The suspicion persists among many critics that when one of Mr. Allen’s films fails, it is because he isn’t really trying: He doesn’t spend enough time rewriting, he doesn’t do enough retakes, etc. One can be tempted to believe that Woody is the prisoner of his own reputation. After all, why does a genius have to do retakes or rewrite his own spontaneous wit? One can also suspect that talent diminishes with age, but where does that leave us aging critics? Perhaps the ability to make people laugh fits into a special category. As Chaplin got older, he was widely thought to have lost his comic gifts. With beloved aging performers, the question becomes more and more complex. Did people really laugh with exuberant surprise when Jimmy Durante performed the same shtick for the thousandth time the same way he’d performed it 999 times before? Or was something more complex at work, something like nostalgia or shared survival? The problem is that Woody never asked us to love him: His humor was more sharply edged than that, and now the edge is gone. Or is it? I ask because I do not know.
I don't know, either. I do know that there is something really complicated--and more than a little sad--going on between Woody and his audience. For years, I delighted in Woody Allen's work, and was more than willing to forgive him his flaws and indulgences. Now, he inspires in me a real feeling of loss.
I would disagree with Sarris that Woody never asked us to love us--his early material (the schlemiel persona, the references) is an enjoyable, but very calculated, attempt to give the people who he respected the kind of comedy he thought they'd respond to. Then, having done what he set out to do, Woody began to look around. He didn't like what he saw, either in himself ("I'm dishonest, this persona isn't real, I'm manipulating them...") or us ("...and they lap it up."). When a self-hating performer becomes successful, the audience becomes a target of his/her self-hatred. "If I'm worthless, and they love me, they must be idiots."
With every laugh I think Woody despises us all a little more, throwing out one-liners like fish to a trained seal. Maybe he hates us for continuing to laugh while in a world Allen finds absurd, vile, repugnant. That we see the suffering of the world and want more jokes is, perhaps, an indictable offense--but a famous comedian isn't the person to scold us for it. After all, that was Woody's reaction to the world, too. He may have since discovered that "comedy as palliative" doesn't work, but audiences would naturally feel angry, even cheated, to hear him say that.
A comedian engages in a simple transaction with the audience; an artist's transaction is more complicated, and for better and worse, Woody Allen's become much more of an artist than a comedian. But what he's been attempting for the last 25 years feels very unhappy and thwarted to me. I feel bad when I watch his movies. Whether they are entertaining or not, I feel like I'm watching a desperate, unsuccessful attempt to escape.
Anyway...
Well…
ReplyDeleteI must say Mike, since I read this post a little while back I have been thinking about it. I also happened to be reading Woody Allen’s interview book with Stig Bjorkman at the time . In it, Woody claims that two of the themes of his work are the inability to reconcile the world of fantasy and reality (Stardust Memories is a prime example) and his unwillingness to be consoled by any claim of immortality art can bestow upon its creator. “I'm not interested in living on in the hearts of my countrymen. I'm more interested in living on in my apartment.” The man is afraid of death and he forgets about it a little while he works. I can’t say that I have gotten much out of his work of the last 15 years or so, but it doesn’t make me feel bad. I also don’t feel the contempt, a contempt I sometimes feel from another one of my favorite directors, Robert Altman. Woody says he likes to work and that by making so many movies, he is able to lessen the impact of each work, which brings him a level of safety. If a movie comes out every three years, it becomes an event, more rides on it and less tolerance is given to an individual failure. By being enmeshed in the next project before the previous one is released, he keeps the ball rolling. And this is the way he has always worked, even when he was hitting more than missing. Yes, I guess there is some contempt imbedded in that philosophy, but I’m not so sure it’s outwardly directed. He’s selfish, no doubt, but he works because that’s who he is and he can get away with it. Of course, I no longer look forward to the release of a Woody Allen movie and that’s a little sad, but I consider a movie like Hollywood Ending or Curse of the Jade Scorpion as pleasant diversions, not bitter disappointments or stinky fish being thrown at me. And ones I really don’t like at all like Small Time Crooks or Celebrity, don’t offend me. Sure, I’d like to see another Annie Hall or Radio Days or Crimes and Misdemeanors but I’d be more offended and/or saddened to see him making Little Man 2.
Speaking of death and Durante, Tor Hershman, a blogging acquaintance of mine, came up with a phrase for those near death: Dancing with Durante. It refers to the fact that Carmen Miranda suffered a mild heart attack while dancing with Durante on his show in 1955 and by the next morning she was dead. Probably won’t catch on, but I like it.