Cafe Society (2016)

After one or two recent misfires, Woody Allen is back on form with Cafe Society. More of a witty drama than an outright comedy, this is a film which harks back to the era of some of his earlier work such as The Purple Rose of Cairo and Bullets over Broadway, although with a completely different style to either of these.

Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) is the youngest child in a 1930s New York Jewish family, where elder sister Evelyn works as a school teacher, while his elder brother Ben is a gangster. Desperate to escape all of this, Bobby moves to Hollywood, getting a job running errands for his high flying agent uncle Phil (Steve Carell). From here, he falls in love with Bobby's secretary Vonnie, has his heart broken in a particularly cruel twist of fate, moves back to New York, starts managing his brother's high-end nightclub, meets and marries another woman called Vonnie - then meets the original Vonnie again.

The different story strands illustrate themes that have recurred throughout Allen's career, particularly in regard to chance, fate, and justice, summed up in Bobby's observation that ‘Life is a comedy written by a sadistic comedy writer.’

Eisenberg does a great job of channelling the tics and mannerisms of Allen's onscreen character. He is aided by Kristen Stewart, who as Vonnie number one, switches gear believably between lowly secretary and Hollywood wife, Steve Carrel, who brings both toughness and vulnerability to the part of Uncle Phil and Blake Lively, who makes the best of an underused part as Vonnie number two.

It is also interesting to see Allen return to a subject that he seems to have left alone for a while. Jewishness is something that defines the Dorfman family, and while it does fuel a few trademark Allen one-liners, the abandoning of this by one of their clan drives one part of the story.

Allen is not afraid to both explore and criticise two big American mythologises of the 1930s, Hollywood and gangsters. While both are undeniably glamorous for the people viewing them from a distance, and financially rewarding for those involved, any wide eyed naivety is undercut by unpleasant bitchiness for the former and gruesome violence for the latter. He also, and not for the first time in his work, ends the film on a somewhat bittersweet note, with lives changed for the worse, hopes and dreams left unfulfilled and characters left wondering what could have been.

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

The author Shirley Jackson once wrote, “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality”, and such thinking may go some way to explain the appeal of watching films with a fantasy or escapist element to them. Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo is a clever and charming exploration of this idea, as well as our relationship with movies, movie characters, and the people who bring them to life. Although the film is a move away from the more usual explorations of contemporary New York, it still has plenty of his familiar tropes, as well as a surprising twist in the tail.

Cecilia (Mia Farrow) lives in Depression era New Jersey, struggling to get by on her waitress wages. Her husband, Monk (Danny Aiello) is no help, spending his days playing pitch and toss with his unemployed friends, and his nights drinking, gambling and occasionally hitting Cecilia. Her only escape is the movie theatre, losing herself week after week in the fluff and glamour on the silver screen. During one viewing of her latest favourite, The Purple Rose of Cairo, the impossible happens – her favourite character, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) comes out of the screen into reality – and declares his love for her. This has serious implications for her marriage – but also for the rest of the characters trapped on screen, who can't move the story forward without their leading man.

The film within a film, The Purple Rose of Cairo is brilliant, a perfect pastiche of the bright and breezy RKO fluff musicals with their mix of beautiful people flitting between big apartments and New York nightclubs, with singers, big bands, and endless champagne. When Baxter steps down into the audience, this takes the film into the world of magical realism described by the writer Matthew Strecher as “what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe”. While atypical of Allen's work overall, it is an area he does move into from time to time, in films such as Play It Again Sam and Midnight in Paris. In addition, as with those films, Allen never explains the cause of the fantastic events, leaving them open to interpretation – is it in people's imagination, some sort of mass hallucination – or has the sheer willpower of a devoted movie fan bought her idol to life? 

The characters themselves are a little two dimensional, but in the context of the era, the films Cecilia likes to watch, and the fantastic events depicted, the slightly unnatural sounding dialogue, such as the onscreen characters having a philosophical discussion, does not seem as jarring as it would in a contemporary setting. Farrow helps, bringing a likeable charm to her character, and her sometimes neurotic mannerisms make her the nearest we have to the “Woody Allen” character that usually crops up if the man himself does not in one of his films.

The period detail feels convincing, and the film clearly had some money spent on it, but more importantly, Allen clearly also spent time on the script, and as feels engaged in the subject, so we feel engaged too. The Purple Rose of Cairo is a film about films, one which looks into not just the creative process that lies behind them, but also the relationship between the filmmakers, the fictional characters they create, and the audience who fall in love with them. Here Allen ask questions as to what it really is that we fall in love with – the actor, the character they are playing, or the image we have of them.

