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Woody Allen saddens by being a once very good artist who has made an incredible number of empty and subpar films; his good films were so very good that they kept me loyal for years after the quality went away.
I've gone so far as to get the IMDB list of Woody Allen films, to further examine the phenomenon. Now, I will say that I only captured as far back as "Take the Money and Run," which strikes me as the first "real" Woody Allen movie -- it is the first aside from TIGER LILY that he ever directed, and it's the first film to show his strengths, though in retrospect it really isn't very good. But let's follow the stages of his career.
THE FIRST STAGE
Don't Drink the Water (1969) (also play)
Take the Money and Run (1969) (written by)
Bananas (1971)
Everything...Sex (1972)
Play It Again Sam (1972)
Sleeper (1973)
Love and Death (1975) (written by)
Sleeper (1973) (written by)
Love and Death (1975)
Okay. This was, for lack of a better word, his juvenalia. His spoofery. Some of it was quite good, but it was gag-driven, and therefore hit and miss. I don't think these are his best films, as too many of his fans believe, but they were his growing period.
THE BREAKOUT FILMS
Annie Hall (1977)
Interiors (1978)
Manhattan (1979)
These were the films that showed he might have something on the ball artistically as well as comedically. His drama INTERIORS is the weakest of the three, but still shows the maturation of his talent. Though even with MANHATTAN, you can kinda see the potential for annoying self-gratification right below the surface. But I do like all three of these quite a bit. This was a high point for him -- so much so that some fans facilely say he hasn't made a good film since ANNIE HALL, a judgment I consider idiotic. He had higher achievements yet to come.
THE FIRST SAD PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS
Stardust Memories (1980)
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982)
These films, by contrast, weren't all that good: they meandered, and in the case of STARDUST MEMORIES were downright self-pitying and unpleasant. They showed the elements of his talent that could swallow the best parts whole.
THE GOLDEN YEARS
Zelig (1983) (written by)
Broadway Danny Rose (1984)
The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
September (1987)
Radio Days (1987)
Another Woman (1988)
New York Stories (1989) (segment "Oedipus Wrecks")
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
Now, I can't vouch for SEPTEMBER, as it's the one I haven't seen, but this was the truly astonishing streak, when it seemed he could do no wrong, when everything he did was fresh and filled with energy. In retrospect, ZELIG was largely filler, and HANNAH was a bit of a mess, but both were accomplished films, and the other three (RADIO DAYS, PURPLE ROSE, DANNY ROSE) are all absolute joys. It's this streak -which includes a career high point, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, that had me continuing to see his films will into the late '90s, as I continued to root for him. But he would never be this consistently good again.
THE DECLINE
Alice (1990)
Shadows and Fog (1992)
Husbands and Wives (1992)
Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)
Bullets Over Broadway (1994)
Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
Everyone Says I Love You (1996)
This is the period where his mannerisms became tics, where an increasing percentage of his output became rote, and where his presence became annoying. Even the entertaining films in this bunch are minor -- and his character's ability to seduce very young women had real-life resonances that were unfortunate at best. At least one of these films, SHADOW AND FOG, was really really bad/ He was still sort of entertaining, at his best. But by the end of this time it was beginning to get a little startling to recall just how long ago the last fully terrific film was: 1989.
THE YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS
Deconstructing Harry (1997)
Celebrity (1998)
Sweet and Lowdown (1999)
Small Time Crooks (2000)
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)
Hollywood Ending (2002)
Anything Else (2003)
Melinda and Melinda (2004)
The past ten years have been a long, sad drought. Aside from DECONSTRUCTING HARRY, his apologia for being a rotten human being who excels as an artist (a probable comment on the Mia Farrow / Soon-Yi Previn situation), which failed as a whole but had some comic highlights, this is the period where Woody Allen, the on-screen personality, coalesced into a downright regugnant presence, more sad than charming. This is also where his younger proxies (such as Branagh in the painful CELEBRITY, the worst performance of that worthy's career), became just as hard to take. SMALL TIME CROOKS was devoid of a single funny moment. So was CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION. I missed SWEET AND LOWDOWN, which some praise, but couldn't bring myself to see HOLLYWOOD ENDING, but I did catch ANYTHING ELSE, which featured a truly toxic Allen giving romantic advice to a younger man, on cable; it was downright difficult to watch even five minutes of it, and Allen himself was the kind of presence you would cross the street to avoid.
All of which brings us to MATCH POINT (2005). Which not only astonishes by being as thoroughly unWoody a film as he has ever made (you would never know it was him if you didn't see his name on the credits), and the first excellent one he's made since 1989's CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, but which further astonishes by being one of the very best films of his career: as accomplished as stuff he made twenty years ago, during his golden period.
So THAT is how surprising this is.
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