![]() ![]() This is why the people at the retreat come across as bizarre and grasping weirdoes. For example, this is why the decor in his apartment seems to change almost at random. He was playing a filmmaker who’s struggling to find meaning in both his work and life, whose current mood dictates how he sees the world around him. What they failed to recognize is that Allen had written and was playing a character. ![]() He even had the effrontery to depict one fan as someone who asks him for an autograph one day and shoots him the next. More so, a film that depicted them as weird, leering intruding pests that he can barely stand to be around horrified them. As a result, a film that depicted him as a successful, admired artist who still wasn’t satisfied horrified them. If Alvy Singer and Issac Davis were, at least in their minds, thinly disguised versions of the real Allen, then it stood to reason that Sandy Bates was as well. The chief reason why Stardust Memories received such a brutal reception sprung from how they’d previously identified his characters as extensions of the public persona as a wisecracking, neurotic New York Jewish intellectual he’d cultivated. Finally is Daisy ( Jessica Harper), one of the festival attendees with whom he hits it off with nicely, though there’s the suggestion he only sees her as a substitute for Dorrie. Then there’s the sweet and maternal Isobel ( Marie-Christine Barrault) who deeply cares for him than he ever could her. However, he’s unable to come to terms with her mental instability. There’s Dorrie ( Charlotte Rampling), the brilliant and beautiful woman who’s presumably the great love of his life. It’s also where people bug him for an autograph, ask inane or obscure questions about his work, and/or sleep with him-almost invariably adding that they prefer his earlier, funnier films.Īs the weekend goes on and the interactions grow surreal and claustrophobic, Sandy finds himself contemplating the state of his personal relationships. He agrees to attend a weekend-long retrospective of his films (inspired by the similar gatherings that film critic Judith Crist, who turns up in a cameo). This, of course, is much to the horror of studio executives and the public, who prefer he stick to the funny stuff. Having made a series of acclaimed comedies, he now yearns to make more serious-minded dramas about the human condition. To these eyes, it’s second only to The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) as the best film of his long career.Īllen plays Sandy Bates, a successful and celebrated filmmaker who now finds himself at a professional and personal crossroads. In fact, the film was his boldest artistic achievement to date, a funny, touching, and frighteningly prescient contemplation on life, love, and art. Even if he had made a truly awful movie (and Allen would certainly prove himself capable of making such things in due time), it wouldn’t have deserved the slating critics and audiences gave him. Given all the goodwill that he had accumulated by this point in his filmmaking career, it’s a little astonishing to go back and discover the amount of venom that was unleashed on him upon the release of his ninth feature, Stardust Memories (1980). And while it wasn’t a particularly big hit, it was a necessary step from him on his artistic journey, one that would pay off the next year with Manhattan (1979), a bittersweet work that combined his comedic leanings with his dramatic ambitions to became the biggest hit of his career to date. It went on to become both an Oscar-winning hit and one of the most beloved films of that era.īolstered by that success and driven by his expanding artistic ambitions, he then came up with his first pure drama, Interiors (1978). Wanting to expand his horizons from the unabashed silliness of those early endeavors, he then presented viewers with the more deeply felt romantic comedy Annie Hall (1977). I promise not to hold it against you.ĭuring the first half of the 1970s, Woody Allen made the transition from comedian to filmmaker with such critically and commercially successfully comedies as Bananas (1971), Sleeper (1973), and Love and Death (1975). If this is a problem, please feel free to bow out now. AUTHOR’S NOTE: Yes, I am writing about Woody Allen within the context of his filmmaking, and no, this piece will not go into his alleged transgressions.
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