The film opens on a train as a ticking clock fills the soundtrack. It is without question one of the filmmaker's most radical and imaginative works released at the peak of his powers, featuring a great deal of wit, warmth and human emotion alongside irreverent moments of personal homage, silliness and surrealism. At its most simple level, the film is a merciless satire on the film industry, on the notion of celebrity, and on Allen's public persona, as he here essays the role of a stand-up comedian turned filmmaker wrestling with a number of weighty personal issues, including the death of a close friend, the breakup of a relationship and the beginning of an affair - all the while trying desperately to reconcile the need for personal success in relation to artistic expression. He is stubborn and refuses to apologize for his misbehavior, even when he sleeps with his psychologist-wife’s patient.Funny, moving, imaginative, bold, intelligent, surreal, nostalgic and beautiful Stardust Memories (1980) is one of Allen's greatest films, if not THE greatest. Harry borrows story lines from his real life for his fiction and in the process alienates his friends by revealing their secrets and portraying them as ridiculous. Nevertheless, Deconstructing Harry feels distinct from the rest of the catalog, because Allen plays a character who is not just annoying or neurotic but actually hateful. And, as in any number of Allen’s films, the protagonist worries about his place in the cosmos. Like The Purple Rose of Cairo (in which a character steps off a movie screen and falls in love with an audience member), it knocks down the wall between fiction and reality-Harry (Allen), a writer possibly modeled on Philip Roth, meets several of his creations. Like Stardust Memories, Deconstructing Harry follows an artist attending a ceremony in his honor and reminiscing over past relationships. Here, art doesn’t help you appreciate life it walls you off from its disappointments. Deconstructing Harry (1997), which considers the merits of art from the artist’s perspective, presents creative work as a consolation of last resort for those too pathetic to hack it in reality. The hours are good, you meet a lot of interesting people, you travel a lot.” Or from Stardust Memories: “To you I’m an atheist to God, I’m the loyal opposition.”Īs with the void moments, the message of the art moments varies. Sonja: “Sex without love is an empty experience.” Boris: “Yes, but as empty experiences go, it’s one of the best!” I can cite jokes from Take the Money and Run: “I think crime pays. (I tracked it down at the Paley Center for Media.) Lots of cinephiles can quote the best lines from Love and Death. Produced as a television special for PBS, it was pulled before airing, reportedly because the programmers feared antagonizing government officials. I’ve even watched Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story, a 25-minute mockumentary that satirizes the Nixon administration. I have seen them all, as well as the early movies that he wrote but did not direct ( What’s New Pussycat?, Play It Again, Sam), the shorts Oedipus Wrecks and Sounds from a Town I Love, and the TV movie Don’t Drink the Water. The worrisomely prolific auteur has written and directed 40 feature-length films, and has a 41 st scheduled to premiere at Cannes in May. Yet attending “the new Woody Allen” is, for me, an annual rite. Given the redundancy of Allen’s work, it might seem like a waste of time to dig into it deeply and get beyond his top-tier comedies and dramas. In Celebrity (1998), a model says she’s “polymorphously perverse … meaning every part of my body gives me sexual pleasure.” That should sound familiar: In Annie Hall (1977), Alvy tells Annie that she’s “polymorphously perverse … you get pleasure in every part of your body when I touch it.” He recycles character types: the neurotic Jewish New Yorker (the filmmaker’s spit and image), the adulterous intellectual, the hypochondriac intellectual. He reuses the same font, EF Windsor Light Condensed, for his titles and credits. It’s not just that he recasts actors or that he revisits the themes of domestic boredom and cosmic insignificance. The extent of the similarities from one film to the next is remarkable. In Allen’s case, it’s ground trod by anxious, well-to-do white people, who swap partners and drop cultural references in an empty, godless universe. Wodehouse, Woody Allen returns compulsively to the same creative ground.
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