Word: allen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Allen deflates romantic rhetoric by pointing up the embarassing vulnerability of the flesh...
...pound weakling before, Yacowar magically transforms him into the beach bully of the art world. For some of us, precisely Woody Allen's redeeming feature is that he places himself on the 'before' side; he knows that it's good to be able to laugh at yourself, but it's better not to find yourself needing to spend all your time in this pastime. Hence the nimbus of gloom on all his films. Certainly few people would recognize what makes Allen so popular in the tone Yacowar wields...
...Thus in Bananas a coffin with a stereo attachment is intended for the California market; already Allen identifies the state with irrational pleasure and obliviousness to death...
...distinctively Woody Allen's quality that he doesn't say these things; he limits himself to lighter moods. Conscious that his comedy doesn't do justice to the world around him, he won't permit himself to generalize. The airs of Yacowar's flimsy elevated prose exactly betray this caution. Yacowar has written a worthwhile book about Hitchcock's British Films - we need books about Hitchcock, since it's dismally current for people to think of him as 'the master of suspense,' the public property, grand and genial. Most film criticism tends to be dull, especially the kind which tries...
WHAT WOODY ALLEN brought to the movie, Renata Adler to the novel and Valerie Harper to the sit-com, playwright John Guare has now brought to the stage--that many-headed artistic monster, the Manhattan neurosis. "Bosoms and Neglect," Guare's newest play, is about therapy. It's about loneliness and "5 a.m. friends." It's about the fulminations of intelligent but broken people who are oppressed by the four walls of their Fifth Avenue apartments. Though a bit tired, these themes can usually withstand a warming over, and Guare's is articulate and wry. The trouble comes when...