Review – Woody Allen: A Documentary (2011)

Even those who aren’t major fans can’t deny that Woody Allen is a person of enormous significance within cinema – indeed he’s perhaps the most noteworthy individual within American cinema in the last 40 years.  For a period in the 1980s it seemed obligatory that every new Allen film would be widely rated as amongst the best films of the year. While the Academy Awards aren’t always a reliable barometer of class, that he has acquired an astonishing  15 Oscar nominations for screenplays he’s written or co-written (for 3 wins) is a true testament to his quality.

Therefore, a three-hour documentary examining Allen’s life and career is essential viewing for any fan of cinema, let alone fans of Allen. Especially so when Allen is prepared to be substantially interviewed in Robert B. Weide’s documentary, simply titled ‘Woody Allen: A Documentary’, released on TV late last year.

This documentary is effectively in two segments. The first segments covers Allen’s life chronologically from childhood to 1980’s ‘Stardust Memories’, which Weide obviously perceived as a crucial decisive period in Allen’s career. The second segment is a more pottered account of Allen’s his post-1980 work and his overall impact on cinema.

Technically, this documentary is impressively done. The clips chosen to show Allen’s career and films are judiciously and intelligently inserted and Weide is prepared to take some risks unusual in a documentary like when a series of talking heads are shown saying the same phrase in rapid succession to underline a point. Even at three hours there’s barely a dull and stagnant moment.

Of course the main reason the documentary is entertaining is the scope and substance of Allen’s career. The segment I found the most interesting was Allen’s stand-up career and rise to fame and acclaim in the 1960s as he succeeded despite himself. Deeply reluctant to pursue stand-up when he was already a successful comic writer, he struggles for a while as his distinctly uncomfortable persona mitigates against his talent. But he persists (and is pushed by perceptive managers) and becomes one of the defining stand-up acts of his era. From the clips that are shown he always looks awkward during his routine and paradoxically, perhaps that was the secret of his success. Perhaps audiences of the 1960s were tired of the traditionally slick and manufactured comics and found Allen’s style genuine and appealing, especially as it fitted in with his self-depreciating style of comedy. And of course, it was also because he was an exceptionally gifted comic.

Even more interesting from this era is how his management pushed him into the public eye in the 1960s so that he wasn’t just a noted stand-up comic, but a mainstream American celebrity. We see footage of him singing in a broadway style musical number (and his singing is indeed dire) and even participating in a boxing match with a kangaroo! While some of this must’ve been galling for him to participate in, it helped give him the celebrity credit that film producers began to see him as a viable talent. And the rest is history.

The section covering his film career is also constantly interesting. While most of it was familiar to me, there were some new revelations, like how the scene in ‘Annie Hall’ where Allen and Diane Keaton’s characters are both shown talking in therapy at the same time in what appeared to be a split screen segment, were both filmed at the same time.

Allen himself is interviewed extensively throughout the documentary, with significant excerpts from earlier interviews. Curiously enough considering he’s the whole basis of the documentary, when Allen is interviewed it’s probably the least interesting part of the doco. This is because Allen’s patented self-deprecating, self-loathsome persona is rather tiresome to hear in this format, especially when his default reaction to any of his work is to belittle it. It almost feels like an easy evasion of a more penetrating self-analysis of his own work.

More interesting from Allen is when we see his process of working which is a mixture of old-fashioned and eccentric. He uses no electronic technology, and still relies on hand-written notes and old-fashioned typewriters. His method of adding in material on his typewritten notes is certainly idiosyncratic and amusing. When we see his hand-written ideas they are splashed on the page in such a random and eccentric fashion that it would be difficult for anyone but himself to transcribe them to legible form. This form of ideas feels more in the spirit of his early anarchic comedies as opposed to the usually tidy films he’s made in recent decades.

Weide has organised an array of talking heads for the doc ranging from actors who’ve worked with Allen such as Mira Sorvino, ex-wife and actress Louise Lasser and film critic Leonard Maltin. They are generally interesting and well chosen, although the predictable absence of Mia Farrow makes itself felt. Probably the most interesting comment came from film writer F. X. Feeney who says that ‘Hannah And Her Sisters’ was the film Allen’s fans were expecting after ‘Manhattan’, not ‘Stardust Memories’ which seemed to disillusion them, especially with what they took to be Allen’s criticism of his fanbase.

