First an appearance at the Oscars, then a new movie (Hollywood Ending) that’s got a decent shot at making you laugh, and now he’s cooperating with the media–what’s next, a young new wife? Oh, wait….
We kid because we love.
Woody Allen: A Life in Film is the first biographical documentary that has Woody Allen‘s full cooperation, and the semi-reclusive filmmaker has rarely revealed himself the way he does in the documentary from Time film critic Richard Schickel, who produced, wrote and directed it for Turner Classic Movies.
The documentary’s concept is simple, yet effective: Allen sits for a close-up interview and speaks insightfully and charmingly about his films, while clips illuminate his themes and techniques. It looks and feels as if Allen directed the documentary.
Allen is clearly comfortable with Schickel, and his insights into his life as a filmmaker are engagingly real without giving the impression that he’s being self-deprecating for the good will it will generate.
Just don’t expect anything personal. There’s nothing juicy or revealing here about Allen‘s relationships, children, neuroses or anything like that. The documentary is all about Allen‘s films, which is perfectly fine.
But for all the tomes of criticism, articles of analysis and term papers that have been written on the Allen oeuvre, Woody’s most astute critic may be Woody himself.
Allen offers this explanation of 1971’s Bananas: He didn’t so much write the screenplay, he says, as cobble together a flimsy excuse for a plot, “an armature on which to hang a million crazy jokes.”
Even when he talks about some of his duds, Allen‘s intriguing. It’s much more entertaining to watch Allen discuss the melancholy Interiors (1978) than to watch the actual movie–although, after listening to what he had in mind, it’s probably worth another try.
The documentary also contains the kind of gems you don’t often hear from our most revered directors. “I’m not a workaholic. That’s a myth about me,” Allen insists. To prove the point, he says that if he absolutely has to get the shot and the light is fading, but it’s almost time for his beloved New York Knicks to tip off at Madison Square Garden, the decision is a no-brainer: “I blow the shot off and go to the Knicks game all the time. Films are not a religion to me.”
At the end of A Life in Film, Allen complains that a person watching the documentary and seeing the clips might think, erroneously, that the films discussed are good.
Allen‘s films are good: If anything’s erroneous, it’s been our perceptions of the man and his films.
