This also fits under a couple other occasional series:
“We’ll always have Woody”: A look at Woody Allen films
and
Films including Diane Keaton, an exemplar of Baby Boomer leading
actresses
Preface
My “Director’s dossier” on Woody Allen gives a chronological list of films he
wrote and directed; the intro material in the first subsection in this entry,
below, squares with that, basically. I would like to review what films of his
that I’m reviewing this season in chronological
order, but as practical conditions have it, I have to start with Manhattan. A review of Interiors (1978) appears here, on
my other blog. Annie Hall I could
review, but it would be some weeks at earliest that this could happen. And of
course numerous films that came after Manhattan have
been or will be reviewed.
Subsections below:
A quickie career orientation (see also my “Director’s dossier” on
Allen)
Manhattan as not quite as
great as it once looked; it’s a thematic tour de force secondary to Annie Hall
The positives, as well as the lesser aspects; the May–December romance
as a “cause for pause”
The constellation of players fleshes out an intricate story involving
also droll (non-love) issues
Wrapping up (can you, with a story like this?)
Tasty details
[Edits 3/10/14. Edits 3/12/14. Edit 3/17/14. Edits 3/28/14.]
Manhattan was the first Woody Allen film I saw when it came
out in the theater. I forget whom I saw it with (it might have been my best
friend in high school, Joe Coles). I saw it in spring 1979 or so, which was
when I first started seeing films in theaters fairly regularly. (Maybe having
money from a job was something that allowed this in my late-teen years.)
It gets categorized as being of
a piece with Annie Hall (1977), his
landmark turn to more adult storytelling and I believe the winner of the most
Oscars for one of his films, and for any aspects of this films; this actually
received the Best Film Oscar, while Diane Keaton won for Best Actress and
Allen won for Best Director.
(An expanded version of this
review, or notes pertinent to it, could be in my print “Jersey Combo Plate”
package.)
A quickie career orientation (see also my “Director’s dossier” on
Allen)
For years Allen’s career was a
sort of work in progress (see my “Director’s dossier” entry on Allen);
when he turned to more serious films starting with Annie Hall, you would be surprised what his next films would be. Interiors (1978), a serious drama, was a
shock to audiences; Manhattan was something of a return to the form exemplified by Annie Hall. Manhattan would
also be Allen’s last film with Keaton as co-star (until 1993); she had been in
each of the films he’d written and directed since Sleeper (1973; see my review here).
Keaton’s exit from his work
would come amid a number of landmarks in his career; she would be absent from
his next film, Stardust Memories
(1980). This film, which is to an extent an homage to Fellini’s cinematic
style, seemed at the time more autobiographical (and hence, to a degree, was
considered narcissistic by some) than his films had tended to be until then.
From definitely a later perspective, it seems to have been a “between gears”
work. Not only did it feature a sort of expression of self-doubt/reassessment
regarding his career, but it featured three acting “leading ladies” none of
whom would end up being his co-star “partner” in subsequent films. Charlotte Rampling, who plays the bipolar actress (and lover of Allen’s character)
who essentially always appears in flashbacks in the film, is the most
dynamic-performing woman in the film, and Allen has even remarked on how well
she fit the part. But Rampling definitely wouldn’t become a multi-films actress
for him. (I notice online that some consider Stardust Memories Allen’s best film; I can see this argument, as it
certainly does seem pretty consistently to deliver in line with his themes and
his attempts at more creative storytelling approaches, and there is a lot
tucked into it, more, I think, than Manhattan.)
Then, in 1982, came A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, which
included Mia Farrow as the main love interest for Woody’s character; Farrow,
in fact and over time, assumed what could be called—in retrospect—the Diane
Keaton long-term co-star role. That is, until family issues arose—Allen and
Farrow shared a family, including children both born to them and adopted (she
was the main one inclined to have so many children in a household)—with an ugly
explosion in 1992-93, and along with their familial split, Farrow left Allen’s creative
fold. It seemed like a generous vote of confidence in Allen that, in the
immediate aftermath of the 1992 developments, Keaton reappeared in his work, in
1993’s Manhattan Murder Mystery. (She
also was in the atypical-of-them Radio
Days [1987]; and much more recently, she accepted a lifetime achievement
award [not Oscar-related] on his behalf.) (End
note 1.)
