The films of Woody Allen – ranked

It’s a great time to be a Woody Allen fan. Not only does Sep­tem­ber see the release of his new film, Café Soci­ety, but also an ​‘about-time-too’ Blu-ray col­lec­tion of his ear­ly, fun­ny ones (plus one very seri­ous one) from Arrow Video. Then there’s his first ever mul­ti-episode TV series, ​‘Cri­sis in Six Scenes’, which arrives next month cour­tesy of Ama­zon. In light of which, we’ve been hard at work revis­it­ing every­thing that bears the name of America’s most pro­lif­ic octo­ge­nar­i­an, rank­ing them from worst to best in an attempt to sort the wheat (“fields of wheat… a tremen­dous amount of wheat”) from the chaff. So here’s the lot: 46 fea­ture films, an episode from an anthol­o­gy film, two shorts and a TV movie…

Although ​“what­ev­er works, as long as you don’t hurt any­body” is Boris’ (Lar­ry David) mot­to in Allen’s 2009 attempt at nihilis­tic com­e­dy, it could not be less rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the film itself. As the divorced and eter­nal­ly grouchy Boris finds his qui­et life turned upside-down when a young Tex­an girl (Evan Rachel Wood) finds refuge under his roof, every per­son he meets is depict­ed with an obnox­ious com­bi­na­tion of dis­dain and insen­si­tiv­i­ty. Each of their undoubt­ed­ly pathet­ic but nonethe­less touch­ing attempts at per­son­al growth is met with sar­casm or straight attacks, which instead of find­ing humour in human frailty, reveal the back­ward­ness of some­one out of touch with mod­ern ideas of love, sex­u­al­i­ty and, yes, com­e­dy. The strange dichoto­my between Lar­ry David’s vig­or­ous deliv­ery and unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly sta­t­ic phys­i­cal per­for­mance may indi­cate a pre­cip­i­ta­tion that could explain the film’s fail­ure. How­ev­er, Allen’s back­ward­ness in all areas, from gen­der pol­i­tics to basic human com­mu­ni­ca­tion, seems too deep-seat­ed to be an acci­dent. Manuela Laz­ic

“This is the great­est city in the world! Where else can you be para­noid and right so often?” Made for the Madi­son Square Gar­den ⁹⁄₁₁ ben­e­fit-extrav­a­gan­za, The Con­cert for New York City, Allen’s throw­away short sees a host of faces famil­iar from his fil­mog­ra­phy march­ing through NYC, talk­ing on their cell­phones. Cram­ming some 20-odd lame one-lin­ers into its three minute run­ning time, most cen­tred on the city’s post-attack anx­i­eties (“You don’t have anthrax, it’s her­pes”), there’s lit­tle escap­ing the sense that it was knocked out one unin­spired after­noon. Still, it’s nice to see Allen using Tony Roberts again – for the first time since 1987’s Radio Days – even if it’s for bare­ly 10 sec­onds. Matt Thrift

It isn’t sur­pris­ing that the hope­ful pre­dic­tion of this title would lead to dis­ap­point­ment and regret when placed in Allen’s hands. Anx­i­ety abounds here when Sally’s (Nao­mi Watts) father Alfie (Antho­ny Hop­kins) divorces his wife of many years (Gem­ma Jones) to pur­sue his race against time, spark­ing an uncon­trol­lable and destruc­tive pan­ic in each mem­ber of his fam­i­ly. Des­per­ate­ly fol­low­ing their deep-seat­ed and unful­filled dreams, they start shat­ter­ing their exis­tence, only to have their illu­sions of grandeur even­tu­al­ly crushed by the cru­el ran­dom­ness of life. While these char­ac­ter arcs are com­pelling, the awk­ward dia­logue clash­es uneasi­ly with the film’s real­ist aes­thet­ic. The pet­ty argu­ments between Sal­ly and her hus­band Roy (a beau­ti­ful­ly curly-haired Josh Brolin) are nei­ther amus­ing nor touch­ing, but increas­ing­ly irri­tat­ing in their point­less rep­e­ti­tion. More wor­ry­ing still are Allen’s own illu­sions going – by con­trast – undis­turbed, as romance and seduc­tion are once again reduced to a pow­er strug­gle where misog­y­ny is mis­tak­en for flat­tery. ML

For his direc­to­r­i­al debut, a 31-year-old Woody Allen chose to enjoy him­self – and in doing so hint­ed at the direc­tion his film­mak­ing career would take. The play­ful­ness with form that came to part­ly define his work con­sti­tutes the very foun­da­tion of this film: using almost exclu­sive­ly the images of an already exist­ing Japan­ese spy film, Allen focus­es on edit­ing and dub­bing to try and make us laugh. The char­ac­ters’ new voic­es, as well as their names, suc­cess­ful­ly par­o­dy the British spy genre, but this super­im­po­si­tion of two dif­fer­ent cul­tures feels like a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore the con­nec­tions between the daz­zling Japan­ese genre and its con­ti­nen­tal coun­ter­part. Instead, the mock­ing tone, while under­stand­able to the extent that the orig­i­nal film looks very dumb, feels more like mind­less fun and repeat­ed­ly veers towards racism. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, also already present is Allen’s (bad) taste for crass misog­y­nis­tic humour. The puerile dirty joke with which he clos­es the film leaves a bad taste, and while he’s rarely so plain­ly dis­taste­ful is his lat­er works, in hind­sight this first instance seems like a red flag. ML

Allen returns to Lon­don in a third bid to nail Eng­lish as a for­eign lan­guage. Slid­ing down the social lad­der for a mis­guid­ed poke around the city’s crim­i­nal under­bel­ly, the results aren’t pret­ty. It’s safe to say that authen­tic­i­ty was not high on the filmmaker’s agen­da when cast­ing dis­cus­sions turned to Col­in Far­rell and Ewan McGre­gor. Yet as off-putting a dis­trac­tion as their accents prove, they’re low on the list of the film’s prob­lems. The screen­play proves the nadir in Allen’s ​‘get­ting-away-with-mur­der’ series, his direc­tion rarely as dis­con­nect­ed as it so often appears here (wit­ness the bizarre stag­ing of some rained-upon expo­si­tion in the park scene). Vil­mos Zsig­mond keeps things vis­i­ble while con­sid­er­ing his din­ner, as Philip Glass jux­ta­pos­es the list­less­ness on screen with a self-pla­gia­ris­ing brand of men­ace. In fact, everyone’s engage­ment with the mate­r­i­al is best summed-up in Allen’s han­dling of the key mur­der scene: when inter­est threat­ens, slow-pan to a hedge. MT

“I want a for­eign cam­era­man, because they get a tex­ture into the work,” says two-time Oscar-win­ning direc­tor, Val Wax­man (Woody Allen), when strik­ing a deal to direct a poten­tial come­back vehi­cle. A sleight on Haskell Wexler, fired just a week into Hol­ly­wood Ending’s pro­duc­tion? Prob­a­bly not, but there’s a cer­tain irony about this tale of a film­mak­er suf­fer­ing from psy­cho­so­mat­ic blind­ness, giv­en the untold ugli­ness of the film itself. Replac­ing Wexler as DoP, Wedi­go von Schlutzendorff’s trag­ic-hour lens­ing bathes pro­ceed­ings in a sick­ly hue, a gold­en back­light­ing effect of the kind seen in infomer­cials sell­ing funer­al insur­ance. Just shy of two hours, the film cries out for Allen’s for­mer edi­tor, Susan E Morse, while limp attempts at auto-satire resem­ble the kind of thing David Mamet might con­jure up post-stroke. As a vision of Hol­ly­wood it’s about as recog­nis­able as the respec­tive cities of his Euro­pean pic­tures. Only Téa Leoni comes out well; for the film’s peo­ple of colour, it’s busi­ness as usu­al. ​“Who ordered?” asks Woody, over­hear­ing his character’s DoP speak in his native Chi­nese. MT

