There’s Something about Woody

Blue Jasmine

Woody Allen fan waiting with trepidation for the release of Blue Jasmine? You’re not alone…

“New York was his town, and it always would be…”

Whenever I think, read or hear about Woody Allen, I am immediately whisked off to a black and white ideal of an American liberal (yet yuppie) world, forever to be gloriously scored by George Gershwin.

In that world Diane Keaton and Allen make for a happy – if constantly verbally-sparring – couple, usually to be found wandering around a hip exhibition. They’re probably meeting the artist later for cocktails, away from the rabble.

Perhaps I exaggerate just a little, but for me (and I’m sure many others), this is how I like to think of Allen and his screen output. The reason for this, unmistakably, is that for a period – roughly the late ’70s to mid ’80s –Allen seemed almost untouchable.

“The socially awkward intellectual was desperately hard not to love”

His movies spoke, nay sang, directly to their audience and Allen’s on-screen persona – the socially awkward intellectual (a character Allen honed during his stand-up days) – was desperately hard not to love and empathise with.

Of course, this period coincides with (in)arguably the prolific director’s best-loved films, his New York Trilogy of Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979) and a little later, 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters. Aside from the aforementioned awkward guy persona, what is it that endears us so to these films, essentially the result of autobiographical naval-gazing?

For me, it’s that very closeness to honesty and the unmistakable love and affection for his hometown with which Allen imbues those films. In his essay, “Woody Allen’s New York,” (published in Cineaste) Leonard Quart explains that Allen’s New York, never simply a setting but a character in its own right, acts as the “most powerful antidote” to the way the city is usually portrayed in Hollywood – that of wanton and corrupt den of iniquity (Scorsese’s Mean Streets and indeed Taxi Driver spring to mind).

Further, asserts Quart, it is “a city of infinite promise, possibility, and grandeur”. And it is probably those qualities above all which attracts us so to that shining trio of movies, qualities which have kept audiences and critics coming back to his oeuvre all these years. Can you feel a ‘but’ coming? You’re right to, for the last of those films is now more than a quarter of a century old.

“At least he had ceased to cast himself in the role of love interest to women significantly younger than himself”

While Allen has hardly been any less prolific (he continues to turn out movies at an almost alarming rate), there’s no doubting quality has been somewhat more difficult to come by.

At times it seemed he had reached the point where it was best if his output dwindled to something more akin to that of someone of pensionable age (he turned 77 last year). At least though he had ceased to cast himself in the role of love interest to women significantly, often embarrassingly, younger than himself.

And it’s not like they were all turkeys: I surely can’t be the only person to have a soft spot for Mighty Aphrodite (1995) and Everyone Says I Love You (1996)? Few however could claim such (albeit humble) status for 2001’s The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, nor 2006’s Scoop.

But a foray into Europe saw something of a rejuvenation and upturn of fortunes; the likes of 2008’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona and 2011’s Midnight in Paris drawing favourable reviews and even talk of Allen approaching a return to form. Then came last year’s To Rome with Love, proving both critical and commercial flop.

Of course though, if you’re going to commit to making a film a year, the way is bound to be strewn with at least as many misses as hits; certainly, you’d settle for one triumph for every stinker, and in his latest effort, Blue Jasmine, early signs are we have on our hands the former.

Starring Cate Blanchett as a “dead broke” society woman, the Guardian’s Catherine Shoard called Allen’s 46th movie “a brilliant, switchblade soap”. She continued: “It’s only at the end you realise the one thing you didn’t have was tense shoulders. The tense shoulders of the Woody Allen fan sat in front of his latest and wondering whether it’s a return to form.”

I, for one, would love to take Catherine’s word for it. Failing that I’m reaching for Manhattan…

Blue Jasmine screens at FACT, Sunday 22nd September (ahead of its official release the following week)

Posted on 19/09/2013 by thedoublenegative