Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Match Point, Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters
He's back. Woody Allen returned to the Venice Film Festival with his new film Chance. The 87-year-old director has struggled to release any of his films in the United States since late 2017, when his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow made allegations of sexual abuse (all of which he has denied).
But that hasn't stopped him from creating a string of abominations outside of Hollywood, from 2017's Wonder Wheel to 2020's Rifkin Festival. His brilliant mid-career victories at Annie Hall and Manhattan seemed to be a thing of the past.
But the buzz around «Coup of Chance», which was warmly reviewed and received a standing ovation in Venice, suggests that its powers are far from exhausted. And while it may not quite live up to the heights of vintage Allen, it's a great chance to reflect on his absurdly prolific career.
Here's our ranking of his feature films — from real scumbags to all-time classics.
50. Hollywood Finale (2002)
The curtain call at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival was the definition of an unfortunate opening that pleased no one: Allen presented himself as a once-celebrated director suffering from a bout of hysterical blindness. What follows is a tense farce, with a full length of dead screen time and only Tea Leoni threatening to become an asset. The punch line explains its place at Cannes: When the $60 million film Allen's character makes while blind fails miserably, his only consolation is that the French love it. But even the French didn't like the Hollywood ending.
49. The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)
Allen has often expressed an interest in stage magic and hypnosis (see also: Scoop, Magic in the Moonlight), but this enthusiasm reached its zenith in this dodo of light comedy, his most expensive film yet (it cost $33 million). . his own account is among the worst. His own performance as a wisecracking insurance investigator mesmerized about a jewelry theft was one of the problems, but Helen Hunt doesn't do much better as the ruthless efficiency expert he wants off his back. All the film achieves is to appear generously nostalgic for a more sexist era.
48. Rifkin Festival (2020)
Did you see it? Congratulations—you're joining an even more exclusive club than the Hollywood actors who want to star in Allen's films. The nicest thing to say about Allen's exploration of a late-career slump, which easily qualifies as his lowest grosser at the box office ($2.3 million), is that it's not nearly as bad as the entries above. A pointless trivia about a film critic (Wallace Shawn) and his much younger wife (Gina Gershon) reconsidering their relationship during the San Sebastian Film Festival, is this Allen at his most desperate? And the resounding answer from the $24,000 opening weekend: no.
47. Whatever Works (2009)
Imagine Manhattan if it rotted behind a radiator for a year. That's more or less the measure of this completely rancid May-September comic romance, although a fairer reflection of the age difference in question might be February-Hogmanay. Larry David's sullen physicist and Evan Rachel Wood's happy-go-lucky nymphet are Allen's nastiest on-screen couple, and the script is deafeningly weaved with misanthropy, misogyny and psychological false notes.
46. To Rome with love (2012)
The worst of Allen's late European films seems, at some distance, like a quartet of plots plucked haphazardly from the director's famous box of ideas and generously infused with Dolmio. It's in reverse order of wretchedness: a shaggy dog story about singing in the shower, a middle-aged architect musing about a youthful romance, a grandfather's grumbling about a pointless celebrity and the D.O.A. a reworking of Fellini's early romp. The cast ranges from Jesse Eisenberg (good under the circumstances) to Alec Baldwin (a terrible scream), and Penelope Cruz gives a monumentally offensive performance as a seductress.
45. Rainy Day in New York (2019)
Timothée Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Selena Gomez, Jude Law, Diego Luna… perhaps the last time Allen will be able to negotiate with such an all-star cast (all of whom claimed to have donated their royalties to anti-rape charities), this featherweight scribble completely wastes them. Chalamet is an obnoxiously awkward Ivy Leaguer whose romantic weekend in New York with his aspiring journalist girlfriend (Fanning) is sabotaged by the weather and her determination to track down the scoop. He's weak, ugly, and seems to troll his critics with his flirtations with age-inappropriate sexual shenanigans. Wet squib? Well, Allen called.