Critical opinion seems to consider
Allen’s period of greatest films to run from 1977 (Annie Hall) to at least Hannah
and Her Sisters (1986); you could probably also throw in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and incidentally
you can observe that the “leading ladies” for his “great” period comprised both
Keaton and Farrow.
Other “aiders and abetters” of
Allen’s great period include cinematographer Gordon Willis, who worked
with him into the 1980s; and cowriter Marshall Brickman, who
helped him with Sleeper, Annie Hall,
Manhattan, and the later Manhattan
Murder Mystery (which I’ve read was originally a work prepared prior to, or
perhaps as an early component of, the Annie
Hall script).
For Manhattan, Allen’s longtime producing partners/agents Jack Rollins
and Charles H. Joffe are duly listed in the credits, along with executive
producer Robert Greenhut (these names would appear in the credits of many of
his films; Rollins died not long ago). Mel Bourne, an accomplished
production designer, is on board for this film. (End note 2.)
Manhattan as not quite as
great as it once looked; it’s a thematic tour de force secondary to Annie Hall
All this said, you would expect
that Manhattan would seem to be a truly grand
work, as it had fairly much been considered by critics at the time it came out.
It had Oscar nominations (like Annie
Hall) but it didn’t win any Oscars; Mariel Hemingway had a nomination for Best
Supporting Actress and the screenplay was nominated for Best Original
Screenplay. (Interestingly, this sort of “magnetism” for such distinctions has
gone on with Allen’s films ever since, though nothing of his has been quite as
lauded as Annie Hall, except possibly
for Hannah and Her Sisters.)
To me, though it is important to
understand the “genre” that Allen most crafted as his own—a relatively
limited-plot story of a clique of intelligent New Yorkers (or otherwise urban
types) dealing with a range of finely articulated interpersonal matters, from
the sexual to the cultural to the “spiritual”—Manhattan seems slighter to me now than I might have thought it
years ago. In fact, it seems more like the “small-ish” pictures Allen made
years later—though Manhattan is a
more accomplished version of this, a sort of genotype for the later ones—with a
motley collection of actors giving good performances, and being unusually
verbal. (In his later such efforts, actors turned up such as Alan Alda, Alec
Baldwin, Mira Sorvino—almost half the Hollywood
Who’s Who, it seems.)
Compared to other directors’
works of the ’70s, Manhattan is not
quite like truly great pictures such as The
Godfather (1972), Nashville (1975),
The Deer Hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979), or many others—generally
covering a wide area of concern regarding American society in some way—that are
landmarks of the time.
I think you can put it this way:
Annie Hall is a well-rounded picture.
Even if you feel that, at points, it is rather dated today, and if your opinion
is that Allen’s character seems like an annoying complainer, it still depicts enough
details of the phases of a rich relationship, and incidentally related
situations, that it seems to satisfy as a comic film that is respectfully
centered on a romantic relationship in a social setting that allows bountiful
personal opportunities. We believe the Woody character can be integral to the
kind of love relationship we see. It even satisfies in its elaborate
observations of “issues at large,” like social fads, with a range of humor that
today seems to have more than we might have thought in 1977 of the grabbing of one-liners
that was characteristic of his “earlier, funnier” films, to adapt the Stardust Memories refrain.
Annie Hall is like a small symphony, let’s say. If so, then Manhattan is a sort of thematic piece of
a more limited structure—more of a tone poem than a bull-blooded symphony—that
shares a lot with Annie Hall, and
thus it can be considered as a good “added bonus” to view in a home “double
billing” with Annie Hall.
In both films, we get the New York setting (and
remarks about it) as key. We get a blossoming relationship between central “accidental-first-encounter
lovers,” Allen’s character and Keaton’s character. We get passing comments on
philosophic issues (not nearly as clunky as in Love and Death [1975]). We get passing comments from Allen’s character
about popular culture—he here seems to vocalize Allen’s own “grousy old man”
sentiments (Allen might have seemed then like a “hip” social observer, but
you’ll note a lot of his assessments are as if from an older, pre-Baby Boomer
generation, even within his ’70s films). For instance, both films have sneering
assessments of the rock genre of music (in Manhattan, Allen’s character makes a passing
dismissive reference to a “think piece on a rock star” that the Diane Keaton
character is writing).
