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Go Home David Thomson on Films: ‘Midnight in Paris’

FILM JUNE 1, 2011

David Thomson on Films: ‘Midnight in Paris’

BY DAVID THOMSON

Opening in May and reaching out into the early summer, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is an artful and shameless encouragement of going back to Paris. I suppose that’s better than artless and shameful, but, from a director who is aged 75 now, wouldn’t it be nice to feel some age and regret, to say nothing of this being the last time he’ll see Paris with the euro stronger than a two-day old croissant? The film makes pleasant, easy-going fun out of the idea of revisiting a starry past—the 1920s!—but, in truth, the movie’s Americans in Paris (at the Bristol) are so loaded, so smug, and so Woodyish that they’re locked in the emotional clichés of the 1920s already.

Gil (Owen Wilson) is a successful but soured Hollywood scriptwriter (again, a type from the past) who may want to write a novel—or want to want to write a novel. Desire in these states is so articulated and compromised it has to go around corners slowly. He is with Inez (Rachel McAdams), his spoiled, hard-edged, shopping-mad lover—except that she is his fiancée. I suppose there was a time when rich young Americans took a “fiancée” to Paris—with the fiancée’s stuffy and disapproving parents. All we can see is that Owen and Inez are not suited. They share a room but not each other. After all, she refuses to remark on the kink in his nose—that tact wouldn’t happen in Inez when it confounds the cameraman at every close-up.

When they get married, Inez wants to live in Malibu on Gil’s junky scripts. No one seems to know that junky deals are now as elusive to pin down as “good” ones. But Gil hankers for the old Paris where Americans took their artistic dreams, so, lost and alone in those windy back streets, at midnight, he is picked up by an antique automobile that contains F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda. It is his portal to the past.

This is known as a conceit, and it carries Gil back into what he regards as the “golden age”—he meets Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Picasso, Matisse, Man Ray, Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali, and so on, plus he picks up the winsome, lose-some Marion Cotillard (who herself longs to get farther back to the Belle Epoque). This might be a spoiler—if you were simpletons enough to miss what’s coming—but Gil will learn to see through Inez and stay in Paris.

Midnight in Paris is very far from the worst film Woody Allen has made in the last 300. He has a conventional prettifying tourist’s eye for the great city. He pursues his old wintry habit of collecting attractive girls and then abandoning them—cast cute but then never give them real scenes, let alone emotions. He has a promising misunderstanding over a pair of earrings, but then tidies it away as if it’s going to require too much work. And the 75-year-old continues to survey his own pictures like a 22-year-old who is superior, lazy, and chronically immature. So the game is played, but no one cares—least of all Allen. The films might as well come with numbers and grades. In which case, this is a solid B for charm, when charm needs to be airy, risky, and torn between an A and an incomplete. It’s just that there is no evident reason why it was made, beyond not making another film, or taking a season off to ask himself, “Why do I need to make another film?”

So Woody Allen attracts promising players and does nothing with them—as an example, he has Michael Sheen and Nina Arianda in this picture (because he’d heard they were good?) but they have nothing to do, except deliver instant plot points. Sheen plays a one-note show-off who is there to romance Inez while Gil goes back to the past—but we never see the romance, which could have been funny enough to turn Inez into a shrew.

The film has a point—about the way golden ages are in the eye of the gold-digger—that is interesting until it’s hammered flat as gold leaf. Above all, Allen delivers not one pang that says, look, I’m an old-timer and time is running out. It’s not just Paris that has deserted me, but love. In all the years, the guarded cleverness and whiny promise of Woody Allen have been afraid of doing feeling. It was there in Manhattan, and I’m not sure where else. He has the artistic fatigue of a lounge piano-player tired of “Feelings.”

But audiences seem to be enjoying Midnight in Paris: I saw it in a sold-out afternoon house, with applause and customers ready to make an Air France booking. It was like being at an Allen picture from the 1970s. The cameos from Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Dali (a delicious Adrien Brody) do pass the time. But I have to advise that, if you like this kind of dish, it was done infinitely better in 1988 by Alan Rudolph in a picture called The Moderns. That had a real love story with loss and passion regained. It was a very witty view of fraud in the art world. Its Hemingway (Kevin O’Connor) was far better than Woody’s; the music was sublime and structural—while, with Allen, it is perky and nostalgic but hanging there like stale wall paper.

