved. (I still consider it the last "great" WA picture, for whatever that's worth.)
Funny, I'd always noticed the Roth-ian overtones (especially with the inclusion of Benjamin), but I hadn't thought of it as a poison pen letter, per se, but as more of a tribute. Now that you mention it, though, it does make sense, especially if you consider that Roth became very close to Mia--something that always stuck in my craw. (Really, Philip? ;-\ ) I think I'm going to need to watch it again, with this new perspective... Thanks.
My YouTube suggestions recently surfaced an opening monologue that John Mulaney and Nick Kroll did at the Independent Spirit Awards circa MeToo (good algorithm!). As usual, Mulaney summarized it perfectly (paraphrasing): Can I still not watch Woody Allen's last 20 unwatchable films in light of recent allegations that have been part of the public record for 30 years?
While there are films of his I really like, there have always been weird gender dynamics that made it impossible for me to love his work in the way that some do. I have never not been creeped out by Manhattan. There are filmmakers where you can have the artist vs work debate. (For example, Rosemary's Baby is a feminist movie!) But with Allen, it's always been right there. I finally stopped watching his movies after that abysmal Colin Firth/Emma Stone film. The film that tells us again and again how lucky she is that this smart, sophisticated, well-read man deigns to spend his time with her, and how he has so much wisdom that he can impart to her.
Even his best work gave me a bit of cringe. My reaction after watching Hannah and Her Sisters was "I guess this counted as progressive in the 80s?" Like there weren't that many movies that passed the Bechdel test and whenever one did it was notable.
Thank you for this, Elizabeth. You've touched on two things that are self-evident to me but that a lot of people don't like to talk about:
1. Woody Allen has always been who he is - the allegations aren't new. (While I'm here, same for Michael Jackson.)
2. Manhattan is all the evidence I need of Woody Allen being who he is - not *just* because it's about a Woody analogue having a sexual relationship with a child, but because it's set in a fantasy world where everyone finds it broadly *acceptable* for a middle-aged man to have a sexual relationship with a child. (Some characters might tut-tut a bit, but it's not just 96 minutes of people punching him in the face.) I haven't seen the movie in years and don't much want to see it again, but my recollection is that the age gap is referenced in roughly the same way as it would be if she were 25. This isn't just a movie where the character's behaviour is painted as acceptable; this is a movie by a guy who doesn't seem to know that there are those of us out there who think the behaviour is unacceptable.
The spike in subscriptions over this piece has led us to consider a pivot into being a Woody Allen blog. Next week’s frame-by-frame breakdown of YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER is shaping up to be a banger.
The sicko at the window in me would like to see a theater schedule a Wallace Shawn double feature of RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL and A MASTER BUILDER just to see if anyone shows up.
Smart analysis of his late-late-period work. I agree with you that it's usually a bad move when his lead adopts an Allen-esque style. Chalamet fares quite poorly—and in one of Allen's very worst. Shawn can do it because he has a natural Allen-adjacent sensibility, but Rifkin's Festival is atrocious—literally my least favorite of all his films (excluding Coup, the only one I haven't seen). I made a similar point to you in my Lboxd review: "The only funny thing about it is the insistence with which Allen's latest avatar, a one-time film instructor, spouts about the 'European masters' and the 'great cinema classics' while demonstrating only the most basic, Intro to Film-level engagement with a handful of directors and their work." I loathed Wonder Wheel, too, and I have mostly erased it from memory. I seem to recall thinking Winslet's performance was off and the story was a slog. I would say all of his 21st century output, save Midnight in Paris and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is forgettable. I have to go all the way back to Bullets Over Broadway to find a great Allen film. Like you, my interest in his movies has eroded, but I am an incurable completist when it comes to auteurs, so I continue to see the new ones. I think you're right that the end of his collaboration with Farrow critically impacted his artistry. Seven of my top ten involve her (The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Broadway Danny Rose, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Zelig, Husbands and Wives). I'm curious to know your top 10 Allen films.
Let me sketch a rough ten best in chronological order: Bananas, Love and Death, Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives.
Been a bit since greatness has been remotely achieved, though I do like some of those lighter ‘90s movies (BOB esp.) and VCB. I also suspect you’ll like the new one better than the previous three, as I did, but it still feels like a lesser Match Point. Not exactly a pulse-raiser.