Explor­ing love in its many shapes and forms – in mar­riage, in love at first sight, achieved through fame and recog­ni­tion, in sex and desire – To Rome with Love refus­es to express any of the sub­tle­ty of human emo­tion so keen­ly felt in the likes of Annie Hall and Man­hat­tan. Of course, that is not a fault in itself, this being a broad­er, slap­stick work, but the film also fails on its own terms as a light com­e­dy of man­ners. It remains unable to tran­scend tired jokes about vora­cious women and sleazy men to trans­port its sur­face-lev­el study into any gen­uine­ly excit­ing ter­ri­to­ry. Alec Baldwin’s aggres­sive­ly misog­y­nis­tic, mono­logue-spit­ting guardian angel to Jesse Eisenberg’s bare­ly present neb­bish is the icing on the cake in a film that awk­ward­ly uses a post­card ver­sion of Rome as a blank can­vas to paint char­ac­ters that nev­er speak, behave or feel like real human beings. Ele­na Lazic

Adapt­ed from one of Allen’s ear­li­est screen­plays for tele­vi­sion, Don’t Drink the Water is a messy, over­long and stagey attempt at imag­in­ing the amus­ing events that may occur if a par­tic­u­lar­ly loud fam­i­ly end­ed up strand­ed in an Amer­i­can embassy abroad dur­ing the Cold War. Although the premise sounds promis­ing, the film soon los­es steam in repet­i­tive and tired jokes. Allen’s char­ac­ter of the grumpy old hus­band is more unnerv­ing than amus­ing and the bloom­ing of a romance between the ambassador’s son (an under­used Michael J Fox) and the family’s daugh­ter is a cheesy but wel­come relief in what is an oth­er­wise unre­lent­ing cacoph­o­ny. EL

Set in 1940s Amer­i­ca with war rag­ing in Europe, this zany sto­ry of hyp­no­sis and loot­ed jew­els is one of Allen’s most decid­ed­ly aver­age films. The direc­tor plays an insur­ance inves­ti­ga­tor who hides, under his airs of aging and creepy wom­an­is­er, a true heart. His new boss (Helen Hunt) is his arch neme­sis until each are brought by cir­cum­stances to realise that nei­ther of them is as evil as the oth­er believes. The lush cin­e­matog­ra­phy and peri­od set­ting facil­i­tate the expe­ri­ence dur­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly cringe­wor­thy scenes where Char­l­ize Theron shows up, inex­plic­a­bly want­i­ng to sleep with the old man. The over­all film remains a sweet yet not par­tic­u­lar­ly notable work in Allen’s career. EL

Shar­ing the rather grim nihilism of his angri­est late peri­od films, Decon­struct­ing Har­ry and Celebri­ty, Any­thing Else is sin­gu­lar in Allen’s canon for its almost total lack of charm or empa­thy. A down­beat rom-com in the vein of Annie Hall, the film tracks the doomed rela­tion­ship of Jason Big­gs’ neu­rot­ic Allen stand-in Jer­ry with new girl­friend Aman­da (Christi­na Ric­ci). But it does so with such feroc­i­ty and shrill­ness as to be at times dif­fi­cult to watch, despite Dar­ius Khondji’s gor­geous widescreen lens­ing. Hav­ing seduced him away from a ​‘nice girl’, the self-absorbed Aman­da prompt­ly los­es inter­est in Jer­ry sex­u­al­ly, invit­ing her dom­i­neer­ing moth­er to move in with them and fre­quent­ly cheat­ing. Jerry’s only solace is to be found in bond­ing with bad-tem­pered neigh­bour, David (Allen), who urges him to trust no one and wal­low in phi­los­o­phy. What’s real­ly dis­turb­ing is the film’s prompt to sym­pa­thise with David and rage against women, here fig­ured as flighty and entire­ly unre­li­able. Paul Ridd

Framed by a bois­ter­ous din­ner scene between play­wright friends, alarm bells ring ear­ly in Melin­da and Melin­da when con­ver­sa­tion turns to whether a ran­dom sce­nario, the arrival of an unex­pect­ed stranger at a din­ner par­ty, would work best as the premise for trag­ic dra­ma or com­e­dy. It’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine any real-world writ­ers pre­oc­cu­py­ing them­selves with such a banal ques­tion, much less so in com­pa­ny, but their argu­ment goes on as the same sce­nario plays out in two incar­na­tions both uni­fied by the pres­ence of Rad­ha Mitchell as the unin­vit­ed guest. In the com­ic iter­a­tion, heart­bro­ken Melin­da begins charm­ing mar­ried man Hobie (Will Fer­rell) away from his wife Susan (Aman­da Peet). In the dra­ma, she begins an ill-fat­ed romance with the suave young Ellis (Chi­we­tel Ejio­for). The prob­lem is that both ver­sions of the sto­ry dis­ap­point, the com­e­dy sec­tions lack­ing any real wit or ener­gy, the dra­ma cursed with that stagi­ness and iner­tia so char­ac­ter­is­tic of Allen’s Lon­don films. PR

Set along­side sex-and-ten­nis romp Match Point, psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller Cassandra’s Dream and quirky mar­i­tal dra­ma You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Scoop is the fluffi­est of Allen’s quar­tet of Lon­don films. Shar­ing none of those films’ mor­dant sense of guilt, erot­ic intrigue or for the most part awful British accents, it’s mem­o­rable main­ly for an appeal­ing per­for­mance from Scar­lett Johans­son. She lends the rather tired com­ic plot some much need­ed zani­ness. Still, it’s bit of a slog and a sur­prise death towards the end proves the only tru­ly remark­able event in an oth­er­wise for­get­table work. PR

An age­ing writer must choose between two beau­ti­ful women in their twen­ties in this extend­ed ​‘Pyg­malion’ riff which sees Jer­ry (Allen) attempt to ​‘reform’ the moth­er of his adopt­ed child, hook­er Lin­da Ash (Mira Sorvi­no) by edu­cat­ing her and sourc­ing her a suit­able part­ner. When Lin­da falls in love with him, Jer­ry must choose to either ward off her advances or cheat on his young wife Aman­da (Hele­na Bon­ham Carter). Some­thing of an apoth­e­o­sis of Allen’s potent fan­tasies of mid­dle-aged male viril­i­ty, the film com­bines two of the director’s most trou­ble­some the­mat­ic pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. First, there is the cos­mic leap that must be made to believe in a par­tic­u­lar kind of neb­bish old­er male as being irre­sistible to young women. Sec­ond, there’s an ongo­ing fix­a­tion with pre­sent­ing endear­ing naïveté in young, sex­u­al­ly vora­cious women, par­tic­u­lar­ly sex work­ers. Much of the film’s humour derives from Linda’s shock­ing frank­ness when it comes to talk­ing about and hav­ing sex, as well as more trou­bling jokes made at the expense of her ditzi­ness. Much of its awk­ward pathos comes from Jerry’s pro­tec­tive­ness toward her. PR