Timothée Chalamet in “A Rainy Day in New York” Author: Jessica Milio 44. Shadows and Fog (1991)< p>The great Italian cinematographer Carlo Di Palma made 12 films with Allen, making him the director's favorite cinematographer, and was his main collaborator on this stylistically bold homage to German Expressionism, which more or less lives up to its title. Plot-wise, we're stuck in an ill-conceived Kafka pastiche, and despite the cast — Madonna, Kathy Bates, Lily Tomlin and Jodie Foster play prostitutes, and Mia Farrow and John Malkovich as a couple of circus performers — everything about it feels shaky and empty . It was a big failure.
43. Scoop (2006)
The second of Woody Allen's London films achieved the strange distinction of not receiving a theatrical release in its country of origin, despite the return of Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman in the lead roles. The reasons are simple: it's blatantly disposable, continues Allen's awkward romance with a non-existent London, and doesn't come up with any intrigue worth caring about, despite all the subtleties of the Thin Man-style plot. Surprisingly, the only positive feature is Allen himself in a supporting role as an amusingly bewildered magician named the Great Splendini.
42. Anything Else (2003)
Allen has yet to debut a film called Will This Do?, but Anything Else comes closest, both in title and in its reworking of old stereotypes about creativity being thwarted and being stuck with an annoying , a persistently difficult long-term girlfriend (Christina Ricci). who wants to move her mother with her. Jason Biggs' character is supposed to be an aspiring comedy writer, but Allen's script doesn't have a single funny line. All this goes to his aging intellectual mentor, a real treasure trove of philosophical witticisms played by, guess who. Go ahead, guess.
41. Wonder Wheel (2017)
Allen is generous with grandiose metaphors for his post-prime ministerial decline (see also 44), but going in circles in this case is banally appropriate. Kate Winslet plays a bored 1950s housewife whose gangster husband (James Belushi) goes by, improbably, the name Humpty. Her problems begin when his stepdaughter (Juno Temple) and a young lifeguard (Justin Timberlake) appear on the scene. Despite Vittorio Storaro's vivid, hyperreal cinematography, the whole thing feels cheap, shadowy and nasty, especially Allen's insistence that women who fall in love with younger men deserve retribution while men get away with it. Where does he get his plots from?
40. Cassandra's Dream (2007)
Allen's European films have a certain touristic quality to them: watching them, you can almost feel the director scouting locations from an open-top bus. But on his third shoot in London, he goes off-piste and things go seriously wrong. In this Faustian thriller about two East End brothers (Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor) embroiled in a murder plot, almost nothing rings true: neither the characters' inner lives and aspirations, nor, of course, their dialogue, which barely rings true. -humanly, not to mention British. Compensation comes in the form of spirited support from Sally Hawkins and a flurry of points from Philip Glass.
Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell in the movie «Cassandra's Dream» Credits: Allstar/THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY 39. Magic in the Moonlight (2014)< p>A walk along the Riviera promises to be a treat for the eyes, and this furry time killer is truly bathed in seductive slanting light. But Allen underestimates both the appeal of his protagonist, an arrogant English stage magician named Stanley Crawford, and Colin Firth's ability to make him tolerable and even less attractive. There's some light-hearted fun with Emma Stone as the young psychic whose actions Firth is furiously determined to debunk. However, even if you do not take into account the age difference of 28 years, romance is not far off here.
38. You will meet a tall dark stranger (2010)
Woody's fourth and, for now, final London film is a slightly cynical ensemble juggle involving gold hunting, psychic love advice and literary plagiarism while chasing an ambulance. Josh Brolin is good as the desperate writer, but Gemma Jones is at her best as Anthony Hopkins' jilted wife, whose new girlfriend is a dowdy ex-prostitute (Lucy Punch). Allen, alas, seems above all his characters here and subjects them to petty ironies of fate that seem forced and malicious rather than wise or enlightening.