Allen is right when he says no one would notice if you made a Lubitsch film today in which love’s bliss and broken hearts are caught in a dance. But why doesn’t he try? And, if he doesn’t have the energy to try, why bother to do it? Rudolph (who has vanished) made a Paris film (in Montreal, I think) that really explored the crazy myth of the place and the mythical frenzy of its artists. The Moderns is close to a great film. Midnight in Paris is an extended trailer—but it is better than Woody has done for a while. It’s that dismal.

David Thomson is the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film and The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder.

Follow @tnr on Twitter.

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160 comments

The last film by Woody that I enjoyed was "The Purple Rose of Cairo. I think he lost it sometimes after that.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 12:18am

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I liked Bananas.

- roidubouloi

June 1, 2011 at 12:36am

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Bananas predates Purple Rose by about 15 years or so.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 12:41am

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Yes, I know.

- roidubouloi

June 1, 2011 at 12:46am

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I liked his early, funny ones.

- roidubouloi

June 1, 2011 at 12:54am

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I think Thomson has a point about feeling missing from Woody's movies. Though that hasn't stopped me from loving so many of them.

- MOLLYSIMON

June 1, 2011 at 1:41am

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I mean, how can you be so cranky that you didn't enjoy Hannah or Match Point.

- MOLLYSIMON

June 1, 2011 at 1:42am

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I enjoyed Vicky Christina Barcelona. Does that make me a bad person?

- ironyroad

June 1, 2011 at 2:19am

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Yes Irony it does. Wouldn't have figured you to be a anti-semitic racist.

- IggyPop

June 1, 2011 at 7:07am

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Allen was incredibly prolific and still doing good movies in the 1990s, but the 21st century has been a wasteland for him. He's doing bland romantic comedies that anyone could do. Thank goodness he's making these films in Europe -- let those people bear the brunt of his artistic collapse. The fact that he can still get famous American actors to amble through these snooze-fests is a tribute to the strength of a reputation he can no longer live up to.

- DC Spence

June 1, 2011 at 7:32am

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I enjoyed Vicky Christina Barcelona, too. I enjoyed the one with Larry David in it. I enjoyed "Scoop". I enjoy "Mighty Aphrodite". I enjoy any Woody Allen movie. He makes witty, humourous, compassionate, strange and honest kinds of films with characters who understand their own absurdities but do not carry major guilt trips over them. He seems to have a lot of fun making them and audiences have lots of fun watching them. Each one of them offers a memorable quote or two, at the very least. What's there not to like? But then I've been accused in the past for not being discerning enough about movies. I recall quoting from some silly comedy which earned me some sneering condescension from both Jackson and ironyroad. I guess I'm a bad person, too, according to that little incident. I only wonder why would ironyroad think he is in a position to make ironic comments about the general pomposity of the comments here. When iggypop says: "Yes Irony it does. Wouldn't have figured you to be a anti-semitic racist." what does he mean? Does he think he is being funny or sarcastic in any meaningful way? Shows more about his own paranoidic turn of mind than anything anyone has claimed in this thread. He would fit into an Allen movie except that I don't think Allen does THAT kind of paranoia. Too boring, perhaps? Or maybe just too much of the real thing to be genuinely funny.

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 7:42am

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Why don't I like Allen? I have never liked his stuff. Glorified hypo..... the art form of masturbation.

- jacko

June 1, 2011 at 7:59am

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I get iggy's joke just fine. He is mocking the hyperbolic language used here, in particular the hyperbolic accusations of anti-Semitism and racism that can emerge almost instantaneously at any moment, seemingly utterly disconnected from what preceded them. One moment you are talking about Wood Allen movies, the next moment someone is an anti-Semite. Makes perfect (non)sense.

- roidubouloi

June 1, 2011 at 8:29am

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"One moment you are talking about Wood Allen movies, the next moment someone is an anti-Semite. " Where would we be without roi's helpful interpretation ...

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 8:37am

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If it's a tribute to Fitzgerald, I'm okay with that; Tender is the Night is my favorite of his few novels, autobiographical and tragic, the period settings in Provence and Paris building up to the calamity with an unexpected twist back in the US. I see Allen as the anti-Fitzgerald, the latter known as the chronicler of his time and place and the former known as the chronicler of another time and place.

- rayward

June 1, 2011 at 9:12am

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Lost, apparently.