Much like Mid­night in Paris and To Rome with Love, Vicky Cristi­na Barcelona is as much con­cerned with con­jur­ing charm­ing, wit­ty char­ac­ters as it is about pre­sent­ing a kind of hyper-stylised Euro­pean tourism on screen. Bathed in gold­en light and full of breath­tak­ing Span­ish vis­tas, Allen’s lets the sto­ry play sec­ond fid­dle to the locales. Javier Bar­dem plays moody artist Juan Anto­nio with an easy inten­si­ty, his seduc­tion of ditzy Amer­i­can trav­ellers Vicky (Rebec­ca Hall) and Cristi­na (Scar­lett Johans­son) prov­ing all but effort­less. Mean­while Pené­lope Cruz appears mid-film as his unsta­ble ex-lover and muse Maria-Ele­na, enabling a saucy ménage a trois to unfold with Johann­son. With a premise veer­ing taste­ful­ly on soft porn, the film is sal­vaged by the excel­lence (and beau­ty) of the actors, as well as some snap­py dia­logue exchanges and fun sup­port from the likes of Patri­cia Clark­son and Chris Messi­na. PR

Echo­ing Star­dust Mem­o­ries and form­ing a kind of hyper-mis­an­throp­ic dou­ble bill with Decon­struct­ing Har­ry, Celebri­ty is Allen’s jet black indus­try satire, com­posed of a series of increas­ing­ly bru­tal vignettes in sat­u­rat­ed black-and-white, pre­sent­ed with cokey, non-sequen­tial skit­tish­ness. Ken­neth Branagh plays an adul­ter­ous screen­writer named Lee, whose star ebbs and flows even as he encoun­ters var­i­ous Hol­ly­wood grotesques. These range from a poly­mor­phi­cal­ly per­verse super­mod­el (Char­l­ize Theron), to a nympho­ma­ni­a­cal actress (Winona Ryder) via a volatile young film star (an elec­tri­fy­ing Leonar­do DiCaprio, just on the cusp of adult fame). Part­ly a bru­tal rumi­na­tion on the tran­sient and bru­tal nature of fame, part­ly an extend­ed rage against just about every arche­type in the enter­tain­ment indus­try, it’s dif­fi­cult to think of anoth­er Allen film so entire­ly filled with ass­holes. PR

What begins as a light com­e­dy of man­ners soon goes south when Allen creep­i­ly attempts to turn a sto­ry of emo­tion­al abuse into a heart­break­ing tale of two lovers meant for one anoth­er. Jesse Eisen­berg plays Bob­by, a young Bronx native who moves to 1930s Hol­ly­wood in the hope of start­ing a career. When young Von­nie (Kris­ten Stew­art) is momen­tar­i­ly aban­doned by her gen­uine­ly kind lover Phil Stern (Steve Carell), a rich and mar­ried Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­er, Bob­by has no qualms tak­ing advan­tage of his friend’s heart­break, the two embark­ing on a short-lived romance togeth­er. Although Allen’s self-cen­tred male char­ac­ters have often been para­dox­i­cal­ly sym­pa­thet­ic, the direc­tor here repeat­ed­ly fails to even acknowl­edge the awful­ness of his lead. Things reach a depress­ing peak at film end, when the hap­pi­ly mar­ried Von­nie inex­plic­a­bly longs for Bob­by, jus­ti­fy­ing his life­long bit­ter­ness at their sep­a­ra­tion. At least the crush­ing bleak­ness of the sto­ry is coun­ter­bal­anced by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Vit­to­rio Storaro’s colour­ful and sun­ny com­po­si­tions. EL

With this sto­ry of a film­mak­er rem­i­nisc­ing about his life and his lovers dur­ing a fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ing his work, Allen bor­rows heav­i­ly from Fed­eri­co Fellini’s 8½. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, he is also seduced by the same pit­falls, and adds to these his own recur­rent lim­i­ta­tions. Although Gor­don Willis’ cin­e­matog­ra­phy man­ages to echo Fellini’s rap­tur­ous images while remain­ing tru­ly unique and suit­ed to the mod­ern 1980s Amer­i­can con­text, the tedious­ness of the loose chronol­o­gy and rep­e­ti­tions is once again hard to swal­low. The self-ques­tion­ing of a rich, suc­cess­ful male artist who can get any woman he wants was only mild­ly com­pelling when he was por­trayed by the soul­ful and heart-break­ing Mar­cel­lo Mas­troian­ni. Replaced by Allen, who adds his usu­al comedic streak to his predecessor’s per­for­mance, the char­ac­ter of the sad direc­tor becomes some­what even more irri­tat­ing, and his misog­y­ny more bla­tant and less ques­tioned by Allen’s film than it was by the source mate­r­i­al. ML

The atten­tion to detail in cos­tume and pro­duc­tion design are unusu­al­ly ambi­tious in Mid­night in Paris, with the film evok­ing both a mod­ern and anti­quat­ed city. The cen­tral con­ceit, which sees unhap­py writer Gil (Owen Wil­son) mag­i­cal­ly trans­port­ed to old Paris, feels fresh and fun­ny. But it is the shrill depic­tion of Gil’s flighty and dis­tract­ed wife Inez (Rachel McAdams) that sours pro­ceed­ings, com­ing to define the film’s per­spec­tive on male mid-life ennui. Indeed, Gil’s van­i­ty and solip­sism are reward­ed by a wife-escap­ing fan­ta­sy of Bohemia which lacks any real insight, irony or dis­tance. Offer­ing lit­tle com­men­tary on the nar­cis­sism, the film seems to share Gil’s wor­ry­ing nos­tal­gia for a hypo­thet­i­cal past Paris. When Gil even­tu­al­ly leaves the unfaith­ful Inez, only to prompt­ly pick up a romance with a very young Léa Sey­doux, we are invit­ed to rejoice at his good for­tune, rather than judge the arrest­ed devel­op­ment made man­i­fest in this gor­geous fan­ta­sia. PR

One of Allen’s favourite top­ics is sex, the psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal work­ings of which he usu­al­ly explores with humour. For his first Lon­don film, how­ev­er, he chose the dra­mat­ic reg­is­ter to por­tray sex­u­al impuls­es as antag­o­nis­tic to the upper class and per­ni­cious for its aspi­rants. One such deter­mined can­di­date is Chris (peak Jonathan Rhys Mey­ers), who endures the bore­dom of ten­nis coach­ing, art gal­leries and skeet to enter the wealthy Hewett fam­i­ly by mar­ry­ing the excru­ci­at­ing­ly jubi­lant Chloe (Emi­ly Mor­timer). For once, Allen doesn’t shy away from social com­men­tary and con­trasts the Hewetts’ com­pla­cent opu­lence with the despair of anoth­er wannabe aris­to­crat, Nola (Scar­lett Johans­son), a frus­trat­ed actress who finds in Chris’ scep­ti­cal approach to life an expla­na­tion for her own mis­for­tune, and pro­vides him with the excite­ment his new lifestyle is lack­ing. Allen’s view of the aris­toc­ra­cy and the world as cal­lous and sense­less reach­es its dis­mal apoth­e­o­sis when Chris, whose basic human decen­cy has been over­run by greed, nev­er­the­less, realis­es that mon­ey will nev­er dis­tract him from guilt – his last remain­ing trace of human­i­ty. ML