If there’s a weakness in this documentary (perhaps inevitable due to Allen’s participation), is that the tone towards Allen is so reverential, including from all of the talking heads,  that it borders on the gushing. Barely a mildly critical word is mentioned of Allen’s work or Allen himself during the documentary. His downturn in in quality and popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s is briefly alluded to, but seemingly only as a precursor to mention his triumphant return to form with 2005’s ‘Match Point’.

Also referenced is Allen’s ugly custody battle with Mia Farrow in the 1990s after she found out about his romantic relationship with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn. But again this is treated rather superficially with the focus being on how excessive the media coverage was of it (hardly an earth-shattering insight) and how Allen managed to carry on so strongly through it. Considering Farrow’s absence, this section feels rather pointless and probably could’ve been excised from the documentary altogether.

Despite some weaknesses and a rather self-serving aspect to it, ‘Woody Allen: A Documentary’ is a fine, entertaining work. For those who know nothing about Allen, it’s an excellent starting point to learn about him and his significance. Of course those who are devoted fans of Allen won’t need a second invitation to watch it.

Rating: B

My Favorite Movie — Annie Hall

My favorite movie, for about thirty plus years now, has been Annie Hall. For the record, these are my ten favorite movies, in alphabetical order: Annie Hall, Casablanca, A Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove, The Godfather, The Graduate, Hannah and Her Sisters, A Hard Day’s Night, The Maltese Falcon, and Manhattan. I would not argue that these are the greatest films ever made (although I would certainly submit that Casablanca and The Godfather are right there), nor would I disagree that Annie Hall is not Woody Allen’s greatest achievement, as Hannah and Her Sisters or Crimes and Misdemeanors are much more emotionally complex. But it is my favorite movie of his, and since Woody Allen is my own personal movie god, it is my favorite film of all time.

To my recollection, the first Allen film I saw was a double feature of Take the Money and Run and The Front (which he starred in but did not write or direct). The former is perhaps his purest comedy, a gag machine that just doesn’t quit, and the movie that most people are referring to when they talk about his “early funny movies” (that and maybe Sleeper or Bananas). My indoctrination into the cult of Allen came through his prose. When I was about 15 I was browsing one day in my local bookstore (the Little Professor on Michigan Avenue in Dearborn, Michigan) and was attracted to the bright yellow cover of Without Feathers, his collection of “casuals” published in the New Yorker. I was hooked. His surreal humor so synced with my own that I treated that book like a Bible. I still have it, though it his held together with masking tape.

All during high school I copied his style in my creative writing, and became known as being such an Allen fan than I was tapped by the high school drama club to direct his play Don’t Drink the Water and thus I was on my way as a theater geek. But it was Annie Hall that pushed me into the status of cinema geek.

Ironically, I didn’t see Annie Hall in its initial theater run. I didn’t go to too many movies in those days without my parents. The movie came out in March, 1977, just after we had moved to New Jersey from Michigan. Thus I didn’t see it until it premiered on HBO in March, 1978. After the first time I watched it, I was transfixed. I watched it every time it was on HBO–perhaps a dozen times that month. I have seen it at least twenty times since then, most recently last night. I have seen it on a big screen a few times, once or twice in college, and once at a theater in Greenwich Village that ran a double feature with Manhattan, surely the most blissful three hours I could possibly spend in a movie theater. In those days before VCRs, I even set up my cassette recorder in front of the TV set and audio taped the movie, so I could listen to it every time I wanted.

So what is that I respond to so much about the movie? Well, it’s amazingly fucking funny. Almost every line is a laugh line, opening and closing with old Catskills jokes. There are also moments of sublime surrealism in some of his jokes. I think the best sequence starts with Alvy Singer’s (Allen, of course) date with Rolling Stone reporter Shelley Duvall. She asks him if he caught the Dylan concert. He responds, “I couldn’t make it that night. My raccoon had hepatitis.” The joke is then pushed when Duvall asks, “You have a raccoon?” and Allen wiggles his fingers and says, “A few.” Then, cut to them in bed, and Duvall tells him as a lover he is “Kafkaesque.” She also apologizes for taking so long to finish. He replies, “I think too much of a burden is placed on the orgasm.” She thinks he’s quoting someone, and asks, “Who said that?” He says, “I think it was Leopold and Loeb.”

He’s then called away to Annie (Diane Keaton), from whom he is separated. She is having a crisis because there is a spider in her bathroom. He finds a copy of National Review and asks, annoyed, why she didn’t get William F. Buckley to kill the spider. Then, finding black soap on her sink, wonders if she’s joining a minstrel show.

