Woody Allen

Bananas (1971)

Bananas (1971)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Google Play Streaming, December 2019) This film is Bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S! Now that I’ve got that out of my system, let’s celebrate how this film was one of Woody Allen’s prototypical “earlier, funnier” movies—a non-stop carnival of absurdist jokes strung on a thin plot about a nebbish New Yorker (Allen himself, naturally) getting embroiled in a banana republic revolution. Definitely dated to early-1970s politics and pop culture, the film still gets its laughs today—the courtroom sequence that dominates the third act of the film is an all-time Allen highlight. The film reaches everywhere for jokes, never feeling over-attached to realism or even narrative consistency. It’s certainly one of the most overly comic films in Allen’s filmography, free from any attempt at pathos, drama or philosophical concerns—it’s a pure joke machine. While I can understand Allen’s desire to move forward with more nuanced fare later in life (and let’s remember that Allen was around 36 at the time of Bananas’ production—not exactly a young man even then) I wish he had done a few more overly comic movies with the verve, inventiveness and go-for-broke pacing that can be found in Bananas. No matter, though: the film is still worth a look today, and it’s still hilarious. Fans of the spoof comedies of the ZAZ era will find a curiously similar rhythm here.

Take the Money and Run (1969)

Take the Money and Run (1969)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(YouTube Streaming, December 2019) When it comes to Woody Allen’s “earlier, funnier movies,” you can’t get much earlier nor much funnier than Take the Money and Run, his first real directorial effort. (While he’s credited as director on What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, that was more of a rearrangement and creative re-dubbing of an existing feature.)  A then-innovative mockumentary featuring a singularly inept bank robber (Allen, obviously), it’s really an excuse for him to throw in as much silliness as possible in a single movie. The jokes start early and seldom let up—and there’s a lot of physical comedy as well. Even at this early point, it’s easy to see the future direction of Allen’s career—the mockumentary form reused in Zelig (or, more generally, the experimentation with form that would reoccur especially in the first half of his career) and the gag-a-minute pacing of his earlier-funnier films. Perhaps more importantly, Take the Money and Run’s best sustained sequence has to do with his talking about romantic relationships, a leitmotif which would form the backbone of his best movies. It’s all wonderfully silly—and contemporary viewers will be surprised to hear a rearrangement of “Soul Bossa Nova” (better known as the Austin Powers theme these days) on the soundtrack. Not particularly ambitious, Take the Money and Run is nonetheless quite successful—it still gets its laughs.

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2019) OK, this was a fun one—in a decade when Woody Allen movies started with the introspective Stardust Memories telling us about his “earlier, funnier ones” and moved on to what would become Allen’s contemporary blend of gentle comedy and drama (culminating in Manhattan Murder Mystery, which would best exemplify Allen’s tone for a while), The Purple Rose of Cairo stands out as a metafictional high-concept homage to 1930s film. The plot gets going in a Depression-era small-town, as a young woman with problems escapes to the movies … and has the star walking off the screen to meet her. They fall in love, but the best part of the film is how it keeps poking at its premise and developing a little bit farther than strictly necessary, having some fun along the way. (Real life doesn’t fade to black in intimate scenes, for instance.)  Some of the development does leave us wanting more, though—the brief mentions of other actors springing to life do land us in a territory that is never properly explored.   The recreation of a 1930s comedy film is convincing and a delight if you’re familiar with the era. The bittersweet ending is disappointing, though: a bit more light would have been helpful, although the protagonist finds herself in a better place if only for not being stuck in the same relationship. Still, compared to other Allen movies of the era (the bizarre Zelig excepted), The Purple Rose of Cairo does feel more high-concept, funnier, breezier.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972)