While it’s rea­son­able to argue that the trinket/​trifle (delete as per­son­al­ly applic­a­ble) that is Mag­ic in the Moon­light may bear a slight­ness at odds with its lav­ish pro­duc­tion val­ues, one can’t help but be wooed by an aes­thet­ic and direc­to­r­i­al com­mit­ment that places it at the top of the filmmaker’s Euro-flick deck. Of a piece with the sun-kissed charms and para­nor­mal flir­ta­tions of A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Sex Com­e­dy, it is undoubt­ed­ly a minor work, if one blessed with a col­lab­o­ra­tive A‑game. Rel­a­tive Team Allen new­com­ers Anne Seibel and Sonia Grande excel with pro­duc­tion design and cos­tume respec­tive­ly, while cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Dar­ius Khond­ji atones for To Rome with Love by ensur­ing the film stands as the best look­er on the director’s CV in recent mem­o­ry. Allen’s screen­play may reduce Emma Stone’s screw­ball femme fatale to mere nar­ra­tive cipher, but his fleet-foot­ed stag­ing, dead­pan com­po­si­tion and ele­gant­ly weav­ing cam­era reveal the pres­ence of a mas­ter film­mak­er too will­ing to accept his own first draft. MT

An adap­ta­tion of his one-act play ​‘Death’ fea­tur­ing Allen as a typ­i­cal­ly nervy neb­bish caught up in the witch hunt for a killer, this sub­lime­ly weird oddity/​indulgence is one of the director’s most auda­cious exer­cis­es in style. Set against the back­drop of a heav­i­ly-stylised, ultra-claus­tro­pho­bic cityscape, the film visu­al­ly echoes the work of Fritz Lang and draws on Kaf­ka-esque para­noia, pre­sent­ing a sin­gle indi­vid­ual up against the pos­si­ble mon­stros­i­ty of a fright­ened crowd. Always inter­est­ing but often mad­den­ing­ly self-con­scious, a cus­tom­ar­i­ly star­ry cast func­tion as lit­tle more than dec­o­ra­tion for what is at heart a one trick film. The cast (in par­tic­u­lar Madon­na, Jodie Fos­ter and Lily Tom­lin as a group of tough hook­ers) are fun but the style is so self-aware, the dia­logue so arch and the­atri­cal, that it’s dif­fi­cult to invest much emo­tion­al­ly. PR

While it’s true that the oppro­bri­um slung at Allen’s Dream­Works peri­od in the first few years of the new mil­len­ni­um is large­ly deserved, it would be unfair to include his first film for the stu­dio with the painful tri­umvi­rate that would fol­low. A wel­come respite from the dark­er works with which he saw out the last cen­tu­ry, Small Time Crooks may run out of steam well before its 90 min­utes are up, but it remains a plea­sure to wit­ness Allen exer­cis­ing his fun­ny bone so freely. Allen’s recur­ring fix­a­tion on class and social-climb­ing is played for cen­tre-stage laughs, while his adroit facil­i­ty for com­ic stag­ing is effort­less­ly show­cased in the open­ing act’s water-thwart­ed bank rob­bery hijinks. With its top cast – a show-steal­ing Elaine May takes MVP – and above aver­age one-lin­er hit rate, it may not amount to top-tier Woody, but we’d soon dis­cov­er the val­ue of mid-tier Woody through­out the decade. MT

Gor­don Willis’ gor­geous cin­e­matog­ra­phy is the stand­out aspect of Allen’s rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of ​‘A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream’, dis­tract­ing the view­er from the vir­tu­al­ly con­tin­u­ous dia­logue with his lus­cious peri­od detail. As three cou­ples spend a week­end togeth­er in a coun­try house, old and new ten­sions sur­face, as the char­ac­ters strug­gle to jus­ti­fy or excuse their impuls­es. Love and lust, duty and desire, log­ic and mag­ic clash until things even­tu­al­ly fall into place, each par­ty hav­ing learned some­thing new and set­tled old dis­putes in the most over­wrought ways pos­si­ble. Allen also dis­plays his impres­sive tal­ent as an actor in a sig­nif­i­cant­ly less neu­rot­ic reg­is­ter than we typ­i­cal­ly asso­ciate with his onscreen per­sona. EL

Allen’s reflec­tions on get­ting away with mur­der go a step fur­ther into mad­ness, final­ly reach­ing their lim­it in this odd moral­i­ty tale. Joaquin Phoenix plays Abe, a depres­sive phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor going through a pro­found exis­ten­tial cri­sis. Emma Stone’s Jill is a young col­lege stu­dent charmed by Abe’s cyn­i­cism but deter­mined to help him be hap­py again. As in many of the director’s films, cir­cum­stances con­trive to have the Allen stand-in only reluc­tant­ly accept the advances of a much younger woman beg­ging him to sleep with her. But despite Abe’s own the­o­ries about Jill’s attrac­tion to him, she soon reveals her­self to be more than a girl crush­ing on her col­lege pro­fes­sor. In a sim­i­lar rever­sal, Abe acts on his mis­an­thropy in a way few oth­er Allen char­ac­ters would. A vio­lent­ly grim and total­ly unex­pect­ed finale sees Jill prove to be stronger than she at first appeared, and Abe more lost. EL

A light­weight friv­o­li­ty, Man­hat­tan Mur­der Mys­tery reunit­ed the direc­tor with Diane Keaton onscreen for the first time in decades, as a bick­er­ing cou­ple sleuthing out a mur­der plot in their Man­hat­tan apart­ment block. Shar­ing the hand­held skit­tish­ness of Allen’s pre­vi­ous, much dark­er film, Hus­bands and Wives, this one bombs along nice­ly. A styl­ish final sequence set in the back­stage work­ings of a down­town movie the­atre is par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing, jux­ta­pos­ing a screen­ing of the mir­ror show­down from The Lady from Shang­hai with a vio­lent scene of con­fronta­tion. There’s also a par­tic­u­lar­ly fun­ny sequence involv­ing the char­ac­ters’ attempt to black­mail a sus­pect­ed killer over the phone using tiny strips of pre-record­ed sound. But it’s all pret­ty incon­se­quen­tial, rely­ing on a fair­ly wit­ty script, a game cast of Allen reg­u­lars and the usu­al lov­ing evo­ca­tion of New York City. PR

“You can’t get in to see the pres­i­dent unless you go through Har­vey. If Mrs Nixon wants to kiss her hus­band, she has to kiss Har­vey first.” In this unaired short made for PBS Tele­vi­sion, Allen plays Har­vey Wallinger, close friend and polit­i­cal advi­sor to Richard Nixon; the only man who can make the pres­i­dent laugh (“He tick­les him”). A mock­u­men­tary in the Take the Mon­ey and Run mode that – with its manip­u­la­tion of news­reel footage – also looks for­ward to Zelig, it’s impos­si­ble not to sense the under­cur­rent of anger that runs through The Har­vey Wallinger Sto­ry, despite its sur­face silli­ness. Tak­ing the president’s onscreen faux pas and non­sen­si­cal ram­blings as his start­ing point, Allen takes point­ed aim at the incom­pe­tence of the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion, high­light­ing the president’s but­ter-fin­gered grip on White House geog­ra­phy. With footage of Nixon gar­bling his plans for ​“win­ning the peace” in Viet­nam, Allen trans­lates: ​“What Mr Nixon means is that it’s impor­tant to win the war and win the peace, or at the very least lose the war and lose the peace, or win at least part of the peace or win two peaces per­haps, or lose a few peaces but win a piece of the war. The oth­er alter­na­tive would be to win a piece of the war and lose a piece of Mr Nixon.” MT

