Movie Update 33: Woody Allen

These movies are all from the mid seventies to early eighties, and show off Woody Allen's more serious and philosophical side. They're also funny though, with one big exception.

Interiors


The only pure drama on this list, and the only pure drama by Allen that I've seen. It's the story of three (though really mostly two) sisters and what they experience after the separation of their parents. They frequently butt heads and have very different takes on their parents, especially how their delicate mother is handing being away from her husband. She dives even deeper into her interior decorating, but it might not be enough to keep her going anymore. The film is very obviously heavily influenced by the style of Ingmar Bergman, and it's mostly a well acted and filmed drama, but I mostly wasn't interested in the characters or their plights. It also seemed just a bit forced in the shots it creates - Bergman was able to create similarly striking images without them seeming so intentional. Still, it's not a bad departure for a guy previously mostly known for silly comedies.

Love and Death


Possibly the last purely goofy Allen movie, Love and Death still has hints of what he would try out later, both in its repeated Bergman references and the constant philosophical debate among its main characters, even if that debate is mostly played for laughs. It's about a Russian played by Allen who stumbles his way to being a war hero, marries his cousin played by Diane Keaton, and eventually they attempt to assassinate Napoleon together. It's a fun little spin on classic Russian literature that manages to be funny throughout without completely ignoring the subject matter it tackles.


A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy


Yet another Bergman-influenced film (boy, did Allen ever love that guy), and his first collaboration with Mia Farrow. It's about three couples that go on a weekend together to a cottage in the woods in the early 1900s, and end up struggling the whole time with conflicted feelings. Farrow is marrying an older professor, but she had a previous experience with Allen and is very attractive to his other friend. The professor is drawn to the friend's new companion, and Allen also has feelings for Farrow further risking his rocky marriage with Mary Steenburgen. There are some sillier elements like his flying machine and a strange device that can show the past, but it's mostly a very entertaining mix of comedy and romantic turmoil.

Stardust Memories


Allen claims this film is not autobiographical, those it's easy to see how it could be seen as such, with him starring as a film director who wants to be serious but is constantly told by fans that they prefer his earlier, funnier work. It's again a mix of humor and more serious elements, this time with an occasionally trippy feel. We frequently see snippets of the films his character has made, and they mix with real life and odd dream sequences which make it easy to get a bit lost as far as what the movie is trying to say. It's a pretty divisive film, and I myself was unable to decide whether I really liked it or thought it was too muddled.

Crimes and Misdemeanors

The third and last Woody Allen film I watched over the weekend. Crimes and Misdemeanors is the first film of his I've seen that you could reasonably call a drama more than a comedy, although there's still funny moments, usually involving Allen's character butting heads with Alan Alda's. But considering that a murder is central to one of the main two character arcs in the story, calling it a drama certainly seems fair. The film is fairly neatly divided between two threads. In one, Allen plays a documentary filmmaker in a loveless marriage, who is given an opportunity to do a profile on his hot shot producer brother in law played by Alda, and then becomes his romantic rival after meeting an associate producer played by Mia Farrow. In the other, Martin Landau plays a successful eye doctor who has to deal with an increasingly intrusive mistress played by Anjelica Huston. The two threads barely bump up against each other until the end, when the two leads meet at a wedding and share a quiet moment.

The film is certainly different than what I'm used to seeing from Allen, and while it didn't totally work for me, I admired a lot about it. The cast is pretty terrific as always, and I appreciated the attempt at some genuinely dark material without a hint of a humorous motive. This is also the second Allen film this week to take an idea from an Ingmar Bergman film, and he's not a bad person to pay tribute to. Alda's character is pretty much the perfect smug bastard, refusing to take no for an answer and carrying a tape recorder around with him to track every little idea he has for the next big hit. The relationships on display have the appropriate mixture of sweetness and melancholy, and there are a few inspired moments. I felt like a few of its concepts got in the way of creating a more genuinely entertaining movie though, and Allen isn't quite a master of suspense when it comes to the darker stuff, or at least he wasn't yet. Still a perfectly fine film, and it was cool seeing him try something different.

Hannah and Her Sisters

Hannah and Her Sisters is another comedy/drama about relationships by Woody Allen, and while I didn't think it was as good as a couple other examples I've seen, it was still a very good movie. It shows the intertwining lives of three sisters over the course of two years as they go through relationship woes and sometimes don't get along too well. Mia Farrow plays Hannah, whose husband played by Michael Caine feels attracted to her sister played by Barbara Hershey, who is also in a relationship with an artist played by Max Von Sydow. Dianne Wiest is a struggling actress who butts heads romantically with her friend and business partner played by Carrie Fisher. Woody Allen plays a TV writer who has a history with both Farrow and Wiest, and believes he may have a tumor. All of these plot threads dance around each other and come together repeatedly around Thanksgiving, when the whole family gathers to pretend nothing is wrong with their lives.