We more generally get a sense of
how the concerns of “upwardly mobile,” leisure-class New Yorkers can revolve an
awful lot around issues to be discussed—whether
sexual, political, or whatever else—rather than worrying about (1) paying
bills, (2) what to make for dinner tonight, or (3) how to get through traffic
(in a suburban area, not in the city), and the general “fate” of running around
like a damned fool, just to meet basic economic demands, that so many of us (including
myself) are consigned to.
(A side note, on one thing
that helps Allen as to provide atmosphere in a film, and to save production
money: Filming in New York City
saves him a lot on production costs. Allen is like someone creating vivid art
with “found objects” when he can offer shots of the New York skyline from a
myriad possible viewpoints; a shot of [correction 3/28/14:] the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) [according to the film's Wikipedia article; this museum is to be glimpsed again in this review]; one
of the major bridges; homier, colorful shots in Greenwich Village; and so on. I
will look again at what makes his own take on filmmaking both highly enabled by his New York location—for
one thing, I am curious about his long history of financing, such as with help
from his production partners Rollins and Joffe—and limited in this way. For me, some of his narrowly New York City locations are very evocative,
such as in Manhattan Murder Mystery
[1993], which I plan to do a short review of. But those viewers well outside
the New York
metro area may find this aspect provincial and not to their taste [at least in
certain phases of their life].)
The positives, as well as the lesser aspects; the May–December romance
as a “cause for pause”
I must say, Manhattan
is worth a look—the cinematography is spectacular (and in black-and-white);
Gordon Willis is in his prime here. And it does wonders to a montage-of-shots
portrait of New York (Manhattan,
that is) that comprise an opening sequence, which also, as a stylish point for
the time, has no title sequence (except arguably for the word “Manhattan” shown on the side of a building).
This plus the Gershwin music that famously decorates the soundtrack makes the
film a true ode to the actual Manhattan,
warts and all. Which apparently was a huge part of Allen’s intent with this
film.
One characteristic of Allen’s
films that they took on when Willis ran the camera was a big plus, and is seen
in Manhattan
especially noticeably. Not only are shots composed well as to what is in the
frame and how it is lit, but the camera often tends to sit still (a fact I
recall noted in a Time magazine
review on the film’s release), and characters move within the steady shot, or
move in and out of it. Or after sitting still a while, the camera may move, now
and then, just a little to accommodate other people or incidents in the shot.
##
I think what weakens this film
the most is that, while the conversations between the different arrays of
people in different scenes are intelligently rendered and often witty—whether
with rather broad jokes or with smart insight into relationship issues—the plot
as a whole is not terribly gripping. There
is intrigue, but no real suspense. Instead of one big, charming romance,
with “rising and falling” action as in Annie
Hall, here you have a kind of a pretzel of a plot. And the most poignant
exchanges involve Allen’s character and someone less than half his age.
Allen is Isaac Davis, a comedy
writer for TV (who will quit his job in disgust at what he feels TV has become),
who is dating Tracy, a 17-year-old girl (Hemingway) who attends the prestigious
Dalton School
in Manhattan.
This relationship itself, right on its face, is rather odd, and you’re hit with
it right away in the first dramatic scene, at Elaine’s, the famous Upper East Side restaurant, where Isaac sits with a set
of friends. (See end of this entry on details from the scene.)
Now, I would tend to consider irrelevant any discussion—of which there
has been some in the New York media not long ago, perhaps in The New York Times—as to how this
relationship resonates with what developed in Allen’s life with the young woman
from within his and Mia Farrow’s large family of children, Soon-Yi Previn, whom
he married in the 1990s (Previn was one of several adoptees in the setting; and
see End note 1, again, for related
considerations).
This goes along with saying that,
as a precept adaptable to approaching
discussion of any film of any writer/director, it is generally a mistake to assume that all the characters Allen plays
are basically himself (or modeled almost entirely on himself). Even if his
characters share some of what seem his personal concerns, or the characters
even seem like naked mouthpieces for him at times, it is important to give him
the benefit of the doubt and stipulate that the characters that he wrote in the
script as to be central figures (which he would later play) were not meant to
be precisely and entirely him, as is
true for any writer who delivers fictional characters. Thus, for example, if
his characters seem excessive in some personality trait, maybe Allen meant this
to be regarded as something he didn’t endorse, i.e., to be the object of a
comic story’s aim at laughter.