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, September 2019) Time advances and leaves some things behind—watching writer-director Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask feels like a relic of an earlier era. Very loosely adapted from a then-bestselling sex advice book (the only material kept being the questions, answered by comic sketches penned by Allen), it’s an anthology film with the typical strengths and weaknesses of the form. Much of the subject matter has gone from shocking to boring in half a century flat, leaving only such things as humour and acting to keep the thing afloat. Fans of Allen’s nebbish persona will get a few treats along the way—the opening segment has him anachronistically riffing as a court jester with designs on the queen, while a later quite amusing segment has him face off against a mad sex research scientist and then a gigantic disembodied breast. Easily at its best when it’s at its most absurd, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask hits a comic highlight in a sequence describing the inner workings of a male body during a one-night stand (featuring Burt Reynolds in what’s possibly his weirdest cameo), or when it lets Gene Wilder work through a bestiality premise to its dumbest conclusion. Much of the rest of the film, alas, is just dull. A sketch about a TV show based on fetishism must have felt old even back in 1972, while another about exhibitionism feels like a single joke extended over several long minutes. There’s a cross-dressing sequence that fails to get a single smile—the conflation between cross-dressing and homosexuality has aged poorly. Despite those misfires, this is one of Allen’s “earlier, funnier movies,” and it does give a glimpse at Allen’s glib genius, his madcap imagination (long since abandoned) and his most likable screen persona. This being said, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask does remain more vulnerable than most of Allen’s early films to our changing perception of Allen as a highly problematic figure when it comes to sexual relationships—even if the age difference between him and his other co-stars such as Lynn Redgrave here is a “mere” eight years or so. Some things do age poorly … like Allen himself.

Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, May 2019) We’ll get to the crux of the Woody Allen Problem in a few sentences, but Magic in the Moonlight, taken at face value, is ordinary late-period Allen, gentle and romantic and icky and a bit ordinary even as it’s perfectly enjoyable. The biggest strengths of the film are its actors, especially Colin Firth as a skeptical magician being asked to unmask a suspected fake psychic, and Emma Stone playing said psychic. Both are quite good, even though they may not necessarily belong in the same story. But criticizing Woody Allen for older-man-much-younger-woman romance is like taking Spike Lee to task for a focus on race relation (well, or would be except that Lee’s agenda is actually socially admirable)—what else needs to be said? Still, the story isn’t that stunning—the focus on magic has been done in other Allen movie, and this one feels like a fairly limp attempt to tackle matters of faith and skepticism. The humour is more comfortable than hilarious (the biggest laugh of the film comes from a character revealing himself from behind a chair) and the dialogue is cute without being particularly revelatory. It feels like discount Allen from Allen himself, retreading familiar ground without extending himself. This being said, the film is visually remarkable—the portrait of the 1920s French Riviera is lush enough that we wish we could go there for a holiday, and it’s bolstered by some better-than-average cinematography for an Allen film. Substantial qualms about the rote intergenerational romance aside (and I’ll grant you that it takes a considerable amount of willpower to put it aside), Magic in the Moonlight is a serviceable film, not unpleasant but not worth harping about. It may help viewers wean themselves off Allen as he becomes older and less acceptable. As of five years later, Allen finally seems marginalized by the industry, with distributor troubles and a more irregular production schedule. (2018 was, if I’m not mistaken, the first year since 1981 in which there wasn’t “a new Woody Allen movie” in theatres.)  Like an occasionally amusing guest who keeps pestering young women, Allen may finally have overstayed his welcome … and it’s about time.

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2009) Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Woody Allen riffing on the upper-class Manhattan lifestyle, with rich bored couples going out on the town daily and developing fancy theories of … murder? Well, yes: that’s what happens in Manhattan Murder Mystery when you get bored with arthouse movies and the rest of New York City culture. Allen doesn’t necessarily make things easier on himself by featuring borderline unlikable characters—the so-called protagonists do themselves no favours even during their introduction by criticizing their boring neighbours. Allen being Allen, this is a low-key remix of familiar murder mystery tropes, from Double Indemnity (explicitly show on-screen) to Rear Window and others. There are also other familiar tropes from Allen … most notably having a somewhat younger wife (albeit “only” ten years younger) but most amusingly by getting a few choice one-liners and rambling self-deprecating mumblings. (“This is a neurotic’s jackpot!” is pretty good.)  He also plays his usual nebbish character at a reduced level. What starts out as a forgettable trifle eventually becomes weightier as late-middle-age ennui leads the lead couple to spend a lot of time with other people indulging their obsessions. Some other noteworthy roles include Diane Keaton and Angelica Huston playing dark and sultry unusually well. The film gets wilder and wilder as it goes on, with people seemingly coming back to life, re-dying and so on. Meanwhile, our lead couple grows closer due to the therapeutic power of sleuthing. Stylistically, there’s nothing much to report except numerous long handheld camera shots, but well-executed to keep focusing on the action. Manhattan Murder Mystery is a trifle, but a fun one (Upper-class Manhattan living is an aspirational atmosphere for many viewers) even if a subplot of marital alienation may have had much to do with Allen’s own marital issues at the time. Allen did much worse throughout the 1990s, so might as well enjoy this one as middle-tier Allen.