- roidubouloi

June 1, 2011 at 9:37am

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"I enjoyed Vicky Christina Barcelona. Does that make me a bad person?" It makes you a saint with taste and possibly bad breath.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 10:48am

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arnon whoeveryouare, you constantly remind me of the old jackson. He too could not accept, graciously, any divergence from his taste. I remember he once preached to me about what makes a movie an art. I ventured to hazard that "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" would count as an art movie. No, said, jackson, sternly and implacably, "it's "Singing in the Rain". I didn't dare contradict him after that. For sure, HE would know definitely and I could only cower in my corner, shamed into silence, and never stopped chiding myself for letting my vulgar ignorance and bad taste in movies show through. I get the same urge to tiptoe into that corner whenever I encounter arnon's dogmatic judgments, either in politics or art.

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 11:42am

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"The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" Never heard of it.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 2:12pm

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Woody Allen is ok as long as he sticks to comic films. When he takes himself too seriously he becomes tediously middle brow.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 2:14pm

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Noga accusing someone of being too serious and not allowing for diverse opinions is like a religious fundamentalist accusing me of being too religious. Noga is the most single minded poster I have ever ran across. But he does have a lively imagination when it suits him.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 2:17pm

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All of a sudden, arnon writes bad grammar and doesn't know. No one, not even very clever people, can pretend not to be who they are for long. It is such a silly thing to do anyway. What's the point of it?

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 2:41pm

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Good: Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Love and Death, Sleeper, Annie Hall. Passable: Everything...Sex, Purple Rose Of Cairo, Manhattan, Mighty Aphrodite, Alice, Sweet and Lowdown, Broadway Danny Rose. Boring, smug, pretentious, middlebrow crap: everything else. Destroy the negatives: Deconstructing Harry, Stardust Memories. I have spoken.

- drozenson

June 1, 2011 at 2:54pm

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I don't care who you think I am, Noga. You are one of the most predictably boring posters here and easy to ignore.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 2:58pm

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I don't know how I can stand being ignored by you, arnon whoeveryouare. It's like being ignored by a hyena. Heartbreaking.

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 3:14pm

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Holy Alvie Singer, you people need some guidance. Here's the definitive breakdown: Great: Crimes and Misdemeanors Hannah and her Sisters Manhattan Annie Hall Very good/good: Stardust Memories Love and Death Bananas Take the Money and Run Alice Radio Days Husbands and Wives (last good movie - 1992) Sleeper OK: The Purple Rose of Cairo Broadway Danny Rose Zelig As a side note, his "He said "Jew eat lunch? Get it? 'Jew?' ... "He said 'We're having a sale this week on Wagner' -- WAGNER, Max, Wagner!" bit in "Annie Hall" was torn from jacksondyer's personal journal.

- W_Bombay

June 1, 2011 at 3:18pm

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Roi, I beg to differ on Iggypop. I try not to be paranoid, but if he's the same IggyPop I recall, he was always making jokes about Jewish paranoia. And making other jokes intended to provoke. Noga, I think Arnon was making a joke. It was funny. I laughed. And who cares if Arnon is Jackson?

- MOLLYSIMON

June 1, 2011 at 3:37pm

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It's not that I care. I'm just puzzled by grownup men playing silly games. What was the joke again? Saintly taste and bad breath? And you laughed? I'm not surprised.

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 4:38pm

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I love this byline - so typical of TNR: "Critics and audiences are wrong: Woody Allen’s new movie isn't good. It’s dismal." It's not just that Thompson does not agree with "critics and audiences." No, they are actually wrong in their assessment of their own opinions. To be fair, Thompson probably did not write that. Still, it's priceless. (Anticipating the inevitable criticism - yes I know I don't have to read TNR. I like its contrarian attitude usually. It does tend to wear though.) As for jackson, I will never understand the reverence held for the late jacksondyer. He was a semi-literate bully, prone to fits of rage and childish pique. He pretended to be well-read while evincing no sign of any comprehension, displaying a disdain of traditional academics typical of one insecure in his lack of formal education. His rants were replete with mispellings and typographical errors, almost as if typed in blinding rage. He brought nothing to a discussion except the foul smell of stubborn ignorance. I know that "arnon" is not he, and all the better. Good riddance.

- bunthorne

June 1, 2011 at 4:45pm

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Manhattan and Annie Hall were very good, not great on second and third viewing. The early comedies are very funny movies. Purple Rose of Cairo rewards second and even fourth viewing. The rest is pretty mediocre and pretentious. This is one posters opinion.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 4:45pm

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From "Scoop": "What instrument do you play?" "Oh, I play the Bruce Harp." "The Bruce Harp? I've never heard of it." "Oh they used to call it a Jew's Harp but you know how those Jews are! You say anything remotely antisemitic and they start sending you letters."