In addition to the unrelenting humor, Annie Hall marks Allen’s maturation as a fillmaker. Much of the credit goes to editor Ralph Rosenblum and cinematographer Gordon Willis, who would enjoy a long collaboration with Allen. To start with, the film is told non-linearly, bouncing from Alvy’s Brooklyn boyhood, growing up underneath the Coney Island roller coaster, to his early days as a comedian, through his first two marriages, to the complete A to Z relationship with Annie. The film also has some extremely long takes–the average length of a take in the film is 14.5 seconds, compared to the average 4.5 seconds. With that knowledge, I watched the movie last night with an eye out for that. Consider the first narrative scene, with Alvy and his friend Rob (Tony Roberts), walking down the street. They start in extreme long shot, almost invisible to the eye, but slowly walk forward, as Alvy lists subtle acts of anti-Semitism he’s experienced, until they are in full frame.

Then there’s the scene in which Alvy’s obsession with the Kennedy assassination interferes with his sex life with first wife Carol Kane. I had never noticed before, but that scene, perhaps two minutes long, is in one long take, and ends with the camera zooming in on Alvy, who talks to the audience.

Allen frequently breaks the fourth wall in the film–he starts and ends the film by doing it, and even does it during the context of actual scenes, such as when he turns to the audience and asks them to clear up a disagreement with Annie. This brings the viewer into a more intimate mode with the character. There are also other unusual aspects of the film. In a scene in a movie line, an annoying man claims he knows all about Marshall McLuhan, so Allen produces McLuhan himself from behind a poster to refute him. Allen uses split screen, animation, subtitles to reflect what characters are thinking, and a technique used by Ingmar Bergman in Wild Strawberries by having characters visit themselves in past situations. I think the best use of this is when Allen recalls his penchant for kissing girls in first grade, despite a little girl’s declaration that even Freud spoke of a latency period. Allen represents himself in two ways–himself as a young boy, and himself as adult, seated at his old school desk. The scene ends brilliantly with Allen wondering what his old schoolmates are doing today, and the child actors stand and recite: “I used to be a heroin addict, now I’m a methodone addict,” or “I’m into leather.”

Above all Annie Hall is a romance, and one that belongs to Diane Keaton. Although Allen and Keaton were previously an item, this is not autobiography, though Keaton’s real last name is Hall (and she did have a Jew-hating Grammy Hall). Keaton has repeatedly said that she never uttered the phrase “la-de-da” until Allen wrote it for her. The film was originally called Anhedonia, a psychological condition that prevents the sufferer from experiencing pleasure, but the choice of calling it after Keaton’s character indicates how strongly she carries the picture. She is a fully-developed character, not an idealized version of a girlfriend, and its her endearing awkwardness that grows into self-confidence, while Alvy Singer does not grow, that is the spine of the film. Allen’s decision to just train the camera on her and let her sing “Seems Like Old Times” is something of a tribute to her as an actress. Of course, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress (the film won Best Picture, Allen won Best Director, and he and co-writer Marshall Brickman won for Best Original Screenplay).

I’ve held this picture in high esteem for so long it feels like a part of me. On one of my first trips to New York City while I was in college I made a pilgrimage to the site of the last shot, which happens to be on Columbus Avenue and 63rd Street, across from Lincoln Center (at the time a restaurant called O’Neal’s Balloon was there; that’s where Alvy and Annie have their last goodbye). I can tell you about the soon-to-be-famous actors who were in the movie, such as Christopher Walken as Annie’s weird brother, Jeff Goldblum as an L.A. guy who has forgotten his mantra, and, very briefly, Sigourney Weaver as Alvy’s date when he runs into Annie and her date, going to see The Sorrow and the Pity. I’ve also, as I’ve become more educated, understood more of the jokes–it took me a while to figure out what Alvy’s second wife meant when she said she had a headache “Like Oswald in Ghosts“–that required understanding the plays of Henrik Ibsen.

Though Annie Hall isn’t as visually stunning as Manhattan or Hannah and Her Sisters, it has its moments, especially a scene at twilight, with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background, when Alvy and Annie first declare their love for each other. Allen says that love isn’t a strong enough word: “I lurve you, I loave you, I luff you.” I feel the same about this movie.