Melinda and Melinda (2004)

Melinda and Melinda (2004)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, December 2018) In the grand scheme of writer/director Woody Allen’s career, Melinda and Melinda feels both like a partial return to form and a transitional film. Occurring right before Allen’s European phase, it takes place in his Manhattan playground and features the kind of high concept that he played with in the earlier segments of his career—specifically, what if the same initial situation led to two separate stories, one tragic and one comic. Radha Mitchell stars as the same protagonist in both stories, with a typically good cast surrounding her in both versions. There is no single Allen analogue to be found here, showing the way that most of his European movies would go. Unfortunately, the concept of having playwrights arguing over whether life is a comedy or a tragedy by telling competing stories is perhaps better than the actual result: the cohesion between the stories is disappointing, as are the echoes going back and forth between the two of them. It’s the kind of device that a younger filmmaker may have been able to exploit more daringly, because as it is Melinda and Melinda often feels like a comfortable and perfunctory return to the kind of gently upper-class Manhattanite comedy that Allen did throughout his career. We’re more or less in the same apartment blocks, going to art-house movies, discussing literature and philosophy in the same ways other Allen characters have done. This does not, in other words, do much to expand Allen’s repertoire but it can be a comfy return to form for his audience. The result is predictably middle-of-the-road, liable to please those who think it will please them. It’s a specific kind of film, the kind where even an inconclusive abrupt ending becomes a gag in itself. In other words, don’t care too deeply about it.

Play It Again, Sam (1972)

Play It Again, Sam (1972)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, November 2018) I’m not sure I even want to get romantic advice from Woody Allen, but if you can park that thought for 90 minutes and rationalize that the age difference between then-almost-fortysomething Allen and Diane Keaton was a mere ten years, then you may start to like what Play It Again, Sam has for you. Riffing from Casablanca so thoroughly that a viewing of the 1941 film is almost required before tackling this one, this romantic comedy takes us in the neuroses-fuelled inner life of one recently divorced San Francisco writer as he obsesses about his singlehood and Humphrey Bogart. While technically this isn’t a “Woody Allen movie” as he merely wrote and acted in it, but did not direct, Play It Again, Sam does count as one of Allen’s earlier, funnier movies, especially when “Bogart” pops up to provide advice to the protagonist, or when the protagonist’s equally-imaginary ex-wife starts interacting with him. It leads, quite predictably, to an airport tarmac climax, but it’s a good ending. In-between the premise and the conclusion, we have enough of Allen’s usual neurotic pattern to last us for a while, along with his interactions with Keaton. Play It Again, Sam may not be a deep or transcendent film, but it does work, and it will work best for those who do know and love Casablanca. (Who doesn’t?)

Casino Royale (1967)

Casino Royale (1967)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Second viewing, On Cable TV, September 2018) On paper, I’m sure Casino Royale was a great idea. In fact, the film does work better from a conceptual viewpoint than a practical one … which is a fancy way of saying that the film is a mess. From a cold viewing, the film makes no sense: it’s an attempt to satirize Bond, and it goes off in all directions at once, making failed jokes in multiple segments that barely relate to whatever plot we can identify. Some moments are funnier than others, and the high-spirited finale is pure comic chaos (in the good sense of the expression), but much of the film simply falls flat. Coherence is a major issue when entire scenes have their own idea of what humour is, and when the actors aren’t following the same plan. And what a list of actors! A young Woody Allen, a remarkably fun Orson Welles goofing off with magic tricks, First Bond Girl Ursula Andress playing (a) Bond, David Niven as “The original” Bond (before Connery ruined the name), Jean-Claude Belmondo for thirty seconds and a bunch of other cameos. Peter Sellers is occasionally fun, but he seems to be acting in another film entirely. The film’s production values are high enough that we’re left to contemplate a bizarre result, clearly made with considerable means but without a coherent plan. What to make of it? The key to understanding Casino Royale is to read about the film’s unbelievable production. It started with the intention of copycatting Connery’s Bond film series through the rights of Fleming’s first Bond novel, but was realigned to a satirical comedy once Connery made himself unavailable. Then, for some reason, the film became a creation from five different directors, with a sixth trying to patch the gaps between the sequences. Then Peter Sellers, who wanted to play a dramatic Bond, started sabotaging the production before leaving it entirely before his scenes were completely filmed. Given all of this, it’s a minor miracle if Casino Royale makes even the slightest sense. That doesn’t make it a good movie (although there are maybe twenty minutes of good comedy here, as long as you keep only the scenes with Sellers, Welles and Allen) but it certainly explains how we got there. There may have been messier productions and movies out there, but Casino Royale is a case of its own. (I saw the film as a young teenager, but the only moment I remembered from it was Allen’s line about learning how to tie women up in the boy scouts. Go figure. Or don’t, given that I was a boy scout.)