(See the theme key on
relationships.) Another issue is that the idea of a 42-year-old like
Isaac Davis dating a 17-year-old girl—well, was this sort of thing ever
“kosher” in the 1970s? The Times
piece not long ago suggested mores had changed since 1979; however much you
want to agree with this, I could tell you some anecdotes of teachers at my high
school who were dating some students in my high school class in 1980 (see my theme key, last subsection, “Some
personal experiences… teachers
crossing the line”), and no, this sort of thing wasn’t entirely kosher. In
fact, the 1970s were a time of “experimentation,” sometimes involving what
would be called “boundary violations” today—with the “chickens coming home to
roost” only when people, much older today, have made claims of sexual abuse and
the like they allege to have come from priests and such, while this sort of
thing they wouldn’t have spoken about then (at least to “ring bells” to get
authorities involved).
This sort of thing makes us look
back to the 1970s when these things happened and ask, What were people thinking
then? In fact, this is a very complicated issue, involving such banally
formulated an idea as “changing times,” with ambiguities at both ends of the
three-to-four-decade period between: just
as people overstepped their bounds a bit in the 1970s, we also might ask how
valid some of the complaints are today (is there a bit of overstepping today)?
I.e., is there some personal issue apart from past abuse that serves as a
“motivating factor” for the current complaints of old abuse? (See theme key, under the subhead “Accusations that may end up being a basis
for…”) This is quite a complicated area, and I will try to return to it
when I review another 1970s movie, not by Allen, in the near future.
##
All this aside, if we just
“bracket out” our concerns about this relationship for now, and say that it was
probably considered OK, if a little weird, for a middle-aged New York male like
Isaac to date a girl still in high school, this is part of a nexus of doings
that flesh out the plot, and allow the story to unfold in its rather meandering,
multi-sided way.
That is, as we see a number of
times, Isaac is currently with the girl, but feels awkward about it and wants
her to move on from him. In fact, in one particularly poignant scene about
midway through the film, Isaac goes to a length to assure Tracy that their relationship isn’t quite
right for her, that she should date young men her age and that she will find
men far better for her than he. Allen performs well here, with a tenderness
suited to the situation that provides the most affecting phase of this whole
story. He also shows himself to be the responsible adult, consistent in trying
to guide her away from him, even though she dissolves into tears and is facing
heartbreak—understandably—because from her perspective, she loves him; and she
looks at his intent strategy as reflected in one thing she says, and I
paraphrase, “You keep stating it as if it’s to my advantage to break up the
relationship, when it’s really you who wants to get out of it.”
Her taking this breakoff hard is
affecting, and clinches the fact central to this relationship that the 17-year-old woman is as much
emotionally invested in the relationship as either of them, and this more
generally shows that “The heart wants what it wants,” as Allen has pronounced
in another context. When this phenomenon even comes from a 17-year-old’s
direction, this in turn shows a key source of prodigious ambiguity in this kind
of May–December relationship. In this regard, to say that Isaac had been
“abusing” Tracy
is a tortured argument and doesn’t square with the facts. Both sides have some
responsibility for it, just as both sides enjoy it when it’s going well.
And this is only one piece in a
larger puzzle of a multi-relationship situation that, otherwise, has its more
conventional charms, possibilities, and faults.
The constellation of players fleshes out an intricate story involving
also droll (non-love) issues
Isaac has quit his job, and
becomes distressed about his financial state, even while he is working on a
book proposal. His own “little life” is a focus of subplots, while his friends
bear their own interesting storylines.
His friend Yale, played by
Michael Murphy (a co-star in the non-Allen-directed The Front [1976]), is having an extramarital affair with a woman
played by Keaton—Mary Wilkie [sp?]—whom Isaac meets and becomes rather smitten
with, even though he first finds her to have a complete disjunction with him in
terms of cultural tastes, and he even finds her a little pretentious.
Even by Allen’s characters’
standards, Mary seems like quite a narcissist; several times she refers to herself
being bright and attractive—she seems like an Annie Hall who is a little less
loopy (though Mary admits her own neurotic, “meaning trouble” side) and more
self-conscious about her accomplished quality as an intellectual; she is an
acquired taste with her self-regard. Also, I feel Keaton seems not quite as
settled in this role as she did in Annie
Hall; she seems a bit distracted/unrelaxed and a bit “overdoing” in some of
her expressions in this film.
Meanwhile, the career and
cultural qualities of Yale’s character are shown in all of his being a
professor/teacher; the fact that he is going to write a book on Eugene O’Neill;
and his needing to scout up money to start a magazine. Only in New York, as they say.