Some photos from Paris for GE regulars

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Review – Broadway Danny Rose (1984)

While he produced arguably his greatest films in the 1970s, because of the context they occurred in Woody Allen’s 1980s film work is a more impressive achievement imo. Whereas 1970s Hollywood and the unprecedented freedom it gave to auteurs like Allen suited him, one would have presumed his career would stagnate in the blockbuster mentality of 1980s Hollywood. But whereas so many other individualistic directors who came to prominence in the 1970s had their careers decline or worse in that decade (Coppola, Altman, Ashby), Allen not only survived, but thrived. Indeed, it could be argued he was the most revered American director consistently working in the 1980s.

For a section of the filmgoing public, Allen in the 1980s was someone who could be counted upon to consistently deliver quality. One such example is one of his lesser known films from that period, the 1984 comedy ‘Broadway Danny Rose’.

The story evokes a deliberately nostalgic tone.  Not only is it shot in black & white but it has a delightful and convincing framing device of a group of old comics reminiscing in a cafe (one almost wishes a movie was based around them), before one of them begins telling a story about Danny Rose (Woody Allen).

Danny is a struggling showbiz manager, as exemplified by the generally limited appeal and talent of his acts (this aspect is probably overdone by the film). However, it appears he could be heading for his big break as he gets his client, washed-up 1950s crooner Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte), a chance to effectively audition for a major TV special. But when Lou has a falling out with his mistress Tina (Mia Farrow) and begins to drink heavily, Danny has to reconcile the two otherwise the big opportunity may be lost. And that’s only the beginning of Danny’s problems.

As a comedy, BDW is only moderately successful. There are some undoubted funny moments here – I particularly liked the scene where Tina says she believes Lou has been seeing another woman behind her back, and Danny tries to placate her by saying “He’s cheating with you, he’s cheating with one person a time only.”  Also, during a chase scene there’s an inventive and humorous use of helium.

But overall it feels like it should’ve been funnier than it was. Scenes like a lengthy one at a party (where Danny incorrectly gets mistaken for being Tina’s lover) feel like wasted opportunities as Allen rather lazily relies on Italian gangster stereotypes instead of the sophisticated humour he’s capable of.

But as a character study, BDW is a winner. Firstly, there’s the character of Lou Canova, nicely portrayed by Forte. Despite being childish, delusional and selfish Lou has an endearing quality that makes him impossible to dislike. But his self-serving nature comes to the fore and the inconsiderate way he treats his wife is replicated in his treatment of Danny and finally, Tina. As a portrayal of a self-absorbed, washed-up entertainer, the character rings true throughout.

After being a central character in the first half, Lou fades out of the reckoning and the film isn’t even particularly interested in whether he makes a success of his comeback. The film is far more interested in the characters of Tina and Danny and their relationship.

Danny and Tina are completely contrasting personalities. He is a decent, humane person whose integrity has probably held him back in his career. Never married, having no children and with all his family dead, Danny treats his clients as family and it helps explain why he sticks with them even when their career prospects look hopeless. In contrast Tina, with a background connected to organised crime (her mobster husband was murdered), is brash, cynical and always looking to get ahead.

After a predictably hostile beginning, against the odds Tina and Danny begin to find a common ground and an unspoken attraction develops between the two. But this attraction can’t be reconciled with the different perspectives they have. In a scene in Danny’s apartment Tina, reflective of her gangster background,  says her philosophy on life is ‘You see what you want, go for it. Don’t pay any attention to anybody else. And do it the other guy first, because if you don’t he’ll do it to you’. In contrast, Danny responds that his philosophy on life is ‘Acceptance, forgiveness, love’.

These vastly contrasting perspectives will come up against each other during the film’s finale where things turn sour for both characters and, in a finale beautifully filmed by Allen, only one perspective can prevail.

Probably the highlight of the film is Mia Farrow. Leaving all traces of her usually meek and self-effacing screen persona behind, she is completely convincing as the abrasive Tina. So completely does she step into this role that I wouldn’t have guessed she was playing the role if I hadn’t known beforehand.

This isn’t a perfect film by any stretch – it’s somewhat disappointing as a comedy and there are issues with the narrative that pop up (is Danny really significant enough to have a sandwich named after him? Wouldn’t have Barney Dunn found out at some stage that Danny had (albeit inadvertently) been the cause of his injuries?) But there’s so much to like about this film, especially in the central characters, that even if it’s a minor Allen effort, it’s a highly enjoyable one.

Rating: B+