Nice, I should give those early comedies another look. Annie Hall and Manhattan are in my ten, though the latter nearly dropped out on a recent rewatch. The Isaac/Tracy relationship has aged like milk. Almost impossible to watch without considering extratextual details about Allen's life. Planning to see Coup de Chance when it shows up in my area (release rollout details have been vague).
That’s a solid top ten and very close to matching mine. I’d swap out Interiors for Another Woman, which features my favorite performance by an actress in a Woody Allen film.
Fully believe the last great Allen movie is Sweet & Lowdown, which incidentally is probably the last movie that didn't have some overt "our lead man is a shit and everyone loves him" tones
I'm surprised there's no mention of the orangeness of Coup de Chance, which is the main thing I've heard about it. Nick Newman actually has a mildly nauseating note on it in his review:
"Friend who recently supervised the restoration of a Woody Allen movie told me the man himself, 88 years old and with a droopy left eye, visited said friend's office, watched about half the film, asked him to pause the DCP, and insisted there be a "more orange" version of an extremely orange film one could only assume was well-restored by a highly regarded company. Allen's rep conditioned this with a note that his eyesight is failing; thus they're now prepping two versions: "orange cut" and "regular cut.""
WHAT?! I thjnk I saw the less orange cut because it looked like Paris as attractively photographed by Vittorio Storaro. Though I now wonder if his optometrist is hiring anyone to murder his wife.
Haha, well Newman's anecdote is about a restoration of an older film, but all the word I'd read on Coup de Chance being excessively orange and suffused with garish gels is from late last year/early this year, when Northeast US cinephiles were clandestinely sharing screener copies and posting their reactions. Maybe it's possible the color grading was re-done before the piecemeal theatrical release, or maybe it just looks better projected on a big screen than on a monitor.
After watching all his best stuff in college in the late 90s, I was excited to see my first Woody Allen film in the theater. Unfortunately it was Small Time Crooks, and it's the closest I've ever come to walking out of a movie. I remember it being painfully unfunny. It's now the only one I've seen in the theater.
I also remember being upset that he wasted a Rachel McAdams performance on a one-note shrewish wife character in Midnight In Paris. And that made me reexamine the misogyny in his older stuff, too.
I've only seen 2.5 of his movies: ANNIE HALL, of course; BANANAS, of which everything on the island is great and everything else is not (doesn't help that Woody jokes about majoring in "advanced child molestation" in his first scene); and like half of HOLLYWOOD ENDING (my sister checked it out from the library for some reason and I remember being bored by it). Once he dies, I think, I plan to watch everything he's made, although this article is good for lowering my expectations for the later work.
(BTW I think Esquire ran an article with this title around the time of the scandals, oddly enough)
I have to admit I'm a bit resentful about Woody Allen and how he was sold to me in my youth as a paragon of intellectualism and introspection. A male role model that stood at odds with increasingly steroidal and monosyllabic matinee idols of eighties and nineties. I'm not the only one to notice that Allen's filmography is peppered with men grooming young vulnerable women, with rich protagonists getting away with heinous crimes. It was there almost from the jump, but the allegations didn't really take hold until the sixth decade of his career.
It seemed for a while that I couldn't read a serious piece about Star Wars without a snide comment about how Annie Hall was the superior picture. How Mel Brooks was an oaf next to this genius.... You cite "untitled Woody Allen Project", but the second half of the joke was that the film was also a placeholder for Best Screenplay at that year's Academy Awards with an astounding 16 nominations in that category. Given that award's pedigree as "The Orson Wells Prize for Originality", Allen's repeated inclusion came to look like a stodgy Academy putting up blinders to more adventurous works. You know, filmmakers who actually were progressive and inventive.
In the fullness of time Allen's persona even apart from those most salacious transgressions is often just as chauvinistic as those Cro-Magnon action stars, just he's more comfortable writing 3D female characters. Yes Manhattan is a beautifully shot film, but its in service of everything wrong with the man. When it comes to such films, On the Waterfront is entirely less icky all these years later.
Allen is so far off my radar that until this article I didn't even realize he was continuing to make new films. I guess I'm not surprised. Whatever its virtues, Europe often goes out of its way to prop up creatives cancelled in America. I think the last time an Allen film really moved me was Match Point. Overlong sure, but such a sure work I'm still surprised Allen was capable of pulling it off.
I mentioned Magic in the Moonlight above as the Woody Allen movie that definitively stopped me from watching any future Woody Allen movies. It's exactly your description: a man grooms a young woman, AND it has the balls to argue that she's so lucky to be groomed by someone who can teach her so much, as if being in a romantic relationship is like finding a grad school advisor. Even beyond that gross premise/POV, I also found it funny that one of the only proofs we're given of how brilliant Firth's character is is that he quotes Hobbes's "nasty, brutish, and short", which any college freshman could do. It made me wonder how smart any of this had ever been, despite his reputation.
