Oh Woody Allen. Whenever I am having a bad New York day like for example today when I am trudging through the pouring rain failing miserably at hailing a cab or when you literally feel like you are part of a cattle train when you are riding the subway (and not like a funny cattle train like in City Slickers with Billy Crystal making jokes on the side. Hellooo) I watch the classic film Manhattan. Allen paints New York in such a beautiful, bold and classic way that you believe that famous John Updike line that "The true New Yorker secretly believes that anyone living anywhere else must somehow, in a sense, be kidding." I mean Allen manages to make the story massively appealing even though he plays a nearly 40-year-old divorced father dating a 15-year-old gorgeous and so innocent-looking Mariel Hemingway who then dumps her for wonderfully neurotic Diane Keaton who is already having an affair with his married best friend.
Story lines like this are common in Allen films but I think my favorite part of his films is how everybody lives in fabulous apartments and has a house in the Hamptons but seem to always be between jobs or struggling writers but they cannot imagine living anywhere but New York. Plus he managed to make crazy, neurotic New York women become massively appealing sex objects. His first muse was Keaton (Annie Hall, Manhattan, Interiors, Manhattan Murder Mystery) followed by Mia Farrow (The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Alice) and then Mira Sorvino (though just for Mighty Aphrodite but she won the Oscar so we will count her) and most recently Scarlett Johannson (Match Point, Scoop, Vicky Cristina Barcelona).
Pretty much every actor wants to do a Woody Allen film even though they pretty much just play slightly different variations of Woody Allen and Diane Keaton's characters in his 70's films (except for Match Point in which he got all moody and nothing was funny everything was just depressing and British) Though for his last couple of films (except for Whatever Works) Allen has stopped filming in New York in favor of cheaper production costs in Europe those great characters are still there they just have the Eiffel Tower in the background instead of the Chrysler. In my opinion Vicky Cristina Barcelona was by far his best film in the last ten years. Penelope Cruz's performance blows me away every time I watch it.
In his film coming out in June, Midnight in Paris, Owen Wilson plays the classic Woody Allen character and Rachel McAdams plays his fiance. Wilson's character apparently finds himself behaving uncharacteristically when he gets swept away in the enchantment of the most romantic city in the world after midnight. Michael Sheen, Adrien Brody, Marionn Cotillard, Kathy Bates, Alison Pill and Carla Bruni also appear in the film.
Anyway if you haven't seen a Woody Allen film (which means you haven't lived a full life) you should start with Annie Hall but my other recs include: Everyone Says I Love You, Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan, Mighty Aphrodite, Anything Else, Match Point, Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
I'll see it with you!
ReplyDelete