For all his significance as a screenwriter, performer, comedian, and musician, it can be easy for some to forget what a wonderfully talented director Woody Allen is when he hits his sweet spot. His status as a prominent voice in American film was galvanized by the wildly influential Annie Hall, which swept four of the five main Oscars in and remains the benchmark for romantic comedies. Indeed, Allen was nominated for Academy Awards with alarming frequency and has recorded 16 nominations in the Best Original Screenplay prize to date, appropriate considering how delicately his scripts balance caustic wit with hefty themes.
With his Brooklyn heritage and background in the worlds of New Orleans Jazz and stand-up comedy, Allen is, by all means, a homegrown American master, but his work nonetheless speaks of a deep-rooted understanding of European arthouse cinema.
That is not to say that his work lacks originality, however. Whilst Zelig and Husbands and Wives pioneered mockumentary storytelling, Deconstructing Harry sees Allen playing against type, as an alcoholic, pill-popping womanizer. Hits such as the quaintly nostalgic Midnight in Paris have been outweighed by irrefutable duds such as Hollywood Ending Removed from the auteur theory, the film still works a treat, as sharply observed in characterizations and observations as ever, dissecting and interrogating the facade that one adopts in a relationship, even a long-lasting marriage.
Shot again by Di Palma in eternally appealing colors, illuminating the shining lights and exuberant wear of the early s, the film is a true exercise in nostalgia to an extent at once shameless and delightful. But whereas modern media tends to define nostalgia as a series of icons, logos, songs, and references, Allen defines it as a more general feeling, something intangible but somehow captured in every scene of the film, which charmingly whizzes around recreations of the anecdotes and folk tales that permeated throughout the pop-cultural landscape.
(mh=UCpiwhvh_rgkGEHQ)16.jpg "Call girl in Locarno")
There are more accomplished and moving films in the Woody Allen catalog, but none so pivotal to the direction of cinema history than Annie Hall , which reinvented the rom-com genre with its endlessly witty screenplay, heartfelt performances, and opening monologue, in which a forthright Allen stares down the camera, inviting the audience into a tender, vulnerable and often hilarious delve into the psyche of Alvy Singer.