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 4:59pm

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Noga: "I only wonder why would ironyroad think he is in a position to make ironic comments about the general pomposity of the comments here" Whaaat?? Well, the handle, for one. Look, I'd like to apologize for liking Vicky Christina Barcelona too, but that could suggest that I'm sorry about something, and that would be very misleading.

- ironyroad

June 1, 2011 at 5:34pm

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Noga, I think that "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" is gorgeous and touching film, jackson be damned.

- bunthorne

June 1, 2011 at 5:37pm

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"David Thomson is the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film and The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder." One paragraph by Thomson is worth 300 posts.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 5:44pm

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"How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder." Hitchcock frightened women all over the world about the simple daily act of taking a shower.

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 6:17pm

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The point wasn't, Noga, whether I laughed at Arnon's joke, but rather that you were unable even to recognize a joke. Bad or good. My terrible sense of humor may not surprise you, but your humorlessness never ceases to shock me. I think I've gauged you, and then you prove yourself to be even more clueless than one could think imagine. And that's why in the past I've wondered whether you have Asperger's. People on the spectrum also have trouble recognizing a joke. I'm starting to go back to that opinion. And truly, I mean no disrespect toward you.

- MOLLYSIMON

June 1, 2011 at 7:14pm

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My favourite Woody Allen movie is Broadway Danny Rose. I'm with Irony on V.C.B. It was good. But then I'd watch paint dry if Scarlett Johansson played paint. Haven't seen this movie yet but will. Iggypop is 100% right about Irony except that Irony isn't an anti-semitic racist, but my God does Irony have a lot to answer for. It's hard to imagine that an innocuous thread following from an innocuous review about an, probably, innocuous movie could lead to an exchange of venom and spittle. But there there you are.

- basman

June 1, 2011 at 7:23pm

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Can you all stop sniping? Seriously, this is one of the few places on the internet (at least parts of it that I frequent) where, based on the generally reasonable content, one should be able to expect a certain amount of civility and absence of personal attacks.

- NR409654

June 1, 2011 at 7:30pm

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"It's hard to imagine that an innocuous thread following from an innocuous review about an, probably, innocuous movie could lead to an exchange of venom and spittle. But there there you are." I sort of think that was Iggy's point in the first place.

- roidubouloi

June 1, 2011 at 7:45pm

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Saw Midnight in Paris and liked it. Nice to see a film not for shallow post-adolescents or to be done in 3D. Thats how starved we are for anything resembling culture. Owen Wilson was like a dummy character for Woody the ventriloquest. You could hear Allen in him. Obviously fantasizing

- NR027810

June 1, 2011 at 8:32pm

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There was a Woody Allen film where Kenneth Branagh was Allen's representative in it. He did a fairly good job, too but being a good-looking guy, a bit implausible as Allen.

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 8:57pm

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Molly, it's not a good sign for you when you start babbling about Asperger's and humour. What's the matter? Meds not doing their work for you?

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 8:59pm

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"I sort of think that was Iggy's point in the first place." Iggpop's point was to respond to the pompous exchange that preceded ironyroad's comment and create a sort of a common bond between them, as in, us two goys exchanging a knowing, long-suffering glance over the heads of them pompous Joos. There is a difference between an ironic squint and a petulant jeer. And it's pathetic to see roi trying to weasel his way into that sort of solidarity (which never quite materializes as ironyroad being an adult, does not play these nudge/wink games). This in turn, reminds me of a conversation I once read about, between Stanley Kubrick and Frederic Raphael, as they were working on the film script for “Eyes Wide Shut”: S.K.: Another thing: that scene where Bill and the other guy walk away down the street. You say they're talking. What about? F.R.: What does it matter? It's the end of the scene and they're a long way from the camera, with their backs to it. S.K.: But what are they talking about? F.R.: What would you like them to? They're a couple of doctors, right? So what do doctors talk about? Golf; the stock market; the tits on that nurse who's on nights...uh...holidays. S.K.: Coupla Gentiles, right? F.R.: That's what you wanted them to be. S.K.: And we're a coupla Jews. What do we know about what those people talk about when they're by themselves?

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 9:13pm

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From "Scoop": "What instrument do you play?" "Oh, I play the Bruce Harp." "The Bruce Harp? I've never heard of it." "Oh they used to call it a Jew's Harp but you know how those Jews are! You say anything remotely antisemitic and they start sending you letters." Allen makes a lot of jokes about Jews in his films, most of them fall flat like the one above. He is no Groucho Marx.