As pro­lif­ic as he is, you could nev­er accuse Woody Allen of being pre­dictable. A year after the joy­ful Every­one Says I Love You, Allen returned with his most ven­omous film to date. Once again tak­ing Ing­mar Bergman’s Wild Straw­ber­ries – a film he mined so suc­cess­ful­ly a decade ear­li­er with Anoth­er Woman – as his start­ing point, Decon­struct­ing Har­ry is less a study of emerg­ing self-real­i­sa­tion than a nar­cis­sis­tic nail-bomb of vit­ri­ol and self-pity. Yet there’s some­thing per­verse­ly admirable about Allen’s will­ing­ness to lay bare his baser instincts so unapolo­get­i­cal­ly, the film’s abra­sive approach to form as great a fuck you to styl­is­tic pleas­antry as his character’s pill-pop­ping mis­an­thropy is to his crit­ics. Blur­ring the line between fic­tion and real­i­ty, this is Allen at his most struc­tural­ly auda­cious. The poi­son-penned gags most­ly land, too – per­haps the great­est of which is deliv­ered by Allen’s writer, Har­ry Block, describ­ing his pro­tag­o­nist as ​“myself, thin­ly dis­guised”; a worm on a hook for those who took Star­dust Mem­o­ries’ spite­ful­ness to heart. Allen baits his crit­ics to ascribe Harry’s ram­pant sociopa­thy to its cre­ator, while chuck­ling to him­self behind the pro­tec­tive shield of artis­tic priv­i­lege. MT

Allen’s third film as direc­tor, Bananas is more a col­lec­tion of ideas and sketch­es than a coher­ent movie. Allen plays Field­ing Mell­ish, a down-on-his-luck ​“tester” for var­i­ous out­landish inven­tions. Misiden­ti­fied as a South Amer­i­can dic­ta­tor in the vein of Fidel Cas­tro, Field­ing finds him­self sud­den­ly beloved by the peo­ple even as he is pur­sued relent­less­ly by the US gov­ern­ment. Some jokes work, oth­ers don’t. A vio­lent­ly chaot­ic encounter with hood­lums on the New York sub­way is mem­o­rable for a very ear­ly appear­ance by Sylvester Stal­lone, while some of the ear­ly ​‘test­ing sequences’ are per­fect exer­cis­es in phys­i­cal com­e­dy. One for die-hard Woody Allen fans only. PR

“You can’t tear up every­thing you write,” says Mia Far­row to Sam Waterston’s nov­el­ist. One can only assume it’s a line exclu­sive to ver­sion 2.0, giv­en that Sep­tem­ber is unique in Allen’s fil­mog­ra­phy – and sure­ly unique to the cin­e­ma – in so far as it was writ­ten, shot and most­ly cut before being rewrit­ten, recast and reshot whole­sale. A minia­ture, Chekhov­ian cham­ber piece indebt­ed to Ing­mar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata, it’s a shame we’ll like­ly nev­er see Allen’s Sam Shepard/​Maureen O’Sullivan-starring first pass. At script-lev­el there’s no escap­ing September’s inher­ent the­atri­cal­i­ty, yet it remains blessed with a sharp atten­tion to styl­is­tic detail; a melan­choli­cal­ly-imbued sense of the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al dis­tance between its char­ac­ters. If the dra­mat­ic peaks of its recrim­i­na­tions edge towards hys­te­ria in the lat­ter stages, they’re tem­pered by the warm tones and a minor-key lyri­cism that belies the film’s trou­bled pro­duc­tion and sub­se­quent crit­i­cal sav­aging. MT

Con­sid­er­ing the almost com­pul­sive­ly sta­t­ic aes­thet­ic of Allen’s recent out­put, it’s hard to believe that the direc­tor could ever have made such a fre­net­ic slap­stick farce as Take the Mon­ey and Run. His sec­ond fea­ture is on a par with Every­thing you Always Want­ed to Know… in its episod­ic struc­ture, but most impor­tant­ly its absur­dist com­e­dy is pushed to the extreme. Most of the jokes con­sist of Allen’s Vir­gil Stark­well find­ing him­self in incred­i­bly unlucky sit­u­a­tions as he tries and fails to pur­sue a career as a thief. The film’s series of gen­uine­ly fun­ny non-sequiturs are basi­cal­ly Allen’s stand-up one-lin­ers brought to life, recall­ing the fran­tic ecsta­sy of slap­stick clas­sics from Blaz­ing Sad­dles to The Naked Gun in the best way pos­si­ble. EL

“The line between the kind of solem­ni­ty I want and com­e­dy is very, very thin,” Allen told Esquire mag­a­zine back in 1978. ​“That’s why it’s so easy to satirise [Ing­mar] Bergman. If you bring the dra­ma off, you hit peo­ple at the most pro­found lev­el, but tenth-rate Bergman… is like soap opera.” The film for which Allen took his first crit­i­cal wal­lop­ing, Inte­ri­ors make a lot more sense in the con­text of his career when viewed with the ben­e­fit of hind­sight. An unremit­ting­ly bleak film, seem­ing­ly carved out of ice, it was a bold move com­ing off the suc­cess of Annie Hall. For all the hat-tips to his Scan­di-crush that per­me­ate his fil­mog­ra­phy, nowhere does else does Allen invoke Bergman quite so brazen­ly. It’s easy to see why Allen detrac­tors might con­sid­er it an emo­tion­al igloo tee­ter­ing on the precipice of par­o­dy. But for all the film’s over­state­ment it remains an affect­ing work of total sin­cer­i­ty, albeit one whose autho­r­i­al voice often strug­gles to be heard over the cries and whis­pers of its influ­ences. MT

Czarist Rus­sia serves as a more bar­bar­ian ver­sion of Man­hat­tan in Love and Death, Allen’s tale of a man’s life through wars of the nation and of the heart. Boris (Allen) despis­es his mod­est upbring­ing and envies high­er soci­ety and pret­ti­er women, but pre­fer­ring serendip­i­tous encoun­ters to direct action. Allen dou­bles down on the film’s grotesque qual­i­ties and doesn’t miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to throw in cul­tur­al ref­er­ences and visu­al gags. As a result this most­ly innocu­ous com­e­dy is one of Allen’s most effec­tive. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it is once again taint­ed by sev­er­al beyond bad taste jokes. ML

An extend­ed, affect­ing riff on Ten­nessee Williams’ ​‘A Street­car Named Desire’, Blue Jas­mine tones down the melo­dra­mat­ics and sex­u­al ten­sions to repo­si­tion its Blanche Dubois as a ruined New York socialite (Cate Blanchett) forced to rely on the kind­ness of her work­ing-class sis­ter (Sal­ly Hawkins) when she is bank­rupt­ed by crim­i­nal hus­band Hal (Alec Bald­win). Prac­ti­cal­ly a dry-run for Car­ol, Blanchett brings the full weight of her big, charis­mat­ic act­ing style to the part, ring­ing max­i­mum pathos and tragedy from the plight of a fierce but frag­ile woman. Louis CK and Peter Sars­gaard are also excel­lent in low-key sup­port­ing roles, a wel­come char­ac­ter­is­tic of the director’s more recent work. PR

