Quote:
|
Originally Posted by demonrail666
Annie Hall and Manhattan.
|
I watched it about a week ago after having not seen it in about a decade. But I've watched it perhaps 30 times in my life. It struck me too as being too joke-heavy but then I remembered it came right after Love and Death, and it suddenly seemed miles more mature.
For some meat, think of it as a revisionist flick, like so many other 70s classics. It's an anti-romance film, subverting the genre in a number of ways.
And it's a technical knock-out. Look at how he frames that JFK/Alice Porchnick scene (although that might be all Gordon Willis for all I know). I swear it's as graceful as Renoir.
And it also initiated what I am coming to believe is one of the great cinematic wonders of the last blah blah blah. Allen's work from Annie Hall all the way to Bullets Over Broadway...that streak is jaw-droppingly good and might only be fully appreciated when he dies. (Coming sooner than we think, folks.)
The duds? Midsummer's Night Sex Comedy, Alice, Shadows and Fog, perhaps September. As duds go, those are pretty good.
And the winners? The rest, mostly. Those light things like Danny Rose, Radio Days and Zelig bristle with energy and imagination and do their little thing perfectly.
He pretty much mastered the "dramady," Hanna and Crimes particularly. (The "and" duo.) But I'd throw Purple into that category. Man, that gut-wrenching ending!
I think Hanna and Crimes look "classic" in their warm autumnal way, as classic in my mind as b and w. The neglected Husbands and Wives is also one of my favorite looking films. I could just fall into those colors.
For me, Bullets Over Broadway was something of a cutoff point. Some sort of magic deserted him after that very good film. As far as I'm concerned, he hasn't made a truly great film since. (Nope, still not sold on Match Point or Midnight, though I might give Vicky another try.) There were clever ideas, but they never seemed to work out. And of course there were bad ideas that never could (looking at you, Hollywood Ending, but you've got company close behind).
But whatever. Who else, for more than a decade, made films which are 95% good or masterpieces. EVERY YEAR! Genius? Cut the dross, concentrate on the good, and the answer is obviously yes.