- Newly84

June 1, 2011 at 9:23pm

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Noga is off his rocker. Its all about Jews and Goym for him. I doubt many posters here had that in mind. Not even that jerk bunthorne who is actually on Noga's side. And he talks about meds. He could sure use some.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 9:27pm

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"..., most of them fall flat like the one above. " I thought it was very much on point. A Danish paper publishes cartoons about Muhamad and riots break out across the world, people killed, cars burnt, etc. The Iranian president holds a Holocaust denial cartoon competition, and Jews across the world write letters to the editors.

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 9:27pm

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arnon: I believe you have tried to pass yourself off as somewhat knowledgeable about Israel, its society, its politicians, its books. And yet you keep pretending that you are unaware of the fact that noga is a woman's name. Is this another dismal attempt to tell us you are not jackson? I note that you are not even writing he/she, as is usually done when the gender is uncertain. You are insisting on "he". Curious.

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 9:34pm

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"I thought it was very much on point. A Danish paper publishes cartoons about Muhamad and riots break out across the world, people killed, cars burnt, etc. The Iranian president holds a Holocaust denial cartoon competition, and Jews across the world write letters to the editors." What is the point, here? Did Woody Allen make a film about Islamic denial of the Holocaust? No! he makes movies about wonderful Europe in the 1920's. Paris was just a "Movable Feast." What a great little dictator he is, sorry, meant director.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 9:36pm

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What's really most amusing about iggy's joke is that, when ridiculing the tendency here to launch into hyperbolic, name-calling attacks at an instant, he named no names and was not directing his comment at anyone in particular. Then noga took umbrage.

- roidubouloi

June 1, 2011 at 9:36pm

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Noga, where did I pass myself off as knowledgeable about Israel? Reading a few books doesn't make me an expert on its culture and I never claimed to be.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 9:37pm

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Clearly there is no subject at TNR that is immune for becoming the occasion to lament anti-Semitism. Iggy has made his point in spades. Grand Slam I should say.

- roidubouloi

June 1, 2011 at 9:38pm

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"Then noga took umbrage." I don't think he or she took umbrage. I think he or she used the comment as an excuse to launch into his or hers favorite topic and attack anyone he or she doesn't like. Noga is beyond insult.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 9:39pm

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"Noga is off his rocker. Its all about Jews and Goym for him." My point was that Jews and Goyim were on iggypop's mind when he made that revealing comment. Why else would he make it?

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 9:40pm

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...06/01/2011 - 9:36pm EDT | roidubouloi ... Exactly, and never knows when to stop. Of the-in-a-hole-keep-digging school.

- basman

June 1, 2011 at 9:42pm

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"he named no names and was not directing his comment at anyone in particular." ________ ironyroad: I enjoyed Vicky Christina Barcelona. Does that make me a bad person? Iggypop: Yes Irony it does. Wouldn't have figured you to be a anti-semitic racist.

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 9:43pm

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Antisemitism is a legitimate topic, but that's the problem with Noga he or she uses it for personal reasons. Noga thinks that Allen is a great director bravely tackling this subject, when he has never dealt honesty with it in any movie that I have seen. In the Front, supposedly a political movies, he makes some jokes about doing "soap commercials" on a program about the Nazis. The jokes don't go anywhere. He used to be funny, then he came nostalgic for his dream life which is pretty thin.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 9:43pm

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It's a joke, noga. You don't get the joke. I do. I'll see your "bad person" and raise you an "anti-Semite and a racist," as is the norm at TNR.

- roidubouloi

June 1, 2011 at 9:49pm

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Yes, Irony's comment was a joke, as I stated at the time.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 9:51pm

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"Noga thinks that Allen is a great director bravely tackling this subject, when he has never dealt honesty with it in any movie that I have seen." I went back and read all my comments in this thread and nowhere could I find anything I said even remotely resembling this statement.

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 9:54pm

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"I went back and read all my comments in this thread and nowhere could I find anything I said even remotely resembling this statement." What did you mean by this that was brought to my attention above by someone quoting it? "06/01/2011 - 4:59pm EDT | noga1 From "Scoop": "What instrument do you play?" "Oh, I play the Bruce Harp." "The Bruce Harp? I've never heard of it." "Oh they used to call it a Jew's Harp but you know how those Jews are! You say anything remotely antisemitic and they start sending you letters.""