The crux of the drama and comedy is the clash between the world of the movies (perfection, order, repetition, happy endings) and that of real life (imperfect, real, chaotic, unhappy endings). Ultimately Allen celebrates both of these for being what they are, and while he does not appear to be favouring one over the other, he seems to suggest that "real" will eventually win out whether we like it or not. This is most evident in the heartbreaking climax, where Allen refuses to pander to the sort of happy endings of classic movie fantasy, even though he celebrates these as good things in their own world.

Caprice (1967)

Caprice is a joyless grating mess of a film that wastes the charms and talents of the two stars. Doris Day plays Patricia Foster, an industrial spy for a global cosmetics firm run by Sir Jason Fox (Edward Mulhare of Knight Rider fame). She crosses swords with rival snoop Christopher White (Richard Harris), both of whom are chasing the latest vital inventions from each other’s companies, inventions such as a spray that keeps hair dry under water and mascara that turns into LSD if you burn it and ingest the ashes.

Beyond that, I am not entirely sure what happened. Patricia’s dad used to be an Interpol agent who was murdered, so she is trying to avenge his death, and White may not be all he seems. Day is a great comic actress but here she feels out of her depth, unsure how to act amongst the avalanche of sixties clichés, while Harris varies between embarrassed and can’t be bothered, and there certainly isn’t the slightest bit of chemistry between them, surely a vital requirement for any romantic comedy.

The comedy is thin on the ground too with jokes that fall flat and an irritatingly self conscious wackiness. The constant shifts in tone feel like the film-makers, or perhaps the studio, were unsure what they were after.

Perhaps more importantly than not knowing what was happening is that after one too many exasperating double cross plot twists, I eventually stopped caring.

Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

Magic in the Moonlight is an affable, distracting, but ultimately unsatisfactory effort from Woody Allen. The whole thing looks great, the actors do a good job with what they are given, but the central premise is spread far too thinly to carry a feature length film, and the dialogue is clunky and awkward.

Colin Firth plays Stanley, a world famous illusionist, better known as Wei Ling Soo, who is roped in by an old friend and fellow magician to unmask a psychic, Sophie (Emma Stone) who is preying on a wealthy friend of his. At first, Stanley thinks this will be a simple task, but as he gets more involved, he finds himself starting to doubt his materialistic worldview. Could Sophie really have the power to talk to the dead? In addition, could Stanley be falling in love with her?

The problem, as is so often the case with modern Woody Allen films, is the script, which feels rushed and poorly thought out, and fails on several levels. Firstly, the central idea, essentially "is it a bad thing to believe in an illusion if it makes you happy?" is interesting and thought provoking, but thinly stretched over a feature length film. Allen has done multiple storyline films before, such as Hannah and Her Sisters or Crimes and Misdemeanours, and maybe that approach would have worked better here. To his credit, despite Allen’s well known atheist leanings, he does not lecture or polemicize in the script.

Secondly, none of the characters feel as though they are real people, and are only the doing the things they do because the script says so, not because that is what the character would do. Stanley’s conversion from devout atheist to true believer in the afterlife is not in the slightest bit convincing, (especially given his “thorough” testing of Sophie seems to consist of one séance and her telling him things about his beloved aunt), and neither is the idea of a love affair between Stanley and Sophie.

Thirdly, is the dialogue, which is grating, clunky and artificial sounding, something that perhaps reads better on a page than coming out of somebody's mouth.

Finally, and I have no idea if this is done for budgetary or artistic reasons, but there is far too much “tell don’t show”, with interminable scenes of characters explaining what has happened off screen, or how they feel, giving some of the film a turgid lifeless feel. Noticeably absent is any version of "The Woody Allen character", a staple of his films, whether played by Allen or an impersonator such as John Cusack in Bullets over Broadway. This character can usually be relied upon to inject some life into any situation, with his neuroses and collection of good one liners (another element missing from this film - it simply is not funny)

However, if the script is lacking in depth, detail and poetry, then the production design certainly is not. The costumes, cars and country estates all look wonderful, but beyond that, help to make the Great Gatsby meets Wodehouse world completely believable. The music, another staple of Allen films is well chosen, a mix of well-known and more obscure big band songs from the era.

