Welcome back for another installment of Filmmaker of the Week! I must admit, I've never been a big fan of Woody Allen, even though I had never seen a single one of his films, until recently. I don't know what it was, but something about the style and substance of films just didn't seem like something that appealed to me. But, if I'm going claim that I'm a serious student of film, I couldn't ignore him forever. He has, after all, written over sixty films during his career. Just try and wrap your head around that. Sixty films. Some people struggle to write just one film while this guy seems to churn them out like clockwork. Obviously, Woody Allen is doing something right and it's about time that I took notice. So, after scouring the Internet, I have assembled what I believe to be his top five films to date, according to his fans, at least. In Part 1, I will be talking about LOVE AND DEATH and ANNIE HALL, Part 2 will focus on MANHATTAN and HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, and we'll finish up in Part 3 with CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS and, as an added bonus, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, the one Woody Allen movie that I've already seen and one that I really liked a lot. Now, time to find out what makes Woody Allen one of the greatest living filmmakers!
During the Napoleonic Wars, Boris Grushenko (Woody Allen) is forced to enlist in the Russian Army despite the fact that he is both a pacifist and a coward, unlike his two older brothers who are eager to go to war to defend Russia from Napoleon Bonparte (James Tolkan) and his forces. The one thing that Boris seems to want more than anything in life is the love of his cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton), who desires to wed his brother Ivan Grushenko (Henry Czarniak) until he spurns her and she decides to marry a herring merchant to spite him. Deemed by his superiors to be one of the worst soldiers in all of Russia, Boris manages to elude any sort of combat out on the battlefield, until he makes the mistake of hiding out in a cannon that fires and launches him into enemy territory, inadvertently landing on and killing a group of the opposing force's generals. Returning home to a hero's welcome, Boris beds the beautiful Countess Alexandrovna (Olga Georges-Picot) and is challenged to a duel to the death for her honor by Anton Lebedokov (Harold Gould). Certain that he is to die, Boris convinces the recently widowed Sonja to marry him should he survive the impending duel, which does not go as expected for either of the men involved.
As the first of the movies for this installment of Filmmaker of the Week, LOVE AND DEATH was not at all what I expected from Woody Allen, but in a way that was pleasantly surprising. I was expecting a lot of dry humor, which there was an ample amount of, but I was taken aback by the goofy comedy that seemed to overtake the film as the plot descended further and further into absurdity, capped by a ridiculous plot to assassinate Napoleon. Some of the humor that was aimed at parodying Russian literature was lost on me due to my being unfamiliar with the source material, but LOVE AND DEATH still has a lot to offer to the casual viewer, satirizing the arbitrary nature of war and the vanity of traditional marriage. I'm particularly fond of the sequences depicting Boris out in the battlefield, where he manages to botch his basic training, turns and runs when faced with the prospect of hand-to-hand combat, and at one point even masquerades as a cheerleader to support his comrades. Two interesting elements of LOVE AND DEATH that I'm sure will pop up again in future films are his use of anachronisms and philosophical debates, both of which are played for laughs and contribute to the tongue-in-cheek tone that permeates the entire film. It is a goofy, light-hearted, and sometimes silly film, but one that drew a lot of laughs from me.
One year after their break-up, Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) attempts to figure out why his relationship with Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) ended, with much of their story unfolding through flashback. Having suffered through two failed and unfulfilling marriages, Alvy receives an unexpected surprise when he meets Annie for the first time while playing tennis with a friend, the two of them later ending up at her apartment for a glass of wine and some casual flirtation. Despite obvious personal differences, the two of them begin to date and their initial love is very passionate, until Alvy begins to grow increasingly paranoid and begins to question both her and their relationship. Even as they fight to stay together, Alvy continues to push her away with his self-destructive behavior and Annie starts to slowly pull away from him, certain that no woman in the world can make Alvy Singer happy.
I'm going to be honest here and admit that I struggled with ANNIE HALL. I wanted to like it, but I just couldn't connect with it for a number of reasons. For starters, I had problems with how the film was structured, how it jumped back and forth in time with reckless abandon and at one point even depicted a scene where two families, separated by several decades of time, appear to share a dinner table and even interact with each other. It made it difficult to grasp what was going on with the characters when I couldn't distinguish what period of their relationship I was watching, making it even harder to find some sense of plot. I liked both Woody Allen and Diane Keaton enough, but I never felt particularly attached to their characters or their relationship, which consisted of arguments, sex, a few tender moments, and more arguments. Maybe that was the point though, and I'm too young to understand the nature of relationships during the 70's. I've heard at least one fan refer to ANNIE HALL as the movie about relationships in the 70's, so perhaps it was capturing a cultural zeitgeist that I was never part of or had a chance to experience for myself. Woody Allen is a very intelligent man and his writing is evidence of that, but I often wonder if too much of his humor is based in culture, because I'll admit that a lot of his jokes and references go way over my head. I'll probably end up revisiting ANNIE HALL again in the future to see if my perceptions of it change, but for a first viewing, I felt very underwhelmed and strangely unaffected by it.
Check back soon for Part 2!
I'm going to be honest here and admit that I struggled with ANNIE HALL. I wanted to like it, but I just couldn't connect with it for a number of reasons. For starters, I had problems with how the film was structured, how it jumped back and forth in time with reckless abandon and at one point even depicted a scene where two families, separated by several decades of time, appear to share a dinner table and even interact with each other. It made it difficult to grasp what was going on with the characters when I couldn't distinguish what period of their relationship I was watching, making it even harder to find some sense of plot. I liked both Woody Allen and Diane Keaton enough, but I never felt particularly attached to their characters or their relationship, which consisted of arguments, sex, a few tender moments, and more arguments. Maybe that was the point though, and I'm too young to understand the nature of relationships during the 70's. I've heard at least one fan refer to ANNIE HALL as the movie about relationships in the 70's, so perhaps it was capturing a cultural zeitgeist that I was never part of or had a chance to experience for myself. Woody Allen is a very intelligent man and his writing is evidence of that, but I often wonder if too much of his humor is based in culture, because I'll admit that a lot of his jokes and references go way over my head. I'll probably end up revisiting ANNIE HALL again in the future to see if my perceptions of it change, but for a first viewing, I felt very underwhelmed and strangely unaffected by it.
Check back soon for Part 2!
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