Two Persistent Myths About Woody Allen’s Oeuvre

Now that Magic in the Moonlight is out, I’m seeing the usual spate of online articles that accompany the release of all Woody Allen’s films, and nearly every one repeats two myths I’ve been reading for well over a decade now.

 

Myth 1: All Woody Allen films are the same. This is an extraordinary claim in light of even the broadest view of Allen’s work. The first thing anyone familiar with his films knows is that he began with the slapstick of Take the Money and Run and Love and Death, developed into a master of rom-com with Annie Hall and Manhattan, and in the 1980s moved on to more serious dramas like Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The claim is even more extraordinary upon a closer look, for in addition to wacky comedies, love stories and serious explorations of human nature, we also see experimentalism, art film, historical movies, magical realism, musicals, philosophical reflection, pure fluff, mockumentaries, parodies, tragedies and a singular ability for mixing any of the above at whim. And all that before Match Point, his first genuine noir thriller in 2006.

Of course, certain themes recur: sex, infidelity, hypochondria, reflections on death, neurotic writers, psychoanalysis, men in love with younger women, and so on. It would take a very deluded Woody Allen fan not to admit that, but the variety of genres and cinematic techniques, the variety of reappearing themes themselves, make it a stretch past the breaking point to say he is merely repeating himself. Rather, these themes are like motifs that, rather than running throughout individual works, run throughout his work as a whole.

 

Myth 2: Woody Allen’s recent work isn’t very good. To contradict this, we need merely look at the last ten years of films he has written and directed, a total of ten films from 2004 to present. Based on my own recollection of their reception, four have been unqualified successes, pleasing fans, garnering positive reviews, or winning prestigious awards: Match Point (2005), Vicki Cristina Barcelona (2008), Midnight in Paris (2011) and Blue Jasmine (2013). The other six might have been the subject of negative or mixed reviews--while still pleasing many fans--but how many directors can come up with a bona fide gem every two or three years?

If there was a slump, I think it came earlier, for a four-film run from 2000 to 2003: Small Time Crooks, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending and Anything Else. Not only is that not recent, but it’s only three years in a career now spanning nearly five decades with numerous masterworks both before and since. To speak of even the last few years, Midnight in Paris was Woody Allen’s highest-grossing film to date and Cate Blanchett won the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in Blue Jasmine.

 

I can’t for the life of me understand how these myths persist. Film critics must be familiar enough with Allen’s work to see the daylight between Bananas, Stardust Memories, The Purple Rose of Cairo and Cassandra’s Dream. Surely cinema reportage can’t laud Allen for Midnight in Paris in 2011, Blue Jasmine in 2013 and forget all that by Magic in the Moonlight in 2014.

It’s baffling.

One of the perks of living in a big city like Tokyo is the guarantee that some movie theater somewhere is showing Woody Allen’s latest film. My wife and I used to enjoy going to a little theater in Ebina and getting our fix with all the other die-hard Allen fans, but that’s off the tables now that we have a toddler. I’ll pick up the DVD sometime and determine for myself whether Magic in the Moonlight is any good. Either way, I’ll look forward to his next film and grit my teeth when these myths pop up again.