In Allen’s films the moti­va­tions, func­tion­ing and con­se­quences of sex­u­al desire are cen­tral to the sto­ry, and nowhere more so than here. Tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from David Reuben’s book of the same name, Allen divides his explo­ration into sev­en episodes using dif­fer­ent actors, time frames, set­tings and even dimen­sions, reach­ing the cel­lu­lar lev­el to depict the work­ings of ejac­u­la­tion in the last chap­ter. While he tar­gets fetish­es that his sar­casm and taste for embar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tions can­not miss – secre­tive cross-dress­ing, zoophil­ia or pub­lic love­mak­ing – Allen also par­o­dies cin­e­ma itself. As Dr Ross (Gene Wilder, unfor­get­table) process­es the infor­ma­tion that his patient is hav­ing sex with a sheep, the cam­era lingers on his face, his dis­gust over­whelm­ing the frame to cre­ate an indeli­ble moment and one of Allen’s fun­ni­est. ML

In exchange for the mon­ey nec­es­sary to stage his play, play­wright David Shayne (John Cusack) reluc­tant­ly gives a role to a mobster’s young girl­friend Olive (Jen­nifer Tilly) and soon los­es con­trol over pro­ceed­ings in this rau­cous 1920s-set romp. It’s in the close inter­ac­tion of social groups that nev­er usu­al­ly meet – name­ly actors and the mob – that Allen finds his most amus­ing obser­va­tions on desire and self-delu­sion. Tal­ent­less Olive’s wish to be an actress proves sim­ply born of van­i­ty, while the naïve Shayne is eas­i­ly daz­zled by the rehearsed airs of once-famous actress Helen Sin­clair (a resplen­dent Dianne Wiest). The only char­ac­ter who tru­ly cares about the play (and art more gen­er­al­ly) is mob­ster Cheech (Chazz Palminteri). Attend­ing every rehearsal as Olive’s body­guard, he turns out to be a genius play­wright him­self, and will go to great lengths to make the play as great as pos­si­ble. Upset­ting the social bal­ance, this turn of events makes the film’s atmos­phere sig­nif­i­cant­ly less sti­fling and is a sat­is­fy­ing hypocrisy-check for the large­ly unsym­pa­thet­ic Shayne. EL

It is no secret that Allen’s sense of humour relies large­ly on word­play: riff­ing on dou­ble mean­ings or bring­ing in anachro­nisms or NY-spe­cif­ic anec­dotes, his dia­logues often fall into absur­di­ty. Allen nev­er­the­less occa­sion­al­ly attempts to mate­ri­alise the dis­con­cert­ing irra­tional­i­ty of his speech into his nar­ra­tives and visu­al style. This ten­den­cy finds one of its most bla­tant exam­ples in the short film Oedi­pus Wrecks, his con­tri­bu­tion to the New York Sto­ries anthol­o­gy. As a man’s anx­i­ety towards his over­bear­ing moth­er becomes man­i­fest, an impos­si­ble wish comes true, a mag­ic trick is actu­al­ly mag­ic, and New York­ers some­what get used to hav­ing an old woman look­ing down on them from the sky ²⁴⁄₇. In the mid­dle of this psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal mess, Allen nev­er­the­less man­ages to find real sen­ti­ment as his char­ac­ter Shel­don asks for the help of a clair­voy­ant but grows attached to her sim­ply through prox­im­i­ty, time and under­stand­ing, and with her help, comes to terms with his Oedi­pus com­plex. ML

Despite the absurd amount of wealth on dis­play in Alice, Allen’s sta­ple inter­est in the neu­rot­ic tales of peo­ple with too much mon­ey and time on their hands makes it dif­fi­cult to believe ini­tial­ly that this film might crit­i­cise that lifestyle. How­ev­er, such pre­con­cep­tions as to Allen’s atti­tude towards con­spic­u­ous wealth only make the film more grip­ping, as does Mia Farrow’s unex­pres­sive face in the title role. Alice at first seems con­tent with life as a house­wife who spends her days buy­ing clothes and beau­ty treat­ments. When a severe back pain brings her to a mys­te­ri­ous doc­tor in Chi­na­town who pre­scribes her all kinds of strange con­coc­tions (includ­ing one which makes her lit­er­al­ly invis­i­ble) she soon realis­es that she is suf­fer­ing from some­thing much more seri­ous than a pulled mus­cle. EL

Allen’s take on the music biopic is a nuanced explo­ration of myth-mak­ing and its every­day impact on the life of a fic­tion­al record­ing artist. Just as Sean Penn’s tal­ent­ed, but inse­cure jazz gui­tarist Emmet Ray begins a rela­tion­ship with mute lover Hat­tie (Saman­tha Mor­ton) – a woman who adores him despite his idio­syn­crasies – he heads back on the road, resolved to fol­low a cer­tain mod­el of the ded­i­cat­ed artist that haunts him. This con­trar­i­an tale, where noth­ing is quite good enough and noth­ing ever real­ly fits for the hero, is pre­sent­ed on screen with a fas­ci­nat­ing­ly dishar­mo­nious cin­e­mato­graph­ic scheme of mis­match­ing colours, often col­lid­ing greens and reds, yel­lows and blues. Sean Penn deliv­ers one of the best per­for­mances of his career as one of Allen’s most self-absorbed yet most endear­ing anti heroes. What is ini­tial­ly framed as a super­fi­cial, light­heart­ed faux-biopic turns out to be unex­pect­ed­ly raw and touch­ing. EL

As its tagline explains, ​‘Woody Allen takes a nos­tal­gic look at the future’ in his 1973 com­e­dy. His vision of Amer­i­ca cir­ca 2173 is true to the 1970s, as he imag­ines it pop­u­lat­ed with clunky, inef­fec­tive machines of unprac­ti­cal shapes and too prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es – most mem­o­rably the ​‘orgas­ma­tron’. This grotesque dystopi­an future allows Allen to give in to his slap­stick impuls­es, bring­ing light­ness with chas­es through fields of giant veg­eta­bles or across stun­ning mod­ernist build­ings men­ac­ing­ly framed with cant­ed cam­era angles. Diane Keaton fur­ther empha­sis­es this play­ful­ness in the role of a clue­less woman dumb­ed down by mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, who then decides to return to nature via a Com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion. How­ev­er, the most grat­i­fy­ing moment remains the sim­plest: sit­ting alone with Keaton, Allen once again deliv­ers an inter­minable string of wise­cracks, but final­ly makes her gig­gle – not laugh, sim­ply gig­gle – and at last, these char­ac­ters seem to con­nect like real human beings. ML

In a fil­mog­ra­phy that has demon­strat­ed a per­va­sive pes­simism and intense cyn­i­cism towards human nature, Broad­way Dan­ny Rose stands out pre­cise­ly because of the unex­pect­ed decen­cy of all its char­ac­ters. In the title role of a tal­ent agent rep­re­sent­ing a series of hope­less­ly banal acts, Allen plays an unusu­al­ly opti­mistic char­ac­ter, a man who believes in the tal­ent of his artists with an inex­tin­guish­able fer­vour, despite being per­pet­u­al­ly aban­doned in favour of more fash­ion­able agents. Express­ing none of the dis­dain for small vic­to­ries typ­i­cal of Allen’s char­ac­ters, Dan­ny does all he can to help jazz singer Lou Cano­va (Nick Apol­lo Forte) nav­i­gate a nos­tal­gia wave that has hit tiny New York clubs. The com­plete altru­ism of this com­i­cal­ly self­less agent is gen­uine­ly endear­ing. But the film’s real suc­cess lies in its empa­thy towards every sin­gle char­ac­ter. EL