Love and Death (1975)

Love and Death (1975)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, September 2017) The good thing about rediscovering Woody Allen’s movies by going back in time is that they get funnier along the way. So it is that Love and Death is classic comic Allen, taking his usual nebbish character and placing him in the middle of an epic Russian war story. Much of the pleasures of the film are about seeing Allen’s character try to rebel against the conventions of the form, and cheerfully throwing contemporary anachronisms in a story that could (and has) been executed with such a straight face in other movies. The period detail is often very credible, and the jokes are funny enough to earn real laughs. Literate philosophical dialogue is a treat (especially as it forms the basis or further jokes), even though I suspect that I’m not catching even half the references to Russian literature or classic cinema. For a film that quite predictably ends with the death of its main character, Love and Death is remarkably upbeat even in its tragedies. Allen is near the top of his classic comic persona, while Diane Keaton is very good as his sparring partner and Olga Georges-Picot unlocks the hidden sultriness of the subgenre that the film parodies. I’m not sure what I expected from Love and Death (again; going back in time on Allen’s filmography sets very strange expectations) but I feel as if I got considerably more than I even hoped for.

Manhattan (1979)

Manhattan (1979)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, April 2017) I’m usually pretty good about compartmentalizing an artist and an artist’s work—something that has occasionally caused me a few retroactive pangs of guilt, especially in considering Roman Polanski’s work. Most of the time, those little bits of disapproval aren’t enough to affect me: I’ve got my list of good Woody Allen movies despite being aghast at his personal life. But for all of Manhattan’s reputation as one of Allen’s best, I understandably had a really hard time separating the movie (in which he gets romantically involved with a high-school girl) from Allen’s personal life (in which he got romantically involved with not one, but at least two high-school-age girls). As much as I tried getting into the rhythm and sensibilities of Manhattan, the film itself couldn’t stop getting me from thinking, “No, Woody Allen, no!” every time Allen and Mariel Hemingway (who, for all of the problematic aspects of her character, is terrific in the role) snuggled on-screen. So if I sound less than enthusiastic about Manhattan, keep thinking, “42-year-old guy writing a role in which he’s dating a 17-year-old girl”). Fortunately, there are other things to talk about in talking about Manhattan. The black-and-while cinematography is exceptional, some of the one-liners are very funny, the portrait of complicated romances is stronger than the usual pap that passes for romantic comedies, Diane Keaton is fantastic and the portrait of intellectual New Yorkers has a strong credibility to it. Oh, and Meryl Streep shows up for a handful of devastating scenes. Still, I was never completely convinced by Manhattan’s humour or its romance(s). Much as I appreciate the achievements of the film, I can’t quite bring myself to like it. You can credit Woody Allen for both reactions.

Hannah and her Sisters (1986)

Hannah and her Sisters (1986)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, March 2017) As I’m watching Woody Allen’s filmography in scattered chronological order, I’m struck by how his works seems best approached sequentially—there are definitely phases in his work, and they partially seem to be addressing previous movies. Hannah and Her Sisters does echo other Allen movies—Manhattan (which I saw between watching this film and writing this review) in tone and setting, I’m told that there’s something significant about Mia Farrow’s casting, and there’s a continuity here between Allen’s nebbish hypochondriac and the rest of his screen persona. Absent most of those guideposts, however, Hannah and her Sisters feels a bit … slight as a standalone. It’s nowhere near a bad movie: the quality of the dialogue, twisted psychodrama of unstable pairings and Allen’s own very entertaining persona ensure that this is a quality film. But in trying to find out what makes this a lauded top-tier component of Allen’s filmography, answers don’t come as readily. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that Hannah and Her Sisters does things that have since then been done more frequently—Northeastern romantic dramas about a close-knit group of friends and family? Might as well tag an entire sub-genre of independent dramas … at least two of them featuring Jason Bateman. Familiarity, of course, is trumped by execution and so Hannah and Her Sisters does go far on Allen’s script. Allen himself is his own best male spokesman, although Michael Caine and Max von Sydow both have their moments. Still, the spotlight is on the sisters: Mia Farrow is terrific as the titular Hannah, while Barbara Hershey remains captivating thirty years later and Dianne Wiest completes the trio as something of a screw-up. There’s a little bit of weirdness about the age of the characters—although I suspect that’s largely because Allen plays a character much younger than he is, and I can’t reliably tell the age of the female characters. It’s watchable enough, but I’m not sure I found in Hannah and her Sisters the spark that makes an average film become a good one. I may want to temper my expectations—after all, not every Woody Allen movie is a great one, even in the latter period with which I’m most familiar.