As someone who wasn't paying attention to movies for adults until Woody was already on autopilot, this comments section is the first I've learned that this guy was ever supposed to be an intellectual. Do people just think anyone in glasses is an intellectual, or...?
I say this as someone who finds Allen in his prime to be quite funny. But his style of comedy is...I don't know, I wouldn't say it's *stupid*, but it's certainly more "laugh at the nebbish" than "laugh along with the clever witticism the nebbish just said", unless I'm completely misunderstanding.
First of all, agreed with your read overall and thank you.
Re: his frequent Oscar nominations: it's funny how the cliche is that the acting awards aren't for Best acting but for Most acting, and yet that couldn't be less true of Best Original Screenplay.
I don't know whether to be happy or sad that you wrote this, Scott! I guess it mirrors my feelings for Woody -- I still have such warmth for his earlier films (even if their cinematic mores often veer into awkwardness/ugliness in our modern times -- I try my best to just say "It was a different time") and always will, but at this point, one doesn't even have to resort to his personal problems for not liking him -- one can simply not like him for all the terrible movies he's made in the last ten years, period!
His last good movie was Blue Jasmine, though I haven't seen that since I saw it then, and frankly, I'm afraid to. It's a fine line between great acting and great hamming...you can go over that line quite easily, especially the better actor you are (i.e., crossing over to the ham side, Blanchett in Benjamin Button, Hopkins in Legends of the Fall -- goodness, I still laugh whenever I think of him writing down his words on the blackboard hanging around his neck).
I'm sorry you had to watch these last four films. I've only watched a portion of Wonder Wheel and just couldn't make myself watch more than half an hour of it. I think you are 100% right -- by still making movies that are in his own stasis, he's staving off the grim reaper. Woody may be staying alive, but his movies are already dead -- and have been for quite some time...
Sorry to nitpick re: Wonder Wheel, which sounds just awful, but Kate Winslet is 48 and Justin Timberlake is 43. I don't doubt that Woody Allen views that as "May-December," but it's kinda more "July-August," no?
OMG, that's a good nitpick! For some reason, I think of them as being from different generations, but you're right. The film certainly frames it as an older, married woman seeing a young lifeguard, but I should have paused for a second to consider that July-August gap.
I've seen every Woody Allen film (other than COUP DE CHANCE but that will be rectified soon) and I was content to see mediocrities every year in exchange for a really good one every five years. MATCH POINT is a terrific character study that turns into a slow burn thriller, BLUE JASMINE is devastating, and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is simply wonderful.
But then we stopped getting anything great to balance it out. CAFE SOCIETY and IRRATIONAL MAN have their moments (Irrational Man could have been very good with a conventional male lead, to make the ending more of a shocker) but they're not great. A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK has some good scenes that you didn't mention -- Cherry Jones's monologue is fantastic -- but it's pretty forgettable.
I'd love to see a great Woody Allen film again so I'm hoping COUP DE CHANCE impresses me more than it does you. I also think it's more productive to just hope that Woody Allen (or Eastwood, who also gets kinda sneered at for his annual films) gives us something special or memorable, rather than lining up to scoff. I take your point that it might be better to fully develop his ideas, but we have more great Woody Allen movies than we do Charles Laughton movies!
I've also been vaguely intrigued by ghostly specter of recent Allen offerings, playing in local theaters without any sort of critical discussion online. But like you, Scott, I wasn't intrigued enough to get past how mediocre the past few decades were before the scandals gained traction. Thanks for confirming I missed what I assumed I was missing.
The mindset of writing and directing one alright-enough movie a year, instead of a legit GOOD movie every once in a while - again, kind of fascinating in concept, but not for the viewing experiences.
It also speaks to how modern film is (for better or worse) seen more as a collaborative art. Allen's of an era where there was a higher premium on autership for its own sake, whether or not it got results.
I saw WONDER WHEEL when it was briefly in theaters — and largely out of a sense of obligation going back a quarter-century to 1993’s MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY, when I started my streak of catching all of his films as they came out. I came by RAINY DAY and RIFKIN courtesy of my library, though, and if I do bother with COUP DE CHANCE, it will be under similar circumstances. Long gone are the days when I would drive several hours to catch the likes of VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA in the Chicago suburbs.