37. How are you, Tiger Lily? (1966)
On paper, it's a blast: a Japanese spy film called International Secret Police: Key of the Keys (1965), which Allen dubbed into English to feel like something of an Austin Powers parody. Strange moments are connected: «This is Shepard Wong's game ship!» — remarks one female character. “Oh, I hate him so much. He's one of the seven worst people in the world.» But there's something smirking and superior and frustratingly problematic about the film, as if a giggling class prankster was making fun of Asian kids. Allen himself called it «stupid and juvenile» after producers tore it out and inserted live performances from The Lovin' Spoonful.
What happened, Tiger Lily? Photo: Photo 12/Alamy Stock Photo 36. Melinda and Melinda (2004)
Borrowing Danny Rose's Broadway tropes of a dinner-table anecdote, Woody tells the story of two hypothetical Melindas, played by Radha Mitchell, whose destruction of the gates of a Manhattan dinner party takes different turns: one comic, one tragic. Comic Melinda has much better hair, but her exploits aren't particularly funnier than Tragic Melinda, who just turns her neuroticism up to 11 and seems convinced she's doomed. Will Ferrell and Chloë Sevigny at least look alive, and it's like an average Allen look that's almost annoying to watch until he just won't stop.
35. Celebrity (1998)
Or: the one where Kenneth Branagh portrays Woody at a party, Leonardo DiCaprio as a bratty A-lister who sleeps with several models, and rough blowjob routines practiced on bananas. This is the last time Allen collaborated with Ingmar Bergman's great cinematographer Sven Nykvist, whose black-and-white vision of this intense media circus is surely meant to remind us of La Dolce Vita. But the film is a bitter pill with little substance, and it leaves Branagh running from too many gorgeous young starlets (Charlize Theron, Famke Janssen, Winona Ryder) for us to feel entirely comfortable with.
34. Match Point (2005)
Match Point did do Allen a favor: it introduced him to a new muse in Scarlett Johansson, made him some decent money, and the screenplay earned him his first Oscar nomination since the late 1990s, to the dismay of most British critics. Kinder US reviews saw this London-set murder story as a return to the raunchy morality play Crimes and Misdemeanors, but it was struck by an expressive and overwhelming tone-deafness: fatal to what was ostensibly a satirical analysis of the English language. class system. Extra debits for those stupid ghosts at the end.
33. Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
Allen performs «Pygmalion» paired with the Greek chorus of «Borscht Belt,» though the jumbled, snobbish, and emotionally twisted results noticeably fall short of the myth. A wealthy New Yorker (Allen) decides to find the biological mother of his adorable adopted son and is horrified (and also more than a little excited) to discover that she is a prostitute and porn star. Mira Sorvino gives an Oscar-winning, eardrum-irritating performance in a thankless role: the film relentlessly patronizes Sorvino's character, and when it works, it's because the actress heroically refuses to roll over and accept it.
32. Chance
What do you know? Allen's latest film isn't a complete dud — in fact, it could be a pretty damn big hit. (Though perhaps that doesn't quite justify the rapturous acclaim it received at the Venice Film Festival.) Shot with an all-French cast—that's the power of Hollywood Omerta at work—it's essentially a baroque extended mother-in-law joke as a joke. A chance meeting with an old flame on a Parisian street forces a jealous husband (the incredibly evil Melville Poupaud) to hire a private detective to stalk his wife. But not before her wily mother (Valerie Lemercier) begins to realize what's going on. It's no brass-bottomed classic, but it's an enjoyable and charming watch — and his best and funniest film since 2016's Café Society.
31. Petty Crooks (2000)
It's one of Allen's silliest, good-natured entertainments of the post-Peak era, and was even picked up by DreamWorks and became a significant summer hit. The second half is a humiliating series of slightly snobbish, nouveau riche gags, but Allen and co-star Tracey Ullmann manage to give them a bit of flair: Hugh Grant also has some genuinely funny performances as an oily art dealer, and Elaine May as the cousin Ulman's sisters, half-witted talker. It's a reminder of a now-lost era when Allen could fill a mediocre script with the right cast to entertain, and it worked.
