So last year on the Reveille website, we featured mini critiques of great artists. This was kicked off with a somewhat arid tribute to Woody Allen. It might be helpful to point out that these are not moral, ethical or other sorts of judgment of the artists in question, but of their work that can be freely judged and critiqued. We have the luxury of letting God judge the people while we judge the work. This first one on Woody was published on August 2, 2017 and expect more to follow.
Woody Allen
In the US, we should celebrate our living national treasures. Among these must be, if not the greatest, truly one of the greatest American filmmakers – Woody Allen. In six decades, Woody has blessed the world’s film-going public with a number of humorous, sensitive and thought-provoking experiences.
Woody never had what I call the “Keats-syndrome” – where many, if not most, artists have done their best works by the time they turn 25 (when Keats died after 4 years of unprecedented artistic output). Woody’s great films span his entire career from the experimental, gut-funny gondos like What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), Take the Money and Run (1969) and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (1972); to his early comic masterpieces Sleeper (1973) and Annie Hall (1977); through his maturing and wondrous Manhattan (1979) and Stardust Memories (1980); the innovative Zelig (1983); his mid-80s streak of Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Radio Days (1987); 1990s Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Deconstructing Harry (1997); and into the 21st Century with Match Point (2005), Midnight in Paris (2011), Blue Jasmine (2013) and Irrational Man (2015) none of these 2000s films actually featured Woody as an actor either. I have not watched the entire canon (and do I relish that fact) and there are simply too many film gems to list here.
Early on, Woody established his iconic, every-man character in the vein of Chaplin’s Little Tramp and like any great artist, he provided continuity with the comic geniuses like Groucho Marx and Harold Lloyd who preceded and inspired him. He would have been one of the true greats if this would have been all, but Woody continued to innovate and exercise a level of creativity and energy that has been exceptional in its artistic scope through a variety of genres, with its many achievements and innovations, and with its impact on culture and society yesterday, today and presumably tomorrow.
The Woody Allen we see in his films is obsessed with sex and death, but the films of Woody explore the living meanings of love and the complexity of human relationships. He forged a uniquely artistic trail through the post-modern cynicism that had begun to take root as he was transitioning from a successful writer into a successful filmmaker. Beyond the existential despair though, Woody was always there to develop a real sense of the hope to be found in how we relate and care for one another in an otherwise cold and callous world. As an artist, Woody Allen is truly a living American treasure.