Word: allen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Religious man. The Esthete transcends himself through Irony to become the Man of Law, and the Man of Law transcends himself through the recognition of the Absurd to become the Religious man who lives in the world but not of it. This explains Woody Allen's fascination with the works of Kierkegaard (it also explains Kierkegaard's continual use of pseudonyms as an escape from fixed identify). The humorist desperately wants to take himself seriously, and concomitant to this, wants others to do the same. The only defense the humorist has against his own cynicism is to say serious things...
...Pender County superior court last week, three key prosecution witnesses testified that they had lied at the original trial under pressure from Prosecutor Stroud. The star witness, Allen Hall, a black youth with an IQ of 78 and a long criminal record, swore in confusing testimony that while he was under observation at a mental hospital before the trial, Stroud had promised him a short prison sentence; he said he was coached to insist that he had helped set the grocery ablaze under Chavis' direction. Another witness, then 13 years old, said Stroud gave...
...which goes to show that the self-pity is still very much present. Allen has simply managed to turn it into highly successful entertainment. Annie Hall is, above all, an immensely funny film. Granted, it lacks both the sustained hilarity of Sleeper and the combination of farce and parody which characterized Love and Death. Then again, in Annie Hall, Allen doesn't need to go as far away in space as Russia, or as far away in time as several thousand years A.D. He can score points off the present without ever straying from his psychoanalyst's couch...
Aiding him is a large, name cast. Most memorable is Shelley Duvall as the rock reporter, prey to her own propaganda, who bores and beds Allen. Colleen Dewhurst also has a bit part as Annie's WASP mother, who exults in the ham she serves Allen. And then there is Keaton. She has never been much of an actress--perhaps the funniest scene she ever played was her dramatic revelation in Godfather II that she had aborted Al Pacino's baby. But in Annie Hall she is presentable enough as Allen's WASP counterpart; for once, she and Allen seem...
That believability is what distinguishes Annie Hall from many of Allen's other films. Alvy Singer and Annie Hall are real people--a bit more neurotic than most, perhaps, but still too familiar to be dismissed with a chuckle. Too many of the scenes in Annie Hall strike home--like the one where Allen, peeved at being late, refuses to enter a movie theater two minutes into the screening. Compulsive, yes--but in the case of a movie as good as Annie Hall, that sort of stubborn insistence on seeing the whole thing makes a great deal of sense...