Stardust Memories (1980)

Stardust Memories (1980)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, March 2017) As a filmmaker spends an entire movie being confronted by fame and the way fans bemoan his “earlier, funnier movies”, it’s hard not to read Stardust Memories as Woody Allen’s own commentary on his career at the time. Despite his noted denials that the film is autobiographical, it’s clearly influenced by his experience, even as a funhouse version of it. The scenes in which he’s bombarded by one request after another remain brutally effective as a distillation of what life as this level of celebrity must be. There’s quite a bit of Hollywood satire as well, as the studio keeps meddling with his latest work and as nearly everyone (even aliens) seem to agree that his earlier movies were funnier. As to whether Stardust Memories is good…. Well, the movie is acknowledged as divisive among Allen fans, and it’s easy to see why: shot in black-and-white, jumping seamlessly from reality to fantasy and from present to past, it’s both a meditation on fame and a film about romantic choices. It’s self-reflective, maybe self-indulgent and there’s a melancholic quality to the movie that coexists with the various jokes. There’s even some contempt for the audience to make thing even more layered. I found it interesting but not gripping: I certainly laughed unexpectedly at a few spots (and I’m not talking chuckles or grins, but real barks of laughter), which is more than I can say about most so-called comedies out there. At the same time, this is obviously not just a comedy, and given that I’m still piecing together a coherent picture of Allen’s career, I feel reasonably confident in saying that I don’t yet have all the information I need to process Stardust Memories to its fullest extent. I’ll give it a cautiously positive rating so far, subject to revision whenever I’m able to speak knowledgeably of Allen’s early and mid-career.

To Rome with Love (2012)

To Rome with Love (2012)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, December 2016) As I’m exploring Woody Allen’s filmography, there’s a certain pleasure in seeing him back on-screen after a lengthy pause. To Rome with Love is an interwoven anthology film of four different stories playing against its roman backdrop, from Alec Baldwin’s recollections of a love triangle made alive to Roberto Benigni’s strange brush with fame to Allen discovering an unlikely signing talent to a couple of visiting newlyweds experiencing life in the capital. Like most ensemble stories, its interest rises and falls unpredictably, but the overall effect is strong, with enough romance, humour and weirdness to keep things interesting. Of the stories, I was most struck by Alec Baldwin’s resigned-but-wise reactions to the developing love triangle in-between Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig and Ellen Page—it’s funny and a bit wistful at once, with plot and commentary joyously crashing in one another. The newlywed’s adventures are also funny, although occasionally too close to humiliation comedy for my taste. Allen’s segment is enhanced by a typical Allen performance as a nattering shmuck—the outlandish situation he creates is just the icing on the cake. Finally, there’s the unexplainable weirdness of an ordinary man (Benigni) brought to sudden fame and dropped just as rapidly—a metaphor for our social media age, perhaps, but still worthwhile on its own. To Rome with Love probably won’t endure as one of Allen’s classics—it’s too scatter-shot, too willing to make audiences laugh without deeper themes—but it’s a relatively good time at the hands of a comedy veteran, and perhaps his funniest film in a while. As an entry in his “European capitals” phase, it’s slight but decent.

Zelig (1983)

Zelig (1983)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, December 2016) There’s something both amusing and ungraspable at the heart of Zelig, a pseudo-documentary describing a 1930s man with a magical ability to take on the characteristics and abilities of the people he happens to be at the moment. Written, directed and played by Woody Allen, Zelig is best appreciated as an experiment in mockumentary filmmaking, blending original material with period footage in an attempt to create a story out of historical context. Allen is reasonably funny as Zelig, although at times it seems as if this shapeshifting ability is only a pretext for various impressions and makeup tricks. It does build to a finale that’s not quite as interesting as you’d expect from a simple description. I was never quite able to suspend my disbelief enough to fully invest in the movie. Zelig is reasonably amusing, somewhat sympathetic, but not exceptional unless you do (and I do) have a fondness for experimental-but-accessible cinema. My own viewing of the film war marred by an execrable resolution/compression image quality due to the channel on which it was broadcast, but since most of the film is deliberately low-resolution to ape the cameras of the times, this didn’t affect the experience as much as I’d have expected.