Con­sid­er­ing the omnipres­ence of jazz in his sound­tracks, Allen was bound to even­tu­al­ly indulge his pas­sion fur­ther with a jazzy musi­cal. Between New York, Venice and Paris, Joe (Allen) and his dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly try to ful­fil their desires and live with their choic­es. Ex-wife Stef­fi (Goldie Hawn), hap­pi­ly remar­ried to Bob (Alan Alda), is con­vinced that Joe isn’t over her; but is she over him? Mean­while, their daugh­ter Sky­lar (Drew Bar­ry­more) is about to mar­ry the gauche but devot­ed Hold­en (Edward Nor­ton) but is trou­bled by her fan­tasies. And so is Von­nie (Julia Roberts) who has the bad luck of find­ing her most secret desires sud­den­ly ful­filled by a des­per­ate and schem­ing Joe. The creepi­ness of his seduc­tion is per­fect­ly ridiculed when Joe attempts to bump into her while jog­ging but, in a mon­tage Jacques Tati would have been proud of, gets lost in the labyrinthine Venice. How­ev­er unful­fill­ing fan­tasies turn out to be, Allen’s char­ac­ters end up real­is­ing that they will always cher­ish and hon­our them with a melan­choly tune. ML

After chan­nelling 8½ for Star­dust Mem­o­ries, Allen turns to Fellini’s Amar­cord for his most per­son­al film. A wist­ful trib­ute to radio in the time of his youth, Radio Days takes the form of a series of vignettes, nar­rat­ed by the film­mak­er and bathed in a nos­tal­gic glow. Cast­ing a young Seth Green as the Allen avatar allows for a wel­come shift in per­spec­tive; a heart­felt evo­ca­tion of child­hood imbued with a bit­ter­sweet fond­ness for a lost era that deft­ly avoids sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. The film dances between auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal rem­i­nis­cence and apoc­ryphal tall tales: from the pair of bur­glars who find them­selves on a gameshow when they answer the phone on a job, to the unlucky-in-love per­sis­tence of the won­der­ful Dianne Wiest. The pow­er of music to con­jure sense-mem­o­ries is stun­ning­ly evoked; nowhere else does Allen trans­mit his love for the great Amer­i­can song­book with such a gen­uine sense of long­ing, loss and affec­tion. MT

What makes cin­e­ma so fas­ci­nat­ing is its pow­er to plunge you in a dif­fer­ent world, far from and bet­ter than your own in some way. Fol­low­ing his ten­den­cy to take expres­sions lit­er­al­ly for dra­mat­ic effect, Allen imag­ines a movie, The Pur­ple Rose of Cairo, com­ing to life. The lim­it between fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty used to dis­ap­pear only to an extent for Cecil­ia (Mia Far­row), when every evening, she would find refuge in her local movie the­atre to for­get the Depres­sion and her lousy hus­band (Dan­ny Aiel­lo) for a cou­ple of hours. Now, in an aveng­ing twist of fate, her des­per­ate binge-watch­ing has brought her favourite char­ac­ter, the cour­te­ous Tom Bax­ter (Jeff Daniels), off the screen and into her arms. Yet just as her ful­filled dream brings her the courage to seek a bet­ter (real) life, a real­i­ty-sourced hope appears in the shape of Gil Shep­herd, the actor play­ing Bax­ter (Daniels again, but this time elec­tri­fy­ing­ly arro­gant). But Cecilia’s choice between the two men is one between two impos­si­ble illu­sions: while Bax­ter still isn’t real, Shep­herd is just a man (and an actor!) whose con­sis­ten­cy of char­ac­ter isn’t guar­an­teed like Baxter’s is by a script. This may be Allen’s most pro­found, grat­i­fy­ing and affect­ing reflec­tion on the dou­ble-edged nature of fan­tasies, at once com­fort­ing and destruc­tive in their per­fec­tion and unreach­a­bil­i­ty. ML

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly one of Allen’s most mature and pun­ish­ing exam­i­na­tions of rela­tion­ships in tur­moil, Hus­bands and Wives sig­nals its tem­pera­ment before the open­ing shot, as Cole Porter’s ​‘What is this Thing Called Love?’ plays over the title cards: ​“I saw you there one won­der­ful day / You took my heart and threw it away.” Then comes the abra­sive inter­ro­ga­tion of Car­lo Di Palma’s hand­held cam­era; the fall­out as Jack (Syd­ney Pol­lack) and Sal­ly (Judy Davis) announce their sep­a­ra­tion to friends Gabe (Allen) and Judy (Mia) cap­tured in its unmoored glare, sans cut. It’s dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate the film from the con­text of its pro­duc­tion – dur­ing which the Allen-Far­row scan­dal made world­wide head­lines – not least giv­en its aggres­sive dis­re­gard for styl­is­tic pleas­antries. It’s a for­mal approach that effec­tive­ly con­veys the emo­tion­al bruis­es these char­ac­ters rou­tine­ly inflict upon each oth­er; even as Allen allows a capac­i­ty for emo­tion­al growth all too rarely seen else­where. This matu­ri­ty is best exem­pli­fied by Gabe’s rela­tion­ship with his young stu­dent, Rain (Juli­ette Lewis). The stu­dent-teacher affair is a com­mon enough Allen trope, but Gabe’s rebut­tal of the razor-sharp, infat­u­at­ed girl’s advances feels refresh­ing. MT

Allen’s nos­tal­gic cinephil­ia always comes through in his films via ref­er­ences, par­o­dies or plays with form. With wit and ten­der­ness, Zelig demon­strates his pas­sion for both doc­u­men­tary and the 1920s as he adopts the news­reel for­mat to present a strange sto­ry of false iden­ti­ty through key his­tor­i­cal events up to the ​’30s. As psy­cho­analy­sis is bur­geon­ing, Leonard Zelig (Allen) finds him­self the sub­ject of tests by Dr Eudo­ra Fletch­er (Mia Far­row) when she dis­cov­ers that this social­ly trou­ble­some char­ac­ter is in fact a chameleon, capa­ble of blend­ing in with crowds by adopt­ing their vocab­u­lary, phys­i­cal aspect and race. Behind the slap­stick of Allen turn­ing into a pro­to-intel­lec­tu­al, an obese or a Chi­nese per­son – trans­for­ma­tions fair­ly accept­able giv­en the film’s iron­ic immer­sion in old-fash­ioned mores – and becom­ing a freak for the New York elite, a mov­ing com­men­tary on social anx­i­ety appears. With Eudora’s help and tal­ent, how­ev­er, Zelig will find his bal­ance and, in return, give her the recog­ni­tion she had long been fight­ing for in a male-dom­i­nat­ed field. ML

What makes Annie Hall unique is the pres­ence of a char­ac­ter who actu­al­ly gig­gles at Allen’s wise­cracks. Here­in lies the secret to the film’s suc­cess. Allen’s Alvy Singer (a char­ac­ter so auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal the direc­tor actu­al­ly has him be a stand-up come­di­an) for once isn’t mak­ing jokes at the expense of the oth­er char­ac­ters and for the viewer’s amuse­ment. Rather, Diane Keaton’s Annie gets him, just as we do. Recall­ing the begin­ning and end of a love sto­ry with great ten­der­ness, the film shows both part­ners as flawed in some ways. Yet Allen the direc­tor is deeply self-aware about Alvy’s, and sup­pos­ed­ly his own, destruc­tive behav­iour. When in the film’s clos­ing moments, Alvy stub­born­ly main­tains that he does not under­stand what hap­pened, his melan­choly and the film’s self-reflex­iv­i­ty heart­break­ing­ly imply that he under­stands per­fect­ly well, but can’t seem to face what he did, and what he has lost. EL

The great­est of Allen’s homages to his idol, Ing­mar Bergman, Anoth­er Woman takes the the­mat­ic skele­ton of the Swedish director’s 1957 mas­ter­piece, Wild Straw­ber­ries, as the tem­plate for an exquis­ite med­i­ta­tion on empa­thy, aging and regret. Gena Row­lands plays Mar­i­on Post, a suc­cess­ful phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor and writer just turned 50. She lives a life of finan­cial and aca­d­e­m­ic priv­i­lege, obliv­i­ous to the long-held resent­ments of those around her. Unable – or unwill­ing – to face the cri­sis of self-aware­ness forced upon her through a series of recrim­i­na­tions and late real­i­sa­tions, Mar­i­on tunes in to the voice of a sui­ci­dal woman, whose ther­a­py ses­sions she can hear through the ven­ti­la­tion duct of her rent­ed workspace.