FWIW, I think COUP DE CHANCE is the most watchable of the four, pretty good until the ending, though I suspect Woody's understanding of the nuances of French culture are probably about as sharp as his take on the British working class of CASSANDRA'S DREAM.
The best thing that came out of CASSANDRA’S DREAM was the Philip Glass score.
Yeah, that was good. I kinda like that movie.
I feel like Woody has always cultivated this self-image as a cloistered artist toiling away in his hermetically sealed world, indifferent to the tides of cultural relevance or critical opinion. So even back when I was a huge fan of his, I always thought of his work as a "take it or leave it" kind of deal. He was one of the few filmmakers I deeply admired that I had zero interest in meeting or talking to in person. He just seemed like this machine that cranked out a movie every year, and it might be good or bad, but watching it never felt like I was interacting with the filmmaker's internal world the way it did with other writer-directors.
That's very well put. He has always put an arm's length distance between himself and his audience, though I think a film l like HUSBANDS AND WIVES breaches that barrier a bit. I guess for me it's the lack of effort and follow-through on his later works that's been galling.
My guess is that he was knocked off his stride a bit by the vehemently negative reaction he got for STARDUST MEMORIES all the way back in 1980 (to the point that he took an unheard-of year off directing). That movie seemed to be an attempt to communicate a bit more of a personal POV to his audience, who took real offense to it (and as they appeared to be characterized as Felliniesque grotesques, it'd be hard to blame them), as did a lot of the critics who, to this point, were solidly on his side. Whatever the reaction, he never got that close to his audience again.
(Not that he was ever really that warm to them, even at his most beloved. I can go all the way back to a 1969 appearance on the DICK CAVETT SHOW [which aired the day I was born, as it happens] where you can see him getting rather testy with the crowd's amused reactions to his clarinet playing. He tried to play his reactions off as jokes, but there was a definite how-DARE-you tone which is hard to miss, especially to modern eyes.)
Scott, there hasn't been any mention here of DECONSTRUCTING HARRY, but I've always felt that one--maybe a notch below HUSBANDS AND WIVES in terms of quality--did some digging of a personal nature. Even if he only cast himself at the last minute when no one else was available, the character he plays can't help seeming like a dark portrait of his--and many writers'--worst tendencies. (I still mourn for that other, lost universe where Norman Mailer or Dustin Hoffman took the lead instead.)
I thought that for a while too, but eventually twigged that it was really a poison pen letter aimed at Philip Roth. Woody was close friends with Roth's ex, Claire Bloom, so that tracks for me. Also, he cast Roth's most famous cinematic surrogate, Richard Benjamin - who hadn't appeared in front of the camera in some time - in the first of the vignettes. So I'm wondering if there's much, or any, serious self-criticism involved. (I still consider it the last "great" WA picture, for whatever that's worth.)
Funny, I'd always noticed the Roth-ian overtones (especially with the inclusion of Benjamin), but I hadn't thought of it as a poison pen letter, per se, but as more of a tribute. Now that you mention it, though, it does make sense, especially if you consider that Roth became very close to Mia--something that always stuck in my craw. (Really, Philip? ;-\ ) I think I'm going to need to watch it again, with this new perspective... Thanks.
My YouTube suggestions recently surfaced an opening monologue that John Mulaney and Nick Kroll did at the Independent Spirit Awards circa MeToo (good algorithm!). As usual, Mulaney summarized it perfectly (paraphrasing): Can I still not watch Woody Allen's last 20 unwatchable films in light of recent allegations that have been part of the public record for 30 years?
While there are films of his I really like, there have always been weird gender dynamics that made it impossible for me to love his work in the way that some do. I have never not been creeped out by Manhattan. There are filmmakers where you can have the artist vs work debate. (For example, Rosemary's Baby is a feminist movie!) But with Allen, it's always been right there. I finally stopped watching his movies after that abysmal Colin Firth/Emma Stone film. The film that tells us again and again how lucky she is that this smart, sophisticated, well-read man deigns to spend his time with her, and how he has so much wisdom that he can impart to her.
Even his best work gave me a bit of cringe. My reaction after watching Hannah and Her Sisters was "I guess this counted as progressive in the 80s?" Like there weren't that many movies that passed the Bechdel test and whenever one did it was notable.