Isaac and Mary become an item,
and this happens to become a fulcrum, awkwardly if constructively presented (in
a delicate conversation) by Isaac to Tracy, amid his encouraging her, in line
with his past reservations about their affair, to go on with her schooling in
England and meet men more suited to her.
A scene where Isaac and Mary are
in a planetarium, talking rather intimately with each other, seems to distill
what is unique about this film. In 1979, it may have seemed quite in the best
taste for the type of story it tells. Today, in addition to having a hard time
hearing all the talk (especially from Keaton), I find the planetarium talk at
times rather self-indulgent, tedious, and pretentious. Maybe so many films have
honed this type of conversation to a standardized art today have made this
early version look creakier for age. But when you see it the first time, it’s
OK; when you see it again, it wears thin rather quickly.
More plot twists ensue when eventually
Mary and Isaac start to drift apart (she still feels something deep for Yale),
while Yale—who has called her furtively from a street pay phone—reveals to Isaac
he still has love for Mary. The craziness, in Allen’s view, of these people’s
stories shows in how, early on (when Yale has first revealed his affection for
Mary) he declares confidently he won’t leave his wife. Late in the film, he is
readier to leave her.
Mixed in with all this is Isaac’s
second ex-wife, played by a young Meryl Streep; she is writing a sort of
tell-all book on their marriage and its breakdown. Streep’s turn in this film
isn’t so splendid an early role for her, I think, as is her role in 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer.
Wrapping up (can you, with a story like this?)
This all sounds almost like the
stuff of soap opera. The performances are generally good throughout. Hemingway
is touching with her girlish, but poised and articulate-enough, way of
comporting herself. When this film came out, it seemed like Allen in full
flower as the filmmaker he was becoming, a sort of pointedly comic Edith
Wharton of the post-Vietnam New York
yuppie set, perhaps. But all considerations about this film’s resonances with
Allen’s biography aside, I found the overall plot to be a slightly contrived
pretzel, and to be maybe not fully justified by the passing chances the plot
provides for conversations to unfold that give scintillating light on the
“neuroses and sexual complications” of privileged Americans, or however you
want to glibly put it.
Now, if you saw this film as a
good “little brother” to Annie Hall,
with a surprising amount of thematic overlap (a good “jam session” with flashes
of brilliance by the generally same “band” who assembled the masterpiece Annie Hall), then it is worth
considering as among Allen’s most notable films (among the very many he has
made by now). But as a standalone work, I think—all its visual and music beauty
aside—it is rather weak (or surprisingly so after all these years).
Tasty details
Following are some details
showing that this work is a good example of an intelligent-film “genre” that if
Allen didn’t invent, he certainly perfected. The script isn’t something you can
imagine people reading decades from now, like Hedda Gabler; but you can look at lines and situations and say,
“Yes, that’s a good example of a Woody Allen line from one of his better
films.” Some of the following quotes may be paraphrased.
* Isaac and friends are at a
table at Elaine’s, in a situation that, today, is less of a fictional movie
idea than it is everyday life for some people. Yale talks about the
power/purpose of art (it’s a means to work through feelings in order to get to
feelings you never knew you had), to which Isaac responds, “Talent is luck. The
most important thing in life is courage.” (Similar themes about luck would turn
up in Stardust Memories.)
* Yale to his wife, showing more
consideration for a friend than maybe a lot of similarly situated men might do
today: “Isaac can’t function anywhere than in New York.”
* Isaac with his girlfriend
Tracy: “As long as the cops don’t bust in, I think we’re going to break a
couple of records.” (All right, 1970s humor.)
* Bella Abzug, the
real-life former New York
congresswoman, is shown at a “black tie” fundraiser at [per the film's Wikipedia article] the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), with the fundraiser supporting the Equal Rights Amendment. As
Archie Bunker sang (but with far different intent), “Those were the days!”
* A loopy guy with Isaac, Mary,
and others at a social gathering talks about a film he wants to direct, about
women brought to climax who, right then, suddenly die. He notes that Mary
thinks this idea is “aggressive.” [Update 3/10/14: Actually, I think the word she uses is hostile, which she uses--rather clangingly, to me--several times in the film.] She adds that it’s “Theater with a touch of
Charles Manson.” (The actor playing the director also appears, I think, in Stardust Memories.)
* One of the funniest lines in
the film is when, in the same get-together, a vapid-sounding young woman says she
finally had an orgasm, and her doctor told her it was the wrong kind.