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 10:04pm

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irony's comment was a joke and iggy's was a riff (clever in my opinion) on that joke. Sheesh.

- roidubouloi

June 1, 2011 at 10:04pm

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roi: You tried to defend IP by disrepresenting his comment:: "he named no names and was not directing his comment at anyone in particular." And when it failed, you went on to the next claim. Of course irony's comment was a joke. IP's was not a joke, but a snide sneer, meant to include both of them in the same circle of amity, and to exclude the others. Why would he think in such terms, in a conversation about Woody Allen's merit as a movie maker, where no one even mentioned Jews or antisemites? A "riff" suggests harmless, good natured humor.

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 10:11pm

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What did you mean by this that was brought to my attention above by someone quoting it? "06/01/2011 - 4:59pm EDT | noga1 From "Scoop": "What instrument do you play?" "Oh, I play the Bruce Harp." "The Bruce Harp? I've never heard of it." "Oh they used to call it a Jew's Harp but you know how those Jews are! You say anything remotely antisemitic and they start sending you letters."" _________ Someone quoted earlier a line from Annie Hall about Jewish paranoia. It reminded me of this quote from "Scoop" which is a different take on the same issue. I think it is a great line. That's why I remember it. And it is exactly in this minor way that Allen does do his share in fighting antisemitism. It offends no one and it makes its point.

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 10:15pm

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My favorite is What's Up Tiger Lilly for its pure creativity because it is really little more than a novelty.

- Nusholtz

June 1, 2011 at 10:18pm

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"What's Up Tiger Lilly" "its pure creativity because it is really little more than a novelty." wish his other movies were like that.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 10:21pm

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"And it is exactly in this minor way that Allen does do his share in fighting antisemitism. It offends no one and it makes its point." I don't know if anyone else came to the same conclusion. I sure didn't. In Annie Hall he talked about Jews confusing "Joos" with "to yoos" mispronounced as "tojoos." How did this dumb joke fight antisemitism? If he wants to fight bigotry which I doubt the comments are not just his way of opposing it in a "minor" way, he is either too cowardly to do it openly or else he doesn't know what he is doing. There is a third possibility point to above: his comments are meant to show how paranoid Jews are about antisemitism. But that doesn't work either because he keep mentioning the Holocaust in many of his films. Conclusion, the guy is too confused to see things clearly which is why his movies are so shallow as David Thomson says.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 10:30pm

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Good grief, noga. iggy wasn't calling irony an anti-Semite or a racist. He was ridiculing the tendency here to hyperbolic name-calling, using the occasion of irony's mock question to do it. And he did not point the finger at anyone. Do you also think irony was really asking whether he is a bad person because he likes VCB? Iggy's joke is in exactly the same vein as Woody Allen's in whatever movie it was where he talks about someone saying, "D'you eat yet?" and hears "Jew eat yet?" Incredibly, the subsequent conversation in response pretty well proves iggy's point, and Woody Allen's too. Iggy could not have scripted this better if he had tried.

- roidubouloi

June 1, 2011 at 10:31pm

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Could any one here see Woody Allen making a comic film like "To Be or Not to Be (1942) by Ernst Lubitsch?

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 10:32pm

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"Why would he think in such terms, in a conversation about Woody Allen's merit as a movie maker, where no one even mentioned Jews or antisemites?" You seemed to have missed much of the subject matter of Allen's movies, noga. That's what made iggy's remark so clever. He took off from irony's joke, made a comment about the nature of discussion at TNR regarding themes that also preoccupy Allen, and used an analogue of Woody Allen's dialogue to do it. That's pretty good for just a few words.

- roidubouloi

June 1, 2011 at 10:36pm

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Come on roi, iggy's point was pretty obvious (all he said was that Woody Allen makes fun of what he thinks are "paranoid Jews" which it probably true). The real questions is how does he handle the subject. To me handles it the way he handles young girls in his movies he want to fuck em or tickle them to death.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 10:36pm

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I think iggy was commenting about TNR boards as well, calling to our attention that some of Allen's jokes could be directed right here. I don't think his comment was meant as a review of Woody Allen's work. Somewhat different subject.