Thank you for this, Elizabeth. You've touched on two things that are self-evident to me but that a lot of people don't like to talk about:
1. Woody Allen has always been who he is - the allegations aren't new. (While I'm here, same for Michael Jackson.)
2. Manhattan is all the evidence I need of Woody Allen being who he is - not *just* because it's about a Woody analogue having a sexual relationship with a child, but because it's set in a fantasy world where everyone finds it broadly *acceptable* for a middle-aged man to have a sexual relationship with a child. (Some characters might tut-tut a bit, but it's not just 96 minutes of people punching him in the face.) I haven't seen the movie in years and don't much want to see it again, but my recollection is that the age gap is referenced in roughly the same way as it would be if she were 25. This isn't just a movie where the character's behaviour is painted as acceptable; this is a movie by a guy who doesn't seem to know that there are those of us out there who think the behaviour is unacceptable.
The spike in subscriptions over this piece has led us to consider a pivot into being a Woody Allen blog. Next week’s frame-by-frame breakdown of YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER is shaping up to be a banger.
So, one decent blog post for every few meh ones?
The blog posts are always big. It's the pictures that got small.
I wish Woody could generate decent movies as reliably as he produces clicks. What the heck: it would warm my cockles if you took on Love and Death.
Wheat. Lots of wheat. Fields of wheat. A tremendous amount of wheat.
It is a greater honor for me.
Scared is the wrong word. I'm frightened of it.
Two words: milk bottle.
Did I say "milk bottle"? Crap. I meant "wine bottle." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mRU_955U_Q
The sicko at the window in me would like to see a theater schedule a Wallace Shawn double feature of RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL and A MASTER BUILDER just to see if anyone shows up.
one step closer to a The Reveal / Blank Check crossover
Hey, I was on an episode. It already happened!
ah yes, pre-Reveal days! here’s to another
Dammit! You’ve intrigued me about Rainy Day in New York!
I am diabolical!
Smart analysis of his late-late-period work. I agree with you that it's usually a bad move when his lead adopts an Allen-esque style. Chalamet fares quite poorly—and in one of Allen's very worst. Shawn can do it because he has a natural Allen-adjacent sensibility, but Rifkin's Festival is atrocious—literally my least favorite of all his films (excluding Coup, the only one I haven't seen). I made a similar point to you in my Lboxd review: "The only funny thing about it is the insistence with which Allen's latest avatar, a one-time film instructor, spouts about the 'European masters' and the 'great cinema classics' while demonstrating only the most basic, Intro to Film-level engagement with a handful of directors and their work." I loathed Wonder Wheel, too, and I have mostly erased it from memory. I seem to recall thinking Winslet's performance was off and the story was a slog. I would say all of his 21st century output, save Midnight in Paris and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is forgettable. I have to go all the way back to Bullets Over Broadway to find a great Allen film. Like you, my interest in his movies has eroded, but I am an incurable completist when it comes to auteurs, so I continue to see the new ones. I think you're right that the end of his collaboration with Farrow critically impacted his artistry. Seven of my top ten involve her (The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Broadway Danny Rose, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Zelig, Husbands and Wives). I'm curious to know your top 10 Allen films.
Let me sketch a rough ten best in chronological order: Bananas, Love and Death, Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives.
Been a bit since greatness has been remotely achieved, though I do like some of those lighter ‘90s movies (BOB esp.) and VCB. I also suspect you’ll like the new one better than the previous three, as I did, but it still feels like a lesser Match Point. Not exactly a pulse-raiser.
Nice, I should give those early comedies another look. Annie Hall and Manhattan are in my ten, though the latter nearly dropped out on a recent rewatch. The Isaac/Tracy relationship has aged like milk. Almost impossible to watch without considering extratextual details about Allen's life. Planning to see Coup de Chance when it shows up in my area (release rollout details have been vague).
That’s a solid top ten and very close to matching mine. I’d swap out Interiors for Another Woman, which features my favorite performance by an actress in a Woody Allen film.
Fully believe the last great Allen movie is Sweet & Lowdown, which incidentally is probably the last movie that didn't have some overt "our lead man is a shit and everyone loves him" tones
I'm surprised there's no mention of the orangeness of Coup de Chance, which is the main thing I've heard about it. Nick Newman actually has a mildly nauseating note on it in his review:
"Friend who recently supervised the restoration of a Woody Allen movie told me the man himself, 88 years old and with a droopy left eye, visited said friend's office, watched about half the film, asked him to pause the DCP, and insisted there be a "more orange" version of an extremely orange film one could only assume was well-restored by a highly regarded company. Allen's rep conditioned this with a note that his eyesight is failing; thus they're now prepping two versions: "orange cut" and "regular cut.""
