The admiration so many film critics and film-goers have for Woody Allen has become increasingly puzzling to me over the years. I appreciate some of his films, and I have seen most of them, but I cannot help but question Allen's much-touted intellectual depth. When people speak admiringly of Allen, I instinctively furrow my brow, which has led to some heated discussions amongst friends and family. My goal here is to work through Woody Allen's extensive filmography briefly, describing at each turn why I just don't get him.
Woody Allen's first films were an accessible but slight string of light comedies. I think even Allen's most fervent apologists cannot affirm their depth, though there is some early signs of intellectual posturing—regardless, Allen’s faux intellectualism had not yet become an intolerable blemish on his work. Bananas is the best of the bunch (forgive the pun, which I intended but somewhat regret), though it is essentially a reworking of Harold Lloyd’s much better silent feature Why Worry?
The late 1970s saw Allen's first “mature” work, including Allen's best film, Annie Hall, a winning romantic comedy (and despite Allen's obvious pretentions, it is just a romantic comedy and not some great artistic statement about the complexities of human relationships). Interiors (his first drama), on the other hand, is mind-numbingly awful; Allen is clearly out of his depth in trying to tackle actual human issues, and his sense of aesthetics is as boring as his worldview is absurd. Manhattan is his best-shot film (though New York rarely needs help looking beautiful when shot in black and white), but his on screen personality has already become grating.
Allen's 80s movies were increasingly uneven: the best two were Zelig, one that successfully captures the innocence of his early work, and Radio Days, which, for a novel change, was a pleasing attempt at making something of an honest film. Most of his 80s works, however, were failed attempts at capturing the essence of other, much greater artists. The Purple Rose of Cairo paraphrases Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. but flounders trying to make its point, while the overly sentimental Hannah and Her Sisters tries but fails to affirm life in Allen's frustratingly inconsistent worldview. Crimes and Misdemeanors is a decadent work that finally betrays the shallowness of Allen's philosophy and his equally shallow understanding of art. Allen is no more intellectually equipped to deal with moral issues than a chimpanzee is equipped to solve a quadratic equation.
Allen's work from the 90s onward has been largely irrelevant and self-parodic. He has become a filmmaker with no ideas, nothing to say, and no creativity; I have to assume that the only reason he cannot bear to deny the world his tiresome presence is because of his terminal narcissism.