- roidubouloi

June 1, 2011 at 10:47pm

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" I don't think his comment was meant as a review of Woody Allen's work. Somewhat different subject." Iggy's comment seems to have gotten a lot of legs: it crawls everywhere. Doesn't seem to reach anywhere, though. All of this proves that David Thomson article is on target. No one here, aside from insulting him, has been able to offer a counter argument showing by way of any of Allen's films that he is a serious and excellent director.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 10:54pm

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"Could any one here see Woody Allen making a comic film like "To Be or Not to Be (1942) by Ernst Lubitsch?" Why would one comic movie maker want to make another comic movie maker's movie? You might as well ask whether anyone could see Philip Roth write a novel like Ian MacEwan. Strange question.

- noga1

June 1, 2011 at 11:05pm

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I absolutely love that iggypop came in, dropped that stinkbomb, and hasn't been back since. Meanwhile, noga and arnon are furiously trying to outcrazy each other and have worked themselves into an incoherent lather. Iggy, if you're still reading this, bravo!

- bunthorne

June 1, 2011 at 11:12pm

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Not Strange at all. Lubitsch was a serious artist/director who didn't condescend to his audience. Woody Allen has been making movies like other director most of his life. For example, he imitated Bergman and he has been trying to be as deep as Russian novelists. The results speak for themselves.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 11:14pm

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bunthorne "I absolutely love that iggypop came in"' of course you would. You are as big an asshole as he is, which is why you love "stink bombs." I don't think I am trying to outcrazy anyone. But being the little morn you are I am not surprised you'd see that way. I doubt you got out o High School in one piece.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 11:16pm

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Now arnon, here I was defending you against charges of being jackson, but that last post is making me look wrong. Come on, man, slow down a little.

- bunthorne

June 1, 2011 at 11:28pm

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Bunthorne is a drunken fool.

- arnon

June 1, 2011 at 11:32pm

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Another ruined thread by people posting comments about a subject they know very little. This is why comments should be limited to blogs that deal with political subjects.

- Newly84

June 2, 2011 at 12:01am

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I'd like to clarify one thing -- my original remark (as everyone else appears to have referenced it at this stage, I'd like to join in the fun) was aimed more at David Thompson than anyone else, whose comment about "audiences ready to book an Air France flight" irritated me. While critics declare their their interests and judgments publicly, as he does on TNR, "audience" is simply everyone who goes to the movie. Thompson knows very little about them, and random applause on one afternoon is hardly a sufficient basis on which to declare them "wrong." Now, I admit that I would also argue that audiences can be "wrong," for example when they cheer racist or antisemitic movies as people have done in the past and probably still do. But whatever about Allen's movies, they are not documents of hate but rather of affection for the world.

- ironyroad

June 2, 2011 at 1:03am

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Sorry, that should be Thomson.

- ironyroad

June 2, 2011 at 1:04am

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In honor of NR409654, this is a non-snipe comment. "Race to the bottom" refers to states trying to outbid each other to give tax breaks to draw or steal businesses. (Pretty bad system, for which I have no suggested cure.] In comment communication (such as the New Republic discussions, where we should demonstrate superior communication even when we disagree), "Race to the Bottom" applies to the problem of pointing out the flaws in another person's comments without being as snotty, irritating, childish, unpleasant, and vomit-inducing as the person one is criticizing. If you figure out how to do it, let me know. Again, NR #### is right on the money in his or her point and demeanor. If you read this far down, NR, I wish you a wonderful and fullfilling week. You have earned it. You also, speaking to all who also conducted yourself honorably. Amen. Church service is over.

- skahn

June 2, 2011 at 1:37am

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Arnon, I must disagree with you about Allen and his "confusion." It's possible to make fun of Jewish paranoia and acknowledge the Holocaust. Philip Roth, whom you mentioned, does that all the time. (It's interesting that you mention McEwan, b/c he reveres Roth.) If time is one test of what's art, I guarantee you that people will be watching Allen movies for years the way they watch Capra movies today. Though I do think the Woodman can sometimes be unintentionally funny. I remember watching that scene in Hannah in which Barbara Hersey's husband, played by Max Von Sidow, is bemoaning the world. It was so lugubrious, and I think Von Sidow may have been playing it for laughs, but I wonder whether Woody knew that. And my final word, for now, on whether Woody is good: I'd be happy to see his worst movies any day over most of what Hollywood is making today. And Noga, my meds are working great. Which is how I could insult you with such good cheer! Sadly, meds can't really help members of the spectrum. Yes, they can help regulate moods and tantrums. But a sense of humor--no drug can grant you that. It's like being born without a sense of smell.

