Ten things I learned about Woody Allen

Woody Allen - A Documentary (Robert B. Wiebe, 2012)



First things first, as it's all over the papers. I don't know the truth about Dylan Farrow's allegations against Woody Allen. I'm a huge fan of Allen as an artist, and would hate for these things to have been happened (I haven't been able to watch a Polanski film in years), but the crucial thing is that the truth be established. This typically superb Onion piece says something about the quandary facing fans, as trivial as this is in the context of the allegations.

It seems an odd time to watch an Allen doc, then, but it arrived in the post recently, I had a spare three hours, and this insightful, incredibly entertaining film is chiefly about Allen's work, rather than his life. And rather wonderful it is too, if you can put the headlines briefly out of your mind, full of intimate interviews and rare footage, even if it becomes a little shapeless towards the end, and seems to think Match Point is a great film. The clips from that and Vicky Cristina - along with on-set footage from You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger - do illustrate just what a creative slump he was in prior to Midnight in Paris. The doc scores a (3.5).

Ten things I learned:

1. Allen (born Alan Konigsberg) chose a nom de plume because he didn't want people at school asking him about his gag-writing for newspaper columnists, and picked "Woody" because it was the first thing that came into his head.

2. As a nipper, he was too active and "too much of a child" for his mum. She later regretted being so strict, saying he would otherwise have been a softer, warmer and less impatient person.

3. He regards his first four or five films as funny but "essentially trivial".

4. What does he see as his legacy? If his life had been snuffed out by a nanny at an early age, as it almost was, the world "would be poorer a number of great one-liners".

5. Production nuggets: cinematographer supreme, Gordon Willis, was known as "The Prince of Darkness" due to his grouchy disposition and fondness for low-level lighting (as showcased in The Godfather). The first scene he ever filmed for Allen was the celebrated lobsters sequence in Annie Hall. He shot Manhattan in super-widescreen (2.35:1) because Allen thought it would be interesting to make a small romance on that visual scale. Woody was never as specific as to tell him to shoot Stardust Memories in a Fellini-esque way. Casting director Juliet Taylor kept a folder of "Woody faces": eccentric-looking character actors she thought he could use.

6. Allen decides his next project by emptying a draw full of scribbled ideas onto his bed and going through them one by one, waiting for inspiration to strike. One says: "a man inherits all the magic tricks of a great magician".

7. Purple Rose originally had Michael Keaton in the Jeff Daniels part, but Allen thought him too contemporary.

8. He sends a personalised but formulaic covering letter to every actor along with the script, essentially saying they can embellish it and chuck out the speeches they hate, and if they find the prospect of working on this one nauseating/disgusting/grim, he still hopes they can work together in this lifetime. He only seems to have signed off the one to Scarlett Johansson with "I'm a big fan."

9. He claims Hannah is a bleak film that audiences thought was optimistic due to his incompetence (I think this might be a fib if you look at the final scene, which he admittedly added belatedly).

10. Farrow confronted Allen about his pictures of Soon-Yi Previn over the phone, whilst Allen was with producer Robert Greenhut. Which must have been quite tricky for everyone involved.

It's highly recommended for committed Allen fans, though I'd caution against others getting a copy, because if you hate him you'll hate this, and if you're still investigating his work there are a lot of spoilers. I'll leave you with this beaut from one of the stand-up clips:

"I had a rough marriage. Well, my wife was an immature woman and, ah, that's all I can say, she... see if this is not immature to you: I would be home in the bathroom, taking a bath, and my wife would walk right in, whenever she felt like, and sink my boats."

See also: The first in my "Ten things I learned..." series was on Michael Winterbottom.

Buster, Bogart and idolising New York City out of all proportion - Festival blurbs

The World's Smallest Film Festival took place at Rudding Park, near Harrogate, on Sunday. Myself and Harrogate International Festival programme co-ordinator Graham Chalmers picked the six black-and-white movies: Sherlock, Jr was my choice, The Artist was his, and the other four emerged from a 10-minute discussion in the work canteen. For the programme, he penned blurbs about The Thin Man, Les Quatre cents coups and The Artist, while I wrote the other three, which I thought I might as well peg up here.



Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924, 45 min) - A cinema projectionist (Buster Keaton) falls asleep on the job and dreams of being a brilliant detective – entering the screen itself to solve a jewel theft – in this groundbreaking comedy. Having served an apprenticeship under "Fatty" Arbuckle, Buster branched out on his own in 1920, unleashing a succession of dizzyingly inventive shorts that blended technical wizardry (The Playhouse saw him play no fewer than 25 parts) with devilishly clever incidental gags and astonishing stuntwork. He made his first feature in 1923 and reached his creative zenith the following year with Sherlock, Jr, a 45-minute comic masterwork that begins with whimsy and wonder, toys with the very nature of cinema and climaxes with some of the most extraordinary physical feats ever attempted on screen. Having been tossed around a vaudeville stage by his parents from the age of three, Buster was – in the modern parlance – as hard as nails, and when the water tower opens on him, you are watching a man having his neck broken. He didn't notice until the 1930s. Sherlock, Jr influenced the surrealists and formed the template for Woody Allen's classic 1984 film, The Purple Rose of Cairo, but, more importantly, it's a rollicking good ride, and still feels remarkably fresh and modern almost 90 years on.

(PS: When @Silent_London recently asked followers to nominate their favourite silent comedy, I sent this tweet, which, to my delight, they read out on this superlative podcast.)



Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942, 102 min) - Casablanca is a great advert for chaos. Its script was still being written as it was filmed, it came in $100,000 over budget and Warner belatedly decided to re-shoot all the scenes featuring As Time Goes By, only to find that they couldn't, as Ingrid Bergman had cut her hair. Now regarded as the definitive screen romance, it's a vivid, unforgettable and lushly-shot film (think of the tears shining in the leading lady's eyes) that sees bar owner Humphrey Bogart, ethereal Norwegian Bergman and resistance leader Paul Henreid play out a love triangle in the titular city - which is increasingly overrun by Nazi forces. The leads are sublime, just about every line of the wise and witty script has echoed down the years and there's perhaps the finest supporting cast ever assembled for a film, from Claude Rains and silent movie legend Conrad Veidt to Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, John Qualen, Dooley Wilson and S.Z. Sakall. All together now: "You must remember this..."



Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979, 96 min) - There are some sublime moments in Annie Hall, but really it's a bit of a mess. It was from 1979 that Woody Allen began firing on all cylinders, making a successful transition from those "early, funny films" (his words) to more thoughtful, affecting fare, and embarking on a devastating purple patch largely unrivalled in the history of American writer-directors. Surely only Buster Keaton or Preston Sturges have ever close to matching Allen's 13 years of unbroken brilliance, taking in films like The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanours. Manhattan, with its gorgeous black-and-white cinematography (spotlighted in that classic planetarium set-piece), wonderful Gershwin score and climactic concession to subtle sentimentality, is one of his most distinctive and appealing movies, tracking the romantic entanglements of a group of New York intellectuals (surely not!) in characteristically sure-footed and amusing style. There's a knockout of a supporting performance from Mariel Hemingway – playing Woody's 17-year-old girlfriend – and it all builds to a typically inspired pay-off. Just lovely.