30. Alice (1990)
Mia Farrow's wealthy Manhattan housewife rediscovers the wonderland that's been missing from her life and, by implication, the title of this bumbling, magical-realism comedy. Seeking help for her bad back, Alice meets a Chinese doctor whose herbal infusions allow her to turn invisible (and thereby spy on her cheating husband), summon an old boyfriend, float over the rooftops of Manhattan, and generally ignore the limitations of middle age. The role fits Farrow like a silk jumpsuit, but its odd premise doesn't quite assuage familiar plot problems.
29. Irrational Man (2015)
A mediocre entry in Allen's unofficial A Perfect Murder tetralogy, in which Joaquin Phoenix's existentially flawed philosophy plots a poisoning in broad daylight as a means of reclaiming his supermenschic power. The premise is brutally falsified, although its intellectual reference points (Nietzsche and Dostoevsky again?) seem very threadbare indeed at this point in Allen's career. But Phoenix's strange, un-Allen-esque lead performance and Emma Stone's sunny supporting performance enliven the film.
28. September (1987)
Nine years after Interiors, it was Allen's first return to straightforward, dark dramatic territory, although this time the model was Chekhov rather than Bergman. Emerging from the suicide attempt in Mia Farrow Lane, it's a suburban whine about the miasma of personal unhappiness. It's also depressingly ocher and over-the-top, and the cast (especially Dianne Wiest and Elaine Stritch) need to breathe some life into it. Allen even shot twice, replacing Sam Shepard, Charles Durning and Maureen Stapleton with Sam Waterston, Denholm Elliott and Stritch. He said he wouldn't mind a third time.
27. Sweet and Low (1999)
Fun and serene, with good performances and even better jokes, this evocation of a (fictional) 1930s guitar virtuoso is perhaps the only one of Allen's films about an artist in which Allen himself would never have played the lead role. That responsibility falls to Sean Penn, whose controversial but talented jazzman is one of the director's most memorable scumbags. The real star, however, is Samantha Morton, who demonstrates supreme silent-film control and comic timing as Penn's silent lover.
26. Everyone Says I Love You (1996)
Allen fondly recalled the Hollywood musicals of his childhood for this sing-along, star-studded confection that follows a clan of wealthy Manhattanites chasing love in New York, Venice and Paris. Edward Norton, Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts and Goldie Hawn are among the game's actors who sing their hearts out. Despite those titles, it was a commercial failure, and its airiness can sometimes seem inconsequential. But when the film works, it really works: not least when Hawn defies gravity on the banks of the Seine in the magical finale.
25. Sleeper (1973)
Allen's first film directed Diane Keaton was also, perhaps not coincidentally, the first film that suggested there was more to it than just screwball comedies with gags. (They starred in a film together before he became director). That's not to say that Sleeper isn't as zany and joke-ridden as his earlier work: a film about a health food store owner who falls into a vat of liquid nitrogen and wakes up 200 years later seems like it should be. But Allen’s painting here has new colors: romance, melancholy and even – ah! — a coherent plot, while a rowdy sequence with a robot butler showed off his talent for silent-era physical clowning.Sleeper Photo: TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy Stock Photo 24. Everything you always wanted to know about sex* (*but were afraid to ask) (1972)
Loosely based on the popular bedroom manual of the day, this anthology of seven sketches with a raunchy theme has gotten even raunchier with age. But if you look at it with a generous and forgiving eye, its legendary popularity (in the US it was one of the 10 most successful films of its year) still makes sense. And the three episodes remain full of visual ingenuity and laughs: an Italian movie parody, a famous sci-fi scene in which Allen plays a sperm on a date, and Gene Wilder's tender romance with a sheep.
