Although they loved Midnight In Paris at Cannes, it wasn’t Woody Allen’s triumphant return to the neurotic humour, wistful romanticism and classy cultural references of classics like Annie Hall and Manhattan.
But Allen’s boosters say that every three or four years, when he rises from his creative torpor and makes a half-decent picture. Will his new flick, To Rome With Love, appease the die-hards?
Here’s a list of the movies – and moments – that gave him his reputation as an American original.
The Bergman influence, Love And Death (1975)
Having spent most of his time lovingly sending up Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Allen switches things up in the final reel to riff on The Seventh Seal – directed by his idol, Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. Collected by an indifferent Grim Reaper, Allen’s hapless Boris bids farewell to his beloved cousin Sonja (“I got screwed!”) and dances off into the sunset with a handful of other souls. Allen would borrow from Bergman again and again in his movies, but this first lift is the purest – and easily the funniest. NW
Marshall McLuhan sets the record straight, Annie Hall (1977)
Alvy and Annie are waiting in line for the movies in front of an obnoxious loudmouth, who’s blathering on the subject of McLuhan’s legacy. Alvy shuts down the know-nothing by actually producing the great media philosopher himself to tell the talkative twit that he doesn’t know a thing about McLuhan’s ideas. It’s a favourite Allen fantasy – intellectual prigs getting their comeuppance – echoed again when Owen Wilson one-ups slimy pedant Michael Sheen in Midnight In Paris. SGC
Opening sequence, Manhattan (1979)
Great cities have always inspired Allen, whether Barcelona in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, or London in Match Point. But there’s no town he’s more passionate about than New York City – witness Manhattan’s spectacular opening montage of images of the city, triggered by the sexy slide of the clarinet from Rhapsody In Blue. Allen loved the montage so much he almost fully reconstructs the sequence – in colour this time – using the City of Light in the opening to Midnight In Paris. SGC
Tracey’s words of wisdom, Manhattan (1979)
We could harvest almost any scene from Manhattan as exemplary Allen – the opening montage (see above), the night walk through the Hayden Planetarium, the angry exchange between Woody Allen and Meryl Streep over what certainly sounds like one character’s attempt to run down the other’s new lesbian lover. But the movie’s ambiguous final scene, in which Allen’s confused Isaac realizes the depth of his feelings for the young woman (Mariel Hemingway) he recently dumped, may be the best and wisest moment in any Allen film. Hemingway’s last line — “you’ve got to have a little faith in people” – could just as easily apply to New York City on the cusp of the 1980s as it does to Isaac’s bleak worldview. NW
Sandy Bates’s close encounter, Stardust Memories (1981)
Woody Allen has always denied any connection between his films and his life, which is why Stardust Memories is so fascinating – it is indisputably a commentary on Allen’s attempts, after Annie Hall, to become a more serious filmmaker. His character, the director Sandy Bates, is constantly reminded that audiences prefer his “early, funny” films even his extraterrestrial fans want him to stick to what he does best. “You want to do a service for mankind?” an alien asks Sandy in a climactic encounter. “Tell funnier jokes.” NW
A face in the crowd, Zelig (1983)
The joke at the centre of Allen’s expertly constructed mockumentary about Leonard Zelig – a 1920s “human chameleon” who unconsciously assumes the characteristics of any group he’s in – pays off in full when Allen’s eponymous enigma is found after a long absence at a Nazi rally in 1930s Germany. In meticulously faked newsreel footage, we see Zelig start waving frantically at his lover (Mia Farrow) amidst a crowd of saluting Nazi officers – finally asserting his individuality at the worst possible moment, and the funniest. NW
Architectural rhapsody, Hannah And Her Sisters (1986)
When Sam Waterston’s architect takes Dianne Wiest and Carrie Fisher on an impromptu tour of his favourite Manhattan buildings, there’s no question that Allen’s voice is speaking through the character – and turning his new film ever so gracefully into an appendix to Manhattan. And since Wiest and Fisher are both quietly angling to turn the tour into a date, it keeps Hannah’s plot moving briskly along. NW
Brotherly advice, Crimes And Misdemeanors (1989)
Much as I love Annie Hall, Manhattan and Hannah And Her Sisters, I suspect this film contains Allen’s greatest insights into the human condition, thanks to one breathtaking scene. Married ophthalmologist Judah (Martin Landau), struggling to detach himself from an unstable mistress (Anjelica Huston), allows his hoodlum brother (Jerry Orbach) to talk him into having the woman killed. Though he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to rationalize the murder of another human being, the true horror of the act is how little time it takes the ostensibly upright Judah to consent to the plan. The feeble attempts of a nebbish documentarian (Allen) to steal another man’s girl are the stuff of comedy – as they would be, in a universe where morality has no meaning. NW
The worst sex ever, Husbands And Wives (1992)
For all the importance Allen’s films place on sex, he’s never been particularly comfortable with eroticism – and his attempts to depict sexuality on screen are profoundly square. (I submit the fumbling threesome in Vicky Cristina Barcelona – sorry, Susan.) But Allen understands the way misdirected excitement brings out the worst in people, and the scene between a solicitous Liam Neeson and a thoroughly distracted Judy Davis is easily the funniest and most uncomfortable example of what one might call “mounting frustration.” NW
Laughing at the unthinkable, Deconstructing Harry (1997)
When Harry’s Orthodox Jewish brother-in-law berates him for not showing respect for the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust – the largest mass murder ever and the likes of which we’ll never see again, he reminds him – Harry shoots back, “The scary thing is that records are made to be broken.” Not often you hear a Holocaust joke in the movies – or anywhere else, for that matter. SGC