While I have enjoyed other films by Allen more, I think this one actually impressed me the most with its direction. The unique use of title cards, the way things are cut together, the way some of the scenes are shot, are all really interesting. It's certainly the best case I've seen so far for Woody Allen as a great artist and not just a guy who makes cute, funny movies. There's some of that too though, especially in his subplot, which is mostly tangentially related to the other stories until near the end. It involves him worrying about his mortality and looking for solace in religion, but because he's neurotic, nebbish Woody Allen the way he goes about it is really silly and amusing. He's mostly there to provide laughs while everyone else is doing heavier lifting. Caine and Wiest both won Oscars for their work, and they along with pretty much everyone in the film do great jobs with the material, sympathizing people with often very unlikable traits, which can be difficult to do. I can see why those two were singled out for their work, but the whole thing is a pretty outstanding ensemble. It's not quite as fun a movie as it could have been, but I liked what it did.

Zelig

Several of Woody Allen's films will be expiring from Netflix' Instant service shortly, so I made sure to watch a few of them this weekend. They coincidentally all co-starred Mia Farrow, and the first one is Zelig, a mockumentary about a man with a mental disorder that causes him to physically transform to resemble those around him. Allen plays the titular character, and is surprisingly dedicated to the documentary conceit, as a very large portion of the film is narration over still photographs and period footage, with the story taking place mostly in the 20s and 30s. Any scene using live action, whether intended as archive footage or as a modern interview, is usually pretty funny, though the focus seems to have been on the fake documentary stuff rather than humor.

I would say that the joke of the character isn't enough to sustain a whole movie, even one that doesn't quite last eighty minutes, though the fact is that the joke isn't the whole thing. It provides some laughs as Allen transforms into other races or gains copious amounts of weight to fit in with his current crowd, but the condition actually sort of explores the idea of identity and wanting to be liked in a way I wasn't expecting. It's a surprisingly effective story beyond the comedy. The relationship between Zelig and his doctor played by Farrow is also one of the nicest I've seen in an Allen film, mostly because it doesn't involve a lot of infidelity or anything like that. The one thing I found odd was that the entire style of the film and narration seemed to be like an old newsreel or something, but the footage from the (then) modern day interviews clashes with that. Still, with so many mockumentaries these days that barely even bother to play with or acknowledge the concept, it was fun seeing a film that threw itself into it entirely.

Rosemary's Baby

So many of these classic "horror" movies really don't resemble what we think of as modern horror in any way. The focus is on things like story and mood rather than surprising the audience to try to make them piss their pants, or pushing the envelope when it comes to gore. I gotta say, I like it the old way. While I still think he's a terrible person, I have to admit Roman Polanski's films are now 2 for 2 when it comes to living up to their reputations. Chinatown was a great, more modern film noir, and Rosemary's Baby is a pretty terrific tale of paranoia. Unlike other Satanic horror of the era that I've seen, where it's pretty obvious from the beginning that something very wrong is happening, this film had me wondering the entire time about multiple aspects of the plot. Not only whether there really was a cult after the baby, but also whether the cult's beliefs were right. The ending answers those questions pretty definitively in a scene I found surprising based on how it seemed to shift the tone away from what had been built over the last couple hours, but I thought it ended up working despite its obviousness.

The movie is pretty much the definition of a slow burn, taking a very long time to develop the characters and their relationships before really getting the plot going. Heck, Rosemary isn't even pregnant until maybe 45 minutes into the story. You spend a lot time just learning about these people and trying to form ideas about who they really are, though it's hard to say anything for certain based on the information given. There's a pretty overtly Satanic scene early on, but it isn't definitely real and after that there's very little solid evidence one way or the other. There's a delicate balance that is maintained, making you wonder if Rosemary's losing it while providing just enough hints to suggest that she might be right after all. Things are slow for a while, but especially in the second half the film turns into a great piece of suspense, with some really nice little touches and perfectly drawn out moments to keep you twisted around in the best way like a classic Hitchcock movie. I again hesitate to call it a horror movie thanks to the modern connotations, but Rosemary's Baby is at least one of the best supernatural (or is it?) thrillers I've ever seen.