These were the testing grounds, and the films come across as wonderfully raw and unmarred by Hollywood sheen. He conducted his first genre experiments documentary, adaptation, etc.
For instance, Sleeper essentially allowed Allen to make a silent film long after the age of silent cinema had fallen. Contrary to popular opinion, these films are my least favourite of his.
Yes , Annie Hall gets its own category. This is the film that made critics take him seriously as a filmmaker, not just a comedian. One of my college tutors once said to me that Annie Hall contains every imaginable narrative device.
However, what is truly astonishing is how well it all works together. Annie Hall is a film deconstructed, yet offers an insightful, relatable, and moving look into the love story of this particular fictional couple. Including a little bit of everything, it manages not to feel overworked.
The comedy comes off naturally and the jokes still play, and the developed conflict remains relevant to modern audiences. This leap in comic and dramatic maturity went hand in hand with a top-notch crew. Allen hired cinematographer Gordon Willis of Godfather fame to shoot this film and continued to work with him for several more films.
This marks the beginning of Allen surrounding himself not just with skilled craftsman, but respected visual masters. From this point forward, the directorial quality of his films vastly improves. There are notable comedies peppered here and there — Purple Rose of Cairo and Zelig , in particular — but for the most part, Allen goes extremely dark and several of the films show a Scandinavian influence, almost certainly Ingmar Bergman.
We had a great opportunity to do that in "Manhattan" because we were filming in black-and-white, which is always very beautiful. And we were also filming in anamorphic [widescreen photography], which at the time was only used for bigger pictures, more adventurous pictures, less intimate pictures.
It was for war pictures, things with more action in them. And we took the position that the wide-screen, which was usually used for battle scenes, or westerns, would create an interesting tension with intimate scenes. And Gordon's way of working was.. Gordon would watch, and would say: "You're gonna need something here, you're gonna need something there. He'd say, Don't worry, we can do that.
But there's a couple of essential shots you're gonna need in this. The script girl would then mark down all the shots we were gonna take. And we'd kick 'em off one by one. After a while, Gordon and I discovered the power of working in masters together.
When you edit, you tend to cut right down to a single frame. You do final cuts, not rough cuts, as you don't see the use for them. How did Rosenblum's feedback on "Take the Money and Run" and "Annie Hall" influence the way you pace and edit your films? I met Ralph on "Take the Money and Run. Ralph and I edited every frame together. I would never let any film, and never have, be edited without me there, calling the shots, saying what I want.
Ralph and I would argue frequently, and sometimes I would convince him, and sometimes he would convince me. But everything was edited together all the time. We edited ["Annie Hall"] and showed it to Marshall Brickman , who co-wrote the picture with me. And he said "Parts of this are so jumbled up then even I can't understand it. But every frame that I ever edited in my life with anybody I never let the film be touched without me being there. This is not to say that the editor [doesn't give me essential feedback.
I'm also curious how [director of photography] Carlo Di Palma helped crystallize your style, especially on " Husbands and Wives ," which I know is one of your favorite films. Di Palma said that, since that movie was so characteristically dialogue-driven, actors would end a shooting day feeling exhausted.
He joked that they needed a good nap. With that film, your style was relatively disruptive: you used hand-held camerawork, and scenes where dialogue is interrupted mid-sentence by talking head interview segments. You've described this style as being almost "European. I thought that, since the film's about such neurotic people, and such neurotic relationships, a neurotic style would be appropriate. So I thought I would obey none of the filmmaking rules. I wouldn't care if people were facing the same direction, if they crossed the degree axis of symmetry, if things matched or didn't match, cutting away whenever I wanted, etc.
I decided to make the film as crudely, and as neurotically as the content of the film indicated. Di Palma also said that you worked so well together because you were about the same age. That's also true of you and Gordon Willis.
I looked it up, and saw that [regular collaborator and "Magic in the Moonlight" director of photography] Darius Khondji is actually 20 years younger than you. Does that make a difference in terms of common points of reference? Darius is a great cameraman; he's a great artist, like Gordon Willis. He's beautiful with lights, and with the poetic effects that I like.
I just finished working with him on our fifth collaboration. And he's a great cinematographer, no question about it. Doesn't matter what age they are, but what they have inside them. And Darius is one of the most gifted around in the world today. I figured there wasn't much of a difference since, when you shot " Midnight in Paris" with Khondji, you both immediately thought of " A Space Odyssey " when you filmed in the Musee de L'Orangerie.
You generally prefer a warm color palette, very warm colors. What was the film, or the experience that made you realize that's your general preference? It has an effect on me, I like it. When I see cool films, no matter how beautiful they are, there's something off-putting about them. And I have [production designer and long-time collaborator] Snato Loquasto make the sets look as warm as possible. And I like the lighting to be very warm, and I color-correct things so that they're very red.
Sometimes, the cameraman will be shocked. Sven Nykvist said "My God, their faces will all look like tomatoes! And when Darius was color-correcting " Midnight In Paris," we went all out and made it red, red, red in color-correction.
It makes it like a Matisse. Matisse said that he wanted his paintings to be a nice easy chair that you sit down in, and enjoy. I feel the same way: I want you to sit back, relax, and enjoy the warm color, like take a bath in warm color. But when Farrow wrote about her experience and her subsequent lifetime of trauma, her story was met with some doubt. Because it was first-person instead of third-person?
In all these stories, there are usually just two people alone in a room. These people have little to gain from telling their story but a disruption of their lives, hate mail and a bad reputation. What do their accusers have to gain from denying it? A maintenance of their greater power. Why would we believe these two sides equally? When someone is mugged and points out the man who did it, do we believe the two sides equally?
Mia, and portrayed Dylan as a mere pawn in their break-up. I believe Dylan, but I also believe Soon-Yi and her charges against her mother, that she felt undervalued compared to her white siblings. Bad people sometimes make great art.
But what culture does that create? And how much do we as fans, critics and film professionals contribute to shaping that culture?
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