WHO is he?
American filmmaker, scriptwriter, actor, playwright, author, stand-up comic and musician who has directed over 40 films since the late 1960s. Known both for his ingenious comic talent as well as his honest portrayal of personal relationships, the versatile Woody Allen has won 4 Oscars for directing and writing which, he said once, he is willing to trade for one more second of life!
WHY is he of interest?
Woody Allen’s cinema could be considered to be a part of New Hollywood and his lead characters, frequently played by himself, are part of the movement’s project to portray people in a more grounded, rounded and wholesome fashion. These flawed, neurotic characters, especially Allen’s own schlemiel image, are stark deviations from the alpha male representations of older Hollywood. Allen’s cinema, among others, has paved the way for many introspective and honest American independent films to date.
WHERE to discover him?
Considered by many to be his finest achievement, Manhattan (1979) is both a love letter to the director’s hometown of New York and a wrenching depiction of life in a hyper-commercial impersonal metropolis. Beautifully scored, shot and directed, Manhattan exhibits a keen sense of place and is an elegantly realised marriage between Allen’s witty, self-deprecating sense of humour and his dramatic inclination towards exploring relationship between men and women in all its beautiful messiness.
WHAT are his films about?
Themes
Broadly speaking, Allen’s films can be divided into comedies and dramas, both of which draw upon the cornerstones of Western literature and philosophy such as the works of Dostoevsky, the cinema of Ingmar Bergman and the writings of Soren Kierkegaard and Jean Paul Sartre. Allen’s comic style primarily consists of juxtaposing ideas from these brooding, Existentialist sources with silly, everyday dilemmas without ridiculing the former or underestimating the latter.
Style
Right from the Windsor font of the titles, through the nervy acting style of the male leads and the jazz-heavy soundtrack, to the pulsating presence of New York City, there is a plethora of unmistakable characteristics of Woody Allen’s cinema. Two of the most familiar cinematographic signatures are tracking shots on the city’s sidewalk as characters converse with each other and panning camera moves as two people keep moving to various rooms of a house, never being able to share the same space or speak to each other face to face.