Isaac/Woody seems barely able to suppress a spontaneous laugh, where he says,
“Really? I never had the wrong kind. Even the worst one I had was right on the
money.”
* Isaac’s character explains to
Mary that the book he is undertaking to write (in the panic-inducing situation
of having quit his TV-writing job in disgust, and with many bills to pay) is an
expansion of a short story he wrote, based on his mother, titled “The
Castrating Zionist.”
* Meryl Streep’s part, I think,
is fairly minor and a bit underplayed. She has a role in a situation that, at
the time, would have brought laughs (but, from the more liberal viewers, these
were “generous enough” laughs), but today would induce cringes because of where
we stand culturally on gay rights and gay lifestyles. Streep plays Isaac’s
wife, who has left him in order to take up with another woman (and she shares
custody of their child). Isaac seems, at several points in the film, unable to
get over that his wife left him for another woman.
##
End note 1.
There is a treasure trove of
personal-life and family-issue stories that various people have related to
Allen’s movies. In fact, from what I recall offhand, there was a relationship
he had with a young woman in the 1970s that provided inspiration for the
component of Manhattan
of Allen’s Isaac Davis taking up with a 17-year-old Tracy played by Mariel Hemingway. Whether
this is true, I don’t fully know; and regarding the 1992-and-after, Farrow-related
situation, while I have heard considerable in the media (as far back as the
1990s, starting about when it happened), and there have very recently been
gossip-column items and even a dignifying of part of the issues by The New York Times in allowing Dylan
Farrow to make a statement about Allen, I
tend in these blog reviews to steer clear of likening Allen’s film stories to, or
looking for inspiration for them in, his personal life.
For one thing, I don’t know
terribly much (certainly directly) about the family issues, and certainly the
sad-sounding Dylan Farrow issues raised very recently have appealed to people’s
attention, if nothing else. Meanwhile, the fact that the 1992-and-later stuff
has been the province of family court and has been subject to long-past intervention
by attorneys and other professionals, and at least one judge, (1) it would be
presumptuous of me, based on what limited I know, to “know the facts” as to the
family matters, (2) aside from this, I
think in general that enough is known to make a good case that condemning,
dismissing, or interpreting the work of Allen largely or entirely along the
line of however-coherent past allegations, or notions of “family-related
perversity” or however you might call it, or anything else outside the province
of artistic criticism, is beside the
point. For one thing, my own inclination is to say that to deny Allen a
recent lifetime achievement award solely on the basis of a theory about his
being a deviant of some kind, in accordance with recent publicized claims, is
of very limited merit at best.
I also don’t know a whole lot
about Allen’s biography as might be presented in books, while I have heard
snippets of his comments, and I’ve seen him perform as a commenter on others’
movies (such as on a DVD about Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove)—that is, lend his services as a sort of
view-offering professional outside the realm of his usual work (films and
published writings). I would be interested in learning more about his life, as
I go along with my own work (and I have enough on my plate already). But along
with his seeming to be a reserved person as to personal life, in view of all
I’ve known about him over decades, going back to the late 1970s, I don’t see
any call to temper, limit, or qualify my statements about his films in view of
any allegations concerning anything along the lines of sexual deviancy,
“improper relationships” family-wise or age-wise, or the like. My remarks in this sort of regard will
relate to (1) the issues looked at in the abstract and (2) his movies as
presented as fiction. If I were to discover reliable information that would
significantly change this approach, I would do that.
Last thing: He’s the only film
director of all I’ve had opportunity to cover in my blog entries whom I
actually saw in person (from about 25 feet away), in 1995 at the offices of the
magazine Cosmopolitan, of all places.
Aside from what you want to say about his work—even that it’s repetitive, of
decreasing relevance, of mixed quality, or whatever—he is unique not only for
the prolific nature of his work but for being a “persona”—his appearance even
recognizable when he is stumping for his work at Cosmopolitan, and the “New York neurotic” thing long being a staple
of how he’s regarded—who somehow maintains a credibility or at least
recognizability, and cultural currency, while he is not sexy or “typical [in
personal style or views] of the whole country.”
End note 2.
I’m not as well versed in
Allen’s film history, regarding who
behind the scenes worked on what, as I am with other directors. For one
weak excuse, Allen poses too great a challenge, with the huge number of films
he’s done. But I am making a little progress.
