Culturebox: I've Seen Every Woody Allen Movie

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the completist I've Seen Every Woody Allen Movie Here's what I've learned. By Juliet Lapidos Posted Thursday, March 31, 2011, at 7:04 AM ET Like Ian Fleming and P.G. Wodehouse, Woody Allen returns compulsively to the same creative ground. In Allen's case, it's ground trod by anxious, well-to-do white people, who swap partners and drop cultural references in an empty, godless universe. The extent of the similarities from one film to the next is remarkable. It's not just that he recasts actors or that he revisits the themes of domestic boredom and cosmic insignificance. He reuses the same font, EF Windsor Light Condensed, for his titles and credits. He recycles character types: the neurotic Jewish New Yorker (the filmmaker's spit and image), the adulterous intellectual, the hypochondriac intellectual. He recycles plot lines. He even recycles punch lines. In Celebrity (1998), a model says she's "polymorphously perverse ... meaning every part of my body gives me sexual pleasure." That should sound familiar: In Annie Hall (1977), Alvy tells Annie that she's "polymorphously perverse ... you get pleasure in every part of your body when I touch it." Given the redundancy of Allen's work, it might seem like a waste of time to dig into it deeply and get beyond his top-tier comedies and dramas. Yet attending "the new Woody Allen" is, for me, an annual rite. The worrisomely prolific auteur has written and directed 40 feature-length films, and has a 41st scheduled to premiere at Cannes in May. I have seen them all, as well as the early movies that he wrote but did not direct (What's New Pussycat?, Play It Again, Sam), the shorts Oedipus Wrecks and Sounds from a Town I Love, and the TV movie Don't Drink the Water. I've even watched Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story, a 25-minute mockumentary that satirizes the Nixon administration. Produced as a television special for PBS, it was pulled before airing, reportedly because the programmers feared antagonizing government officials. (I tracked it down at the Paley Center for Media.) Lots of cinephiles can quote the best lines from Love and Death. Sonja: "Sex without love is an empty experience." Boris: "Yes, but as empty experiences go, it's one of the best!" I can cite jokes from Take the Money and Run: "I think crime pays. The hours are good, you meet a lot of interesting people, you travel a lot." Or from Stardust Memories: "To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the loyal opposition." To continue reading, click here. Juliet Lapidos is a Slate associate editor. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate The Troubling Risks of the U.S. Arming and Getting Cozy With the Libyan Rebels Bill James: Why Are We So Good at Developing Athletes and So Lousy at Developing Writers? Britney Spears' New Album Is Brilliantly Avant-Garde. Seriously.	Advertisement
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