Word: allene
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...WOODY ALLEN COULD have cashed in his chips in a very big way after Annie Hall. He could have stopped making movies, could have stopped being an anxious, nervy little guy who makes people squirm while they laugh, could have given up on his artistic angst. He might just have just put his feet up, smiled at his rows of Oscars, and lived like a sheik for the next hundred years...
...Instead, Allen put it all on the line with Interiors. In making his first serious movie, what he calls "a drama in the traditional sense," Allen gambled his presumed hammerlock on American humor for a shot at fame as a "serious artist." If Interiors flops, all Allen will have left is the old image of an undignified loser--only it won't seem quite so funny any more...
Whatever prompted him to try this film--whether boredom with his mastery of the "Woody Allen" genre of films or simply a middle-aged change-of-life crisis--Allen is playing with no less than his career. So if the weight of the world hung over Allen when he wrote and directed Interiors, it shows in the film. Interiors is very, very sober: the story chronicles a family's trials and collapse, and the script is filled with heavy dialogue. The father, played by a stalwart but silent E.G. Marshall, severs ties with his compulsive interior decorator-wife (Geraldine Page...
...psychiatrists, and an entirelv new one to American film. Although the mourer, who creates and controls the family's world as she would one of her interiors, is clearly the most neurotic and unstable person in the family, the focus of Interiors is not on her alone. Instead, Allen examines how her illness reflects on each member of the family, and in all of their relations with one another. Each character, with the exception of the daughters' husbands, stands as an individual, compelling our attention, yet we are continually drawn back to the complex relationships within the family...
...film is plainly a tribute to Igmar Bergman, the master at expressing intense emotion and psychological drama on film. Allen emulates Bergman as a student would imitate the master of his craft. The effort, though somewhat over-wrought, like that of a too-careful student, succeeds. A talented cast, well-directed, saves the heavy screenplay from sinking into murky melodrama. Mary Beth Hurt, as the youngest daughter, the one with "all the anguish of an artistic personality without any of the talent," is especially good in her film debut. And Geraldine Page evokes the neurotic woman "too perfect to live...