23. Midnight in Paris (2011)
Depending on your point of view, this huge hit and Best Picture Oscar nominee—Woody's first film in a quarter century—is either a glass half-full or Allen half-empty: a fun, shiny bauble that lets you travel back in time. to the past. Jazz Age shows that the grass is always greener; or a superficial, rather pseudo-magazine conceit whose current characters are irritating. Proponents of both views have been surprisingly passionate, but in reality there is not much that separates them. Owen Wilson's jovial flâneur takes it all in stride: It's hard not to when Allen is throwing so many easy wins his way.
22. Bananas (1971)
Perhaps, of all Allen's early comedies, this is the one that can be remade today with the least concessions to modern taste. Perhaps this is because, by the time it was released, it already felt like a film out of time: it's essentially the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup with a Cuban twist (Allen's fading New York ne'er-do-well accidentally becomes a dictator) and survives on an endless supply of insane jokes rushing past like an express train. It looks cheap, which is funny in itself, and satire and parody are crammed to such an extent that they don’t bulge at the seams.
21. Deconstructing Harry (1997)
Allen's darkest comedy is one of the most exciting, especially during the increasingly wayward 1990s: it touches several raw nerves. The structure is loosely borrowed from Bergman's reflections on life in Wild Strawberries, when Allen's boisterous writer, Harry Block, is invited back to his alma mater to receive an honorary degree. The ride includes reflections on the fallout from Harry's failed relationships, not to mention some wacky twists in the sketch comedy: Robin Williams developing an attention disorder and Tobey Maguire playing a sex-obsessed alter ego. It's an uneven bag, a failed film-a-clef with sharp and honest moments.
20. Cafe Society (2016)
It's the thirties, and young Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) has abandoned the sepia-toned buzz of the Bronx for the technicolor vistas of Hollywood. Arriving in town, Bobby seeks a job with his Uncle Phil (Steve Carell), a bulldog agent who doesn't so much name names as toss them around like confetti. Jobs are hard to come by, but in the meantime, Phil introduces Bobby to his secretary, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), who offers to show him the sights.
After a series of collaborations with cinematographer Darius Khondji, Allen works here for the first time with the venerable Vittorio Storaro, a change that works to his advantage. A couple of scenes between Bobby and Vonnie are the most visually beautiful scenes in Allen's God knows how long movie. And then there's Stewart, who's been the best here since she came on screen.
Cafe Society Photo: CANNES FILM FESTIVAL/HANDOUT 19. Love and Death (1975)
The smartest of Allen's early scattershot comedies, it's a surprisingly accessible parody of the Russian literature he was devouring at the time and which would go on to shape his later, weightier work. Allen is Boris Grushenko, a «belligerent coward» who is sent to fight the French and ends up caught up in a plot to assassinate Napoleon with the help of his pretty cousin (Boris: «twice removed!»), played by Diane Keaton. who is on her way to the pinnacle of her comic powers. Parodies of Tolstoy, Eisenstein and Bergman sit alongside Allen's vintage surreal and obscene riffs.
18. Radio Days (1987)
«Radio Days» is Allen's nostalgia for nostalgia: it's the kind of movie about the old days that they don't make anymore. The model is Fellini's loose 1973 masterpiece Amarcord, which replaces Rimini with Rockaway Beach, Queens, where a working-class Jewish family buzzes and floats through everyday life while the music of Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington crackles soothingly from the living room. . Allen weaves new stories about stars and dreamers, confusing memories and fantasies. The result is less a collage and more a patchwork quilt.
17. Sex Comedy on a Midsummer Night (1982)
It sounds like Shakespeare set the template for this gauzy upstate romp, but it was actually the conceited «weekend in the country» of Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night (also created by Stephen Sondheim in A Little Night Music). There's a lot of fuss, rekindling or rekindling of love and so on: you imagine the Porky's crowd, attracted by the title, may have been disappointed. As a milestone for Allen, it is primarily notable for being the first of his (unsuccessful) 13 films with Mia Farrow, who took on the role originally written for the too-busy Diane Keaton. She gets more dreamy close-ups than he could ever give her.
16. Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
The best of Allen's films about Europe is the one most in touch with its tourist soul. Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall are two young American women who fall in love with divorced artist Javier Bardem while on a tour of Catalonia — and, like A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, it's the idea of romance as a mini-soul that gives the film its rosy voluptuousness. power. From an unspeakably attractive cast, Penélope Cruz eventually became an Oscar winner; you often feel that Allen is just happy to be along for the ride.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona Photo: Photo 12/Alamy 15. Take the money and run (1969)
“It's a bank robbery, not a movie,” complains Virgil Starkwell, who plays Allen, although in this case it's easy to confuse the two. Allen throws himself into this parody biopic of a down-on-his-luck serial criminal, full of puns, concepts stolen from Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, and an arsenal of brilliant jokes, one-liners and physical comedy routines. (Judging by the comic density of the idea, the marching band cellist may be the best thing he ever did.) This is his archetypal early funny film: one of them may have come before, but none of them were funnier.
14. Bullets Over Broadway (1994)It's a throwback to the days when Allen's sheer confidence in his pen reigned supreme: the idea of a theatrical gangster farce in which playwright John Cusack finds an unexpectedly brilliant associate in mob bodyguard Chaz Palminteri isn't inspiring on its own, but he puts the characters together to make him was full of vigor and ideas. Jim Broadbent and Tracey Ullmann do excellent work as Broadway's all-seeing stars, and Jennifer Tilly scores points as the creaky prostitute who guarantees the funding, but the crown jewel of the ensemble is Dianne Wiest, walking away with her second film from Allen. Oscar as the sublime, melodramatic diva Helen Sinclair.
13. Blue Jasmine (2013)
Of Allen's many discussed returns to form, here's a film that was actually one of them: a heartbreaking comedy about financial and romantic downturns, and his best work since his extraordinary mid-career hot streak came to an abrupt halt in the early 1990s. X. Cate Blanchett won an Oscar for her heartbreaking performance in the title role, a sort of Park Avenue Blanche DuBois humiliated by her husband's economic machinations. Jasmine's stubborn denial of her desperate circumstances is the fire under the film's feet, and watching her crumble is harrowing, moving — and, worst of all, a lot of fun.
12. Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)
After breaking up with Mia Farrow, Woody called on some old friends—Alan Alda, Anjelica Huston, co-writer Marshall Brickman, and even long-absent muse Diane Keaton—for this decompression exercise that makes for fine, elegant entertainment. : A bouncy comic take on material he previously criticized for its harsh irony. Woody and Diane go into Nick and Nora detective mode when their elderly neighbor (Lynn Cohen) suddenly drops dead. The shop plot — not always Woody's main point of interest — is satisfactorily realized, perhaps thanks to Brickman's input, and the quartet of protagonists once again fall into a mode of mutually skeptical sparring that is completely irresistible.
11. Interiors (1978)
The most imperious of all Allen's projects and his most self-consciously «serious» venture, Interiors balances between assertive, self-sacrificing artistry and a self-parodic tip of the cap to Ingmar Bergman. Choose your side. The Swedish author would hardly leave his fingerprints here if he were considered a decorator — we spend most of the time in a gloomy beige beach house on Long Island, ranting about everyone's misery, and Geraldine Page's witcher-like obsession with expensive vases quickly turns violent. take. Still, the cumulative emotional effort involved is hard to dismiss, and Maureen Stapleton's touching late incursion as the bumbling, vulgar stepmother does have the liberating effect that's expected.