Sadly, though, these elements on their own cannot save the film, and Magic in the Moonlight goes on the "pleasant but forgettable" pile of Woody Allen films. A shame, as he has shown with Blue Jasmine and Midnight in Paris that when he spends a bit of time crafting the script he can still make interesting, thought provoking and funny work. The Allen juggernaut roles ever onwards with shooting underway on his latest film, so, who knows - maybe next time?

Celebrity (1998)

With the rate at which he churns them out, it is no surprise that the back catalogue of Woody Allen is going to be a mix of hits and misses. Although I find more hits than some critics or moviegoers, Celebrity is not one of them, lumbered as it is with a rambling and largely dull screenplay, unlikeable characters, and an annoying Woody Allen impersonation from Kenneth Branagh.
 
Lee (played by Branagh) is a failed novelist turned travel writer and celebrity journalist, going through a midlife crisis and a divorce from his wife, Robin (Judy Davis), a neurotic and insecure English teacher. While a chance encounter at a plastic surgery clinic sets Robin on the path to a new life and a new career as a TV presenter, Lee sees his relationships flounder, along with his dreams of getting his screenplay filmed.
 
I am not of the opinion that Allen has lost it, as recent efforts like Blue Jasmine have shown that with the right premise, and some time spent constructing the script he can still more than cut it. However, Celebrity feels like he got a bunch of ideas that had been lying around, and tried to string them together in one rushed draft. For a film packed with neurotics the finished product feels lifeless. It is hard to give a damn about the characters, and their world is too insular, with nothing about them, either on the surface or in broader characteristics or situations that gives us a way in with anything to sympathise or identify with.

As any Allen aficionado knows, a film of his that does not star him will often have one character doing an impersonation of “The Woody Allen Character”, and here we have Kenneth Branagh doing his attempt. Unfortunately, while he captures the surface traits, the tics, the stuttering, the hand gestures, he never manages to get beyond that and turn Lee into a believable character.

Judy Davis does a better job of bringing Robin to life, imbuing her with some likeable vulnerability. The events that happen to her may seem improbable, but in a way, that is kind of the point, in the context of the character arc.

The film is not totally without merit, and, aside from some good quality one-liners ("What's your next project?" "Birth of a Nation, an all-black version") there is one genuinely hilarious sequence, with Lee inadvertently taking a trip to Atlantic City with a vain, violent movie star (a cameo from Leonardo di Caprio) and trying to discuss rewrites to his script with in the middle of a hooker and drugs orgy.
 

That alone might make be enough to make it worth watching for Woody Allen completists, but anyone else may struggle to find a reason.

The Thrill Of It All (1963)

The success of the TV show Mad Men triggered some interest and debate fairly recently over mid 20th century attitudes towards gender roles and advertising. The Thrill of It All is a film dealing with both themes, but as it was made nearer to the time Mad Men is set in, it does not have the safety net of ironic detachment to fall back on.

Doris Day plays housewife Beverly Boyer, who, after a chance remark at a dinner party, ends up doing TV commercials for Happy Soap - much to the chagrin of her husband, obstetrician Gerald, played by James Garner. As her fame and earning power grows, so does Gerald's jealousy. Will have Beverley have to choose between her career and her marriage?

Despite being written by two genuine comedy legends, Larry Gelbart and Carl Reiner, the script never raises any real belly laughs, and does not really rise above the level of the domestic TV sitcoms of the time, with cheesy dialogue and predictable situations, although some of the sexual innuendo is good for a chuckle. Thankfully, the seemingly effortless charisma of the two stars, who take up the majority of the screen time, make the film a very enjoyable watch. The rest of the cast go for a rather exaggerated, almost cartoon style of acting, that grates after a while.

The main message of the woman gaining, and then giving up her vocational and financial independence could be problematic, but it is difficult to take as misogynistic given the lightweight, insubstantial nature of the film.

Rather than the "Battle of the Sexes", the more interesting conflict is that between TV and cinema. The Thrill of It All is set in the time when TV was, relatively speaking, still in its infancy, and still a fairly crude and unsophisticated medium, both in technology and form. The dramas sponsored by Happy Soap are depicted as being poorly made, with a running gag of about them literally churning out the same scenes each week. Nevertheless, the public are entranced by it, perhaps as much by the novelty as by the content.

This leads to a slightly sneering, dismissive tone in the script, as if television is a medium driven primarily by commercial concerns, providing mindless, cheap entertainment to the masses, but never able to reach the sophisticated heights of more established forms. Which is of course exactly how, in it's early days, cinema was perceived.