WHAT?! I thjnk I saw the less orange cut because it looked like Paris as attractively photographed by Vittorio Storaro. Though I now wonder if his optometrist is hiring anyone to murder his wife.
Haha, well Newman's anecdote is about a restoration of an older film, but all the word I'd read on Coup de Chance being excessively orange and suffused with garish gels is from late last year/early this year, when Northeast US cinephiles were clandestinely sharing screener copies and posting their reactions. Maybe it's possible the color grading was re-done before the piecemeal theatrical release, or maybe it just looks better projected on a big screen than on a monitor.
After watching all his best stuff in college in the late 90s, I was excited to see my first Woody Allen film in the theater. Unfortunately it was Small Time Crooks, and it's the closest I've ever come to walking out of a movie. I remember it being painfully unfunny. It's now the only one I've seen in the theater.
I also remember being upset that he wasted a Rachel McAdams performance on a one-note shrewish wife character in Midnight In Paris. And that made me reexamine the misogyny in his older stuff, too.
So I think I was ahead of the times.
I've only seen 2.5 of his movies: ANNIE HALL, of course; BANANAS, of which everything on the island is great and everything else is not (doesn't help that Woody jokes about majoring in "advanced child molestation" in his first scene); and like half of HOLLYWOOD ENDING (my sister checked it out from the library for some reason and I remember being bored by it). Once he dies, I think, I plan to watch everything he's made, although this article is good for lowering my expectations for the later work.
(BTW I think Esquire ran an article with this title around the time of the scandals, oddly enough)
I have to admit I'm a bit resentful about Woody Allen and how he was sold to me in my youth as a paragon of intellectualism and introspection. A male role model that stood at odds with increasingly steroidal and monosyllabic matinee idols of eighties and nineties. I'm not the only one to notice that Allen's filmography is peppered with men grooming young vulnerable women, with rich protagonists getting away with heinous crimes. It was there almost from the jump, but the allegations didn't really take hold until the sixth decade of his career.
It seemed for a while that I couldn't read a serious piece about Star Wars without a snide comment about how Annie Hall was the superior picture. How Mel Brooks was an oaf next to this genius.... You cite "untitled Woody Allen Project", but the second half of the joke was that the film was also a placeholder for Best Screenplay at that year's Academy Awards with an astounding 16 nominations in that category. Given that award's pedigree as "The Orson Wells Prize for Originality", Allen's repeated inclusion came to look like a stodgy Academy putting up blinders to more adventurous works. You know, filmmakers who actually were progressive and inventive.
In the fullness of time Allen's persona even apart from those most salacious transgressions is often just as chauvinistic as those Cro-Magnon action stars, just he's more comfortable writing 3D female characters. Yes Manhattan is a beautifully shot film, but its in service of everything wrong with the man. When it comes to such films, On the Waterfront is entirely less icky all these years later.
Allen is so far off my radar that until this article I didn't even realize he was continuing to make new films. I guess I'm not surprised. Whatever its virtues, Europe often goes out of its way to prop up creatives cancelled in America. I think the last time an Allen film really moved me was Match Point. Overlong sure, but such a sure work I'm still surprised Allen was capable of pulling it off.
I mentioned Magic in the Moonlight above as the Woody Allen movie that definitively stopped me from watching any future Woody Allen movies. It's exactly your description: a man grooms a young woman, AND it has the balls to argue that she's so lucky to be groomed by someone who can teach her so much, as if being in a romantic relationship is like finding a grad school advisor. Even beyond that gross premise/POV, I also found it funny that one of the only proofs we're given of how brilliant Firth's character is is that he quotes Hobbes's "nasty, brutish, and short", which any college freshman could do. It made me wonder how smart any of this had ever been, despite his reputation.
As someone who wasn't paying attention to movies for adults until Woody was already on autopilot, this comments section is the first I've learned that this guy was ever supposed to be an intellectual. Do people just think anyone in glasses is an intellectual, or...?
I say this as someone who finds Allen in his prime to be quite funny. But his style of comedy is...I don't know, I wouldn't say it's *stupid*, but it's certainly more "laugh at the nebbish" than "laugh along with the clever witticism the nebbish just said", unless I'm completely misunderstanding.
First of all, agreed with your read overall and thank you.
Re: his frequent Oscar nominations: it's funny how the cliche is that the acting awards aren't for Best acting but for Most acting, and yet that couldn't be less true of Best Original Screenplay.