Interiors 10. Stardust Memories (1980)
If Allen's first truly great film came out in 1977 (see number 3), then three years later its greatness began to torment both the audience and himself. “Stardust Memories” is about that moment when artistic success feels like failure: it was Allen’s own, cheerfully prosaic version of the high-toned creative ennui of Fellini’s “8½.” Allen plays himself—or rather, director Sandy Bates—who is beaten by fans and torn between lovers to the point where the chaos begins to take the form of art itself. It's a throwback knockout at the time, thanks to its ambitious structure, vinegary jokes and searing monochrome photography courtesy of Gordon Willis.
9. Broadway Danny Rose (1984)
Sometimes Allen can play himself perfectly, sometimes he doesn't. Despite his terrible wardrobe, beleaguered variety agent Danny Rose is one of Woody's most perfectly cast roles: instantly funny, a little sad and the sweetest of all the characters he's played. It helps that Mia Farrow, the girl next door ex-con, is such a sweet girl too: sharp-tongued but vulnerable underneath it. The film is deceptively disposable, but it has a neat philosophical message about being loyal to anyone who has offered theirs to you. The warmth of reward spreads through you like a ray of sunshine.
8. Zelig (1983)
Throughout his career, Allen has downplayed the degree of self-portraiture in his work, but perhaps this ingenious documentary parody of the once famous «human chameleon» who lived in the first half of the 20th century and who could change his personality and appearance to harmonizing with him wherever he goes is a typical Allen-as-Allen movie. It's about the horror of visibility when all you want to do is fit in, and the humor touches on all kinds of personal and political pressures. (Allen's choice of time period and Zelig's Jewish-American heritage are no coincidence.) The special effects, in which Allen blends seamlessly with period newsreels, are still astounding and underscore the painful tragicomedy of Zelig's plight. He is the same person who was not there.
7. Husbands and Wives (1992)
It opens with one of Allen's most powerfully written, directed and acted scenes, as Judy Davis and Sydney Pollack arrive for dinner and announce their plans to separate. The way their best friends, Allen and Farrow, react—shocked but also hurt—turns this into a quick four-way characterization marvel. It's the most searing anatomy of Allen's marital bond, a film so bitter, searingly frank and unsentimental that he completely reinvented his shooting and editing style for it.
Plenty of jump cuts, on-camera interviews punctuate the plot, and Carlo Di Palma's handheld camera circles all over the place, seeming to move from one accusation or gossip to another as the four experiment separately with new lovers: the perfect catch Liam Neeson, the aerobics fool Lisette Anthony, impressionable student Juliette Lewis. This is Woody's last film with Farrow, and now it feels even more like a brutal autopsy of their entire relationship: he even makes himself a loser.
6. Manhattan (1979)
Conventional wisdom has it that Manhattan is a cinematic love letter to New York City. But in fact it's the other way around: a thank you card from New York, via Allen, to cinema — for the alchemical process by which light, shadow and music can transform buildings and streets into a wonderful, shared dream of the city. It is, in theory, a romantic comedy, although its romance and humor are alternately angsty and brooding, and its characters are burdened with many flaws and neuroses (not least the troubling May-September romance between Isaac, Allen's controversial comedy writer, and Mariel Hemingway). 17-year-old student).
On the contrary, they are nourished by the city itself, frozen in time by the impeccable black and white photographs of Gordon Willis. Just by watching the sun rise over the East River and Gershwin's song wafting through the morning mist, Allen's tiny worker ant can somehow feel like the king of the colony.
Manhattan Photo: United Archives GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo 5. The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
Movies are so often an escape route for Allen's characters that it's only natural that one of them would end up going in the opposite direction—jumping off the silver screen and into the life of a troubled soul seeking solace in the movies. Cecelia (Mia Farrow), a waitress struggling through an unhappy marriage and the Great Depression, is halfway through an escapist swashbuckler when her lantern-jawed hero (Jeff Daniels) climbs out of frame and drags her out the door on a romantic adventure. on its own.