Like Bergman, Allen trans­mits Marion’s inte­ri­or life through her nar­ra­tion; a plain­ly-spo­ken, almost diaris­tic account­ing of events and emo­tion­al impas­siv­i­ty. Wild Straw­ber­ries’ famous dream sequence takes the form of a stage play recount­ing Marion’s failed rela­tion­ships, while her cold intel­lec­tu­al­ism and inca­pac­i­ty for self-aware­ness is poignant­ly con­trast­ed in the tears found on the final lines of her mother’s favourite Rain­er Maria Rilke poem: “…for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.” Run­ning a mere 81 min­utes, it’s Allen’s most con­trolled and under­stat­ed work, not least thanks to Row­lands’ sub­tle expo­sure of emo­tion­al fault lines and DoP Sven Nyqvist’s steely reserve. Not a film of force­ful con­fronta­tions but one of gen­tle real­i­sa­tions, deliv­ered with the kind of melan­choly sigh exem­pli­fied by Marion’s age­ing father’s heart­break­ing solil­o­quy: ​“Now that my life is draw­ing to a close, I’ve only regrets…” MT

A bit­ter­sweet roman­tic com­e­dy about self-absorbed New York writer Isaac (Allen), Man­hat­tan is beyond doubt the director’s most rap­tur­ous trib­ute to his city and par­tic­u­lar social milieu. But beyond the breath­tak­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phy, wit­ty script, beau­ti­ful act­ing and score, it also remains the clear­est and most con­cise pre­sen­ta­tion of his core shtick. As Isaac leaves his dot­ing, very young part­ner Tra­cy (Mariel Hem­ing­way) to pur­sue a brief, doomed fling with the neu­rot­ic Mary (Diane Keaton), the film lays bare the frag­ile nature of his and oth­ers’ desire and jeal­ousy, while some­how remain­ing a film that is light and fun­ny through­out, despite its com­par­a­tive­ly pes­simistic out­look on human relations.

In one of Allen’s most ten­der­ly writ­ten scenes, Isaac falls out spec­tac­u­lar­ly with his best friend Yale (Michael Mur­phy) who splut­ters ​“I saw her first” in defence of his adul­tery with Mary. The men find them­selves actu­al­ly speak­ing like chil­dren where before they had sim­ply act­ed as such. It’s a brac­ing­ly self-aware moment, the scene’s insight into frag­ile, bor­der­line ridicu­lous mas­culin­i­ty prov­ing more pro­gres­sive and reveal­ing than much of the director’s work since. Yet Allen can­not resist con­clud­ing on a note of almost unbear­ably roman­tic opti­mism. It is Tracy’s sen­ti­ment, ​“You got­ta have a lit­tle faith in peo­ple,” that express­es with a per­fect clar­i­ty the core mis­ery of the char­ac­ters, as well as a pos­si­ble solu­tion, with­in this movie and beyond. There is no end­ing like it. PR

One only need look at Melin­da and Melin­da or Cassandra’s Dream to see how eas­i­ly Allen’s films borne out of an over­ar­ch­ing philo­soph­i­cal or dra­mat­ic the­sis can swift­ly head south. Crimes and Mis­de­meanours is an excep­tion to the rule – and what an excep­tion. Tak­ing his cue from Fyo­dor Dostoyevsky’s ​‘Crime and Pun­ish­ment’, Allen fash­ions his own Raskol­nikov in Mar­tin Landau’s Judah Rosen­thal, an oph­thal­mol­o­gist plagued with guilt over the mur­der of his mis­tress. The film’s forked struc­ture sees the dra­ma of Judah’s sto­ry coun­ter­point­ed in a par­al­lel com­ic nar­ra­tive that fol­lows a film­mak­er (Allen) as he unwill­ing­ly shoots a doc­u­men­tary on his suc­cess­ful, boor­ish broth­er-in-law (Alan Alda).

Allen sets up a series of dialec­ti­cal oppo­si­tions as a means of explor­ing the film’s themes: the absence of moral­i­ty in a god­less world; faith ver­sus doubt in human nature and man’s capac­i­ty for good­ness; the gulf between the cathar­tic res­o­lu­tions afford­ed by cin­e­ma and the mess of real­i­ty. If such exis­ten­tial enquiries sug­gest an aca­d­e­m­ic exer­cise on paper, Allen’s extra­or­di­nary screen­play inte­grates and embeds them seam­less­ly. It’s one of the filmmaker’s dark­est, most cyn­i­cal pic­tures, but also one of his fun­ni­est. As the two nar­ra­tive strands coa­lesce for a final scene between Allen and Lan­dau, this amoral­i­ty play point­ed­ly dis­avows res­o­lu­tion, even as it con­tin­ues to probe ques­tions of own­er­ship and author­ship in life and art. ​“We define our­selves by the choic­es we have made. We are in fact the sum-total of our choic­es,” we hear in voiceover, as the film fades out on Sam Waterston’s blind rab­bi danc­ing at his daughter’s wed­ding: the one fig­ure who finds con­tent­ment – how­ev­er fool­ish­ly – in the moral imper­a­tives of a high­er pow­er. MT

It took a while for Woody Allen to escape from the shad­ow of his influ­ences, to forge a mas­ter­piece indebt­ed to his love of Bergman and Chekhov, but one which stands apart as a sum­ma­tion of his own work to this point and beyond. While Inte­ri­ors may have marked the point at which Allen made a bid for artis­tic matu­ri­ty (what­ev­er that might mean), Han­nah and Her Sis­ters was the moment the direc­tor stopped see­ing his com­ic and trag­ic incli­na­tions as mutu­al­ly exclu­sive modes, deliv­er­ing a film in which the organ­ic code­pen­den­cy of both reaps the rich­est of rewards.

In its the­mat­ic pre­oc­cu­pa­tions, the film is quin­tes­sen­tial Woody: the quest for mean­ing in a spir­i­tu­al void; the obses­sion with mor­tal­i­ty; the con­flict between the intel­lec­tu­al and emo­tion­al realms; human fal­li­bil­i­ty and the elu­sive search for self-ful­fil­ment through sex and attach­ment. Yet here, Allen’s nihilis­tic ten­den­cies are tem­pered by an opti­mistic human­ism untaint­ed by his go-to defence mech­a­nism of sen­ti­ment cloaked in nos­tal­gia; it’s a roman­tic movie, but one that tugs at the heart strings by virtue of its real­ism in the way the char­ac­ters and rela­tion­ships are drawn, not by a roman­ti­cism afford­ed by form. ​“You’ve got to have a lit­tle faith in peo­ple,” says Mariel Hemingway’s Tra­cy at the end of Man­hat­tan; Han­nah and Her Sis­ters is that faith man­i­fest. MT

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