The city speaks in Woody Allen’s filmography

Analyzing cinema means stopping at the explicit to delve into the implicit. This time we are going to delve into the work of Woody Allen to find out a hidden message from his filmography.

The director resorts to a series of themes such as infidelity, death or psychoanalysis. But if there is something that underlies all these themes, it is an element: the city, which comes to life in Woody Allen’s work. The characters in his films reveal it to us. Attention, what is there spoilers.

New York trajectory

In 1977 the movie Annie Hall features a character, Alvy Singer, obsessed with New York City. After a romantic plot that chronicles the relationship between Alvy and Annie, there is the New York stage as a witness and accomplice in the couple’s entanglements. And the cause of the breakup is Annie’s desire to go to the city of Los Angeles, a place that Alvy hates. “No, don’t insist. I don’t want to live in a city in which the only cultural advantage is that you can turn right with a red light ”argues the character in one of his discussions.

Isaac, protagonist of Manhattan (1979), maintains that admiration in his speeches: “He adored New York, he idolized it in a disproportionate way.” The feature film is a visual and narrative tribute to this city. And Yale, Isaac’s friend, in a scene in which his wife proposes to him to move to the suburbs, recovers the idea that Isaac, a role played by the director himself, would be unable to leave Manhattan. “He is unable to function anywhere other than New York.”

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The start of Manhattan It is a song of love to New York.

None of the characters is willing to leave the city that identifies him. Neither does the director shows initial signs of wanting to change filming location, since in successive years he continues to shoot in New York and until 1996 he did not place a film on European territory.

Detonating

They all say I love you (1996) is shot between New York, Paris and Venice and is based on the story of the american dream in paris, a recurring discourse in North American cinema and that woody allen collects as a new icon of his filmography.

The protagonist wants to conquer a woman with whom he has become infatuated by pretending to be the man of his dreams: “I am a simple man. My plans are, I don’t know, to live in Paris, maybe to fall in love and take long walks in the rain ”. The director ironically lashes out at the Parisian romantic stereotype while continuing to nurture it.

Goldie Hawn and Woody Allen dance on the banks of the Seine in They all say I love you.

The city is drawn under a trail of fleeting romanticism, which is not true, and remains a place for the ideal, unattainable love.

First turning point

In 2003 it surprises in Everything else with a New York speech very different from that of his first years of career. In this case, Dobel, the role played by Woody Allen, insists to his colleague Jerry that they leave New York together: “I have an acquaintance there in California who produces and does comedy programs for television and I know they are looking for teams of writers and if I tell them that you and I are a team, I think they would hire us ”. This gesture is a symbolic approach by the director towards the Hollywood representation model that he criticized in Annie Hall.

From Isaac’s words in Manhattan to Dobel’s in Everything else there is a substantial change, a turning point that modifies the urban trajectory of his filmography. From Everything else, the protagonist of your films will not be New York City.

European first stage

In 2005 he premiered Match Point and starts a period European. With the change of scenery, motivated by the search for financing, he manages to maintain his usual rhythm of filming in exchange for filming in the cities of their investors. An exchange of interests that renews your creativity. However, both in the plots and in the characters of this time we can sense an identity crisis for the director.

In a first phase, he filmed in England a trilogy on crime themes (Match Point, Scoop Y Cassandra’s dream). He draws on classic British murder mystery stories to capture his London vision. And he begins to leave the leading roles in the hands of other actors, whom he uses as alter ego.

Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell in Cassandra’s dream.
Filmaffinity

In the Spanish Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), the director’s voice is split between the two protagonists, which shows a beginning of their own duality. Woody Allen is torn between a Cristina who tries new things without knowing what she wants and a Vicky who has been unfaithful to her organized life project.

Second pivot point

Put this dilemma on If the thing works (2009). The wheel in New York and in it he explains his personal crisis. Boris, the protagonist, hates and curses everything around him. One of his scenes with Melody, his co-star, is set on one of the docks in New York Harbor. They admire the Statue of Liberty while Boris unleashes his antics. It is paradoxical that in this place, which has been the main reception center in the country, the director says goodbye to New York and returns to Europe.

European second stage

“Have you come to Paris to write? Because you see, nowadays many Americans have the need to move here “, they ask Gil, the protagonist of Midnight in Paris (2011). Through its alter ego, Woody Allen fulfills the dream of american in paris. Wonderful things happen to Gil there, but, above all, he finds a new life: “That Paris exists and that someone can choose to live in any other part of the world will always be a mystery to me.”

Marion Cotillard and Owen Wilson and, again, the Seine in Midnight in Paris
Filmaffinity

After this, Allen moves To Rome with love (2012). He returns to acting and raises infidelity as the plot of four independent stories. The chaotic form of this footage is an indication of the director’s state of mind behind his European route.

Climax

That chaos is embodied in the protagonist of Blue Jasmine (2013), a New Yorker who seeks to start a new life in San Francisco after the death of her husband. After a major change in her economic status, Jasmine looks back to her luxurious past in New York and her stays in Europe. The Parisian memory makes her relapse and fall apart again.

Woody Allen represents in Jasmine her confusion after returning to American territory. Blue Jasmine It is a catharsis of the director who regrets having been unfaithful to himself.

Final

In Café Society (2016) recovers the rivalry between New York and Los Angeles that it posed in Annie Hall, although in the context of the 1930s. And in Wonder Wheel (2017) returns to the New York of the 50s. In both films he uses themes about infidelity and characters in existential crisis with which he shows the consequences of his symbolic case.

At this stage, the nostalgic memory he has of New York at the beginning of his career stands out, as Gatsby states in Rainy day in New York (2019). Because, as Alvy Singer said in Annie Hall, “One is always trying to make things perfect in art because getting it in life is really difficult”. Which is why Mort, a New York writer who starred in Rifkin’s Festival (2020), has a creative block that he only solves when he falls in love with a woman who is not his during his stay in San Sebastián.

The location changes bring the director’s filmography to life. And so, as unfaithful and natural as his characters, Woody Allen continues to live and shoot movies in different territories.

Marta by Miguel Zamora, Professor of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising, Rey Juan Carlos University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. read the original.



Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx

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