It's a brilliant idea that Allen and his actors explored to dazzlingly funny ends. What gives the film its existential poignancy, however, is a two-part late-game confession: first, that the beautiful comfort movie is a lie, and second, that it doesn't matter. Watching it, you feel (and probably look) like Farrow's heroine: a smiling face in the dark, illuminated, flickering, alive.
4. The Other Woman (1988)
Allen's most underrated and least known work is also one of his shortest at 84 minutes. It has a wonderfully elegant tone, and the lead role of Gena Rowlands has to be one of Allen's three or four greatest works, along with Keaton in Annie Hall, Landau in Crimes and Blanchett in Blue Jasmine. Rowlands plays Marion, a philosophy professor who overhears Mia Farrow's therapy sessions, forcing her to question her own life.
Gene Hackman, Ian Holm and Martha Plimpton appear in flashbacks and contemporary scenes, which she compares with each other, trying to understand where her life fell into a rut of barely noticeable dissatisfaction and how to get out of it. In the film's most disturbing scene, she runs into a high school friend (Sandy Dennis) who drops a shocking list of grievances into her lap, revealing Marion's long-held view of herself as some kind of mirage.
3. Annie Hall (1977)
Every scene, every joke in Annie Hall is so familiar that it's easy to forget how irritatingly strange it is: the romantic double entenders with subtitles, the monologues poured out to the camera, the temporary freedom, even Allen's character, Alvy Singer, wandering through his own childhood memories. . It's a romantic comedy the likes of which cinema has never seen and hasn't seen since. Allen and Diane Keaton compete here on such a perfectly even footing and with such supremely harmonious warmth and wit that you almost feel she should be credited as co-director.
Allen's lore has it that the film was originally a two-and-a-half-hour solipsistic outing in which Alvy and Annie's affair was relegated to a subplot. But in the editing, it was their relationship that brought the film to life, and the dead wood was mercilessly cut out. Allen's preferred title for the film he originally planned was Anhedonia: a Greek term for the inability to feel pleasure. There could not have been a less suitable title for the finished film.
2. Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
“People carry terrible things with them. This is reality. What we are really doing is rationalizing, denying, or not being able to continue living.” With these words, ophthalmologist Judah Rosenthal (the superb Martin Landau) tries to justify a terrible crime — his last resort after he orders the murder of his mistress (Anjelica Huston), who threatens him with blackmail in order to maintain a comfortable existence. it is built.
He talks to the film's other main character, Allen's documentary filmmaker Clifford Stern, in one of the extended scenes while sitting on the sidelines of a wedding party at the very end of the film. There are no fortune cookie epiphanies here that some of Allen's lesser pictures call philosophy. Here he thinks deeply about moral choice, about what is more important: guilt in his own eyes or in the eyes of the world. Rich in beautifully combined metaphors about blindness, conscience and the dangers of self-discovery, this seething and wise film has only become more popular since its release. This is Allen in soaring form, gliding so elegantly through a labyrinth of ideas as if the spirit of Fred Astaire had given him lift.
1. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
There it is: not just Allen's creative peak, but perhaps the most successful combination of comedy and drama in mainstream American cinema. It feels like a wonderful middle ground between all the director's many techniques and tones: caustic without being cruel, deep without being sanctimonious, warmly human without turning into slime.
His greatest? Mia Farrow, Dianne Wiest, Barbara Lee Photo: AJ Pics/Alamy Stock Photo
The romantic destinies of Hannah (Mia Farrow), Lee (Barbara Hershey) and Holly (Dianne Wiest, who won an Oscar, like Michael Caine) provide Allen has the perfect Chekhovian structure to test mid-adulthood, when there is already a sense of disappointment over lost promises and unfulfilled happiness, but there is still something to play for. And this is precisely what makes his bittersweet symphony so convincing and generous towards all participants, and above all towards the viewer. Without shying away from everyone's massive misfortunes, his succinct message is: don't give up.
Coup de Chance is showing at the Venice Film Festival. No UK release has been announced yet.
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