The Cinematic Art on the Curious Case of Woody Allen
May 21st 2008 02:15
Seeing the iconic image of the Brooklyn Bridge, filmed by Allen for "Manhattan", it's hard not to be overwhelmed by the director's love for New York City, and his raw zeal for the moving image.
In recent times, though, Allen has continued to make a movie every year, but critics and fans have lost admiration for the man that once could have ruled Manhattan. From the post:
"Allen doesn't get the credit as a filmmaker that Hitchcock and Spielberg do. Woody Allen didn't define or revolutionize the medium. Instead, critics, moviegoers, and Allen himself see his films as imitations of those from cinema's great directors. He's considered an American wannabe, pining after the European greats like Bergman and Fellini, his filmmaking idols."
Allen has always publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with his work, citing his influences as masters of the medium far beyond his skill. How can you measure this? While Bergman was an intellectual force that was gigantic in size, Allen's film strike the audience with a different flavour.
When I watch a Woody Allen movie, even one of the more recent ones, coolly received, I'm almost guaranteed that I'll be entertained. The worst that I've seen would probably be "Hollywood Ending", a movie that seems to resort to zany, nebbish rants and a gimmicky plot.
Despite these failings, though, it's still a finely captured film, with a warm aesthetic and reasonably entertaining dialogue. Compared to the near-masterpiece of "Annie Hall", some of the recent Allen projects look flat and uninspired.
"Annie Hall" used the Allen character to full effect, psychoanalyzing himself before the camera, eviscerated and skewered before the audience, left in a fetal position. The haphazard melange of gimmicks and effects are overshadowed by the sheer weight of personal introspection.
Of course, it's the nebbish personality that audiences seemed to have outgrown. Is this really representative of Allen, or is it a character? From interviews with the director, I would conclude that Allen's real personality is much different from that of Alvy's or Issac's.
"And rather than examining the extent to which the dialogue about Allen has informed critical analyses of his work, critics instead continue to (rather stubbornly) insist that Allen is himself solely responsible for his own image image."
What is this image? It's difficult to say, especially when comparing "Manhattan" and "Annie Hall", two films that critics have looked back on and declared 'are the same movie!'. The Cinematic Art distills the two films into separate flasks:
"There are budding moments of romanticism in the film, especially for New York and classic love stories, but ultimately the cynicism prevails in spite of the dream of romanticism. Annie Hall, on the other hand, is not about cyncisim at all; it's a bittersweet proclamation of loneliness and self-loathing. "
Finally, the author of the post asks if Woody has become obsolete in the modern cinema, a dinosaur trying to hunt fast-moving mammals as the meteor plummets towards the earth:
"I mean, the man hasn't changed his title cards in damn near 40 years!"
Personally, I love the Woody Allen opening credits... the typography, the silence, the simplicity. I've seen too much CGI, heard too many jungle beats; when those Allen credits roll, I get a Pavlovian response that's not dissimilar to drooling.
What makes Allen different? I don't think he set out to embrace the auteurism that was flying around in the 60s and 70s, instead, opting to make films as he knew it. He loved intellectual ideas, but, at heart, he was a lusty, randy old man, and he merged the two halves of his personality into his films. His characters are always weakened by their obsession for women, even despite reading ponderous texts on metaphysical realms. Attempting to bed a beautiful art enthusiast in "Play It Again, Sam":
It's with great pleasure and anticipation that I watch a Woody Allen film; though I've only seen a relative handful out of the 39 (40?) movies that he's made, I eagerly look forward to the pleasure of seeing those black title cards appear on the screen.
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