Woody Allen
Life and Works
American motion-picture director, screenwriter, actor, and author, best known for his bittersweet comic films containing elements of parody, slapstick, and the absurd. He was also known as a sympathetic director for women, writing strong and well-defined characters for them. Among his featured erformers were Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow.Much of Allen's comic material derives from his urban Jewish middle-class background. Intending to be a playwright, Allen began writing stand-up comedy monologues while still in high school. His introduction to show business came a few years later when he was hired to write material for such television comedians as Sid Caesar and Art Carney.
Close up of Allen's statue in Oviedo
In the early 1960s, after several false starts, he acquired a following on the nightclub circuit, performing his own stand-up comedy routines. His comic persona was that of an insecure and doubt-ridden person who playfully exaggerates his own failures and anxieties.Soon Allen began writing and directing plays and films, often also acting in the latter. He appeared in and wrote the screenplay for What's New, Pussycat? (1965), and his first play, Don't Drink the Water, appeared on Broadway in 1966. He starred in and directed the film Take the Money and Run (1969), a farcical comedy about an incompetent would-be criminal. The films that followed, Bananas (1971), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask (1972), and Sleeper (1973), employed a highly inventive, joke-oriented style and secured his reputation as a major comic filmmaker.
In Love and Death (1975), a parody of 19th-century Russian novels, critics discerned an increased seriousness beneath the comic surface. This was borne out in Allen's next (directed) film, the award-winning Annie Hall (1977), in which the self-deprecating humour of the protagonist (played by Allen) serves as but one motif in a rich portrayal of a contemporary urban romantic relationship. He also starred in the film version (1972) of his successful Broadway play Play It Again, Sam (1969) and in the motion picture The Front (1976).
Blend of comedy and philosophy
Allen's subsequent films contained a paradoxical blend of comedy and philosophy and a juxtaposition of trivialities with major concerns. The critical and commercial failure of the bleakly serious drama Interiors (1978) was followed by the highly acclaimed seriocomedy Manhattan (1979). In such later films as Stardust Memories (1980), Zelig (1983), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Side Effects (1989) and Alice (1990) Allen attempted with varying success to blend his vein of absurd humour with more realistic narratives, a wider range of character portrayals, and light but basically serious themes.Not only has Allen written most of the scripts for his own movies, he has also done, at least, nine plays. Four of them have been professionally published so far, Don't Drink the Water, Play It Again Sam, The Floating Light Bulb and Central Park West.
Don’t Drink the Water was a great hit on Broadway, with 598 performances. But it got awful criticism in 1969, when director Howard Morris made a film out of it. Allen hated his version. And in 1994 he re-made it for television, in his own direction.When Play it Again, Sam was first due on Broadway, Allen himself was in the leading role of Allan Felix. That’s were he first met Diane Keaton. The play ran to 453 performances, followed by the film starring Allen and Keaton. For years the Play it again, Sam was the eleventh most popular play on the American amateur stage - Don’t Drink the Water rating fifth.The Floating Light Bulb is Allen’s only drama play. Not as famous as the previous two, but still made it to be one of the Best Plays in the 1981-1982 Broadway season.
Latest Play
His latest play, Central Park West, is not in full length. It is a part of a three one-act plays put together in one, called Death Defying Act. The other plays were modified television sketches called Hotaline and An Interview, leaving Allen’s play a bit more ambitious. Some critics related the play to Allen’s relationship with Soon-Yi, but it is about an adult man leaving his wife for a twenty-one-year-old film student. The play did well and ran in 343 performances.
All Woody Allen films seem to support the idea that knowing more means suffering more. He always seemed certain that ignorant people are the only ones capable of experiencing happiness. He couldn’t argue against that. He had to deal with it. And he dealt with it in many interesting ways. In a fifteen year period between Annie Hall and Husbands and Wives Woody Allen’s view on the role of education changed significantly. He went from despising the ignorance through the celebration of simplicity to accepting knowledge with all its bad "side effects". It is safe to say however that he didn’t say his last word in that matter. I am sure that his new movies will have something new to communicate on that subject.