- MOLLYSIMON

June 2, 2011 at 2:18am

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Poor Molly. Confused and incoherent to the end. Ironyroad: That's a nice way of capturing Allen's essence "documents of affection for the world". Indeed. No villains in his movies. Only bumbling, misguided human beings.

- noga1

June 2, 2011 at 7:40am

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Sighted on the Internet: "When I was young, one had to have millions of $$ to behave like an animal and not suffer the consequences. Today all one needs is an Internet connection."

- noga1

June 2, 2011 at 7:44am

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I'm sorry, but David Thompson is a terrible, terrible writer. I've read several of his essays since he appeared on the TNR scene and every time it's the same, like talking to an intelligent but deeply intoxicated person at a hotel bar at 2 a.m. Parse the following sentence: "It’s just that there is no evident reason why it was made, beyond not making another film, or taking a season off to ask himself, 'Why do I need to make another film?'" I understand what he's trying to say here. The problem is he doesn't say what he's trying to say. A correct paraphrase of the above sentence would be, "Beyond not making another film, there is no evident reason why Woody Allen made another film." It makes no sense!

- AaronW

June 2, 2011 at 8:09am

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Allen has made several good films recently. "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" was solid. "Match Point" was a sexy moral thriller. "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (going back a ways, I know, but still more recent than Purple Rose) was another moral thriller and well worth the time. "Deconstructing Harry" was maybe not on par with "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan" but was still pretty good in that line, and so was "Hannah and her Sisters."

- AaronW

June 2, 2011 at 8:14am

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“Arnon, I must disagree with you about Allen and his "confusion." It's possible to make fun of Jewish paranoia and acknowledge the Holocaust.” I don’t know what “Jewish paranoia” is. Jews as individuals can be paranoid, but Jewish paranoia means what? Is it a metaphysical, sociological or anthropological concept? The term is often used metaphorically to mean: “suspicious, worried, nervous, fearful, apprehensive” and I don’t see Jews as individuals or as a group more susceptible to these mental states than others. It can also mean “obsessive, disturbed, unstable, manic, neurotic, mentally ill, psychotic, deluded, paranoiac his increasingly paranoid delusions. I doubt Jews or Judaism would have survived had this been the case. Now Woody Allen early comic films used these popular for satirical purposes. Since the satire was so outrageous, it was funny. Few thought he was being literal. In his later movies when he introduced serious subjects his introduction of paranoia didn’t work as well. It’s sadistic to present characters that had been victimized in real life and call them paranoid even if their subsequent behavior became driven by suspicion of others. (True of any victimized nationality.) It can be a subject for serious analysis but it’s not a serious subject for comedy. At least not the way Allen handled it in his films. IN any case, when Allen gets serious he is seldom original. He used to imitate Ingmar Bergman among others. “Philip Roth, whom you mentioned, does that all the time. (It's interesting that you mention McEwan, b/c he reveres Roth.)” I didn’t mention McEwan, someone else did. Roth writes serious books about the Holocaust. When he is writing comedy he is seldom frivolous, so I don’t know what you are talking about. Name a book that you think is as flimsy as any Allen film and where he treats Jews comically as a paranoid people? The only place where he introduces a Holocaust survivor who is pathetically funny is in his memoir Patrimony and he makes it clear that he portraying an individual nut case and not a type of person. Most of the controversy surrounding his work has been driven by people who didn’t read his work. Roth makes it clear that he is very proud of his Jewishness (he grew up as a proud secular Jew) which made him who he is as a writer. In this sense I would compare his to Saul Bellow or to the English Howard Jacobson. I don’t get the same sense from the shallow Woody Allen. The one area of achievement which might give him some sense of identity is his love of Jazz. But even here, it comes through as more of a hobby than a full-fledged passion.

- arnon

June 2, 2011 at 11:26am

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A propo Phillip Roth, here is the latest kerfuffle surrounding his literary merit: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-critics-who-need-to-examine-themselves-2290175.html "Just back from the Sydney Writers' Festival, where the sun shone, the harbour glistened, and, in his absence, Philip Roth was awarded the International Man Booker Prize. Also absent was Carmen Callil who, as everyone now knows, withdrew from the three-person judging panel after the event – which by general consent was a bit late – complaining that though Roth was the unequivocal choice of the other judges, he was not hers, and therefore should not have won. [-] But it wasn't so much the rights and wrongs of the voting system that had writers at the festival spluttering into their wine glasses, as the reasons Carmen Callil gave for being unable to live with the idea of Roth as the winner – to wit his having only one subject, his "going on and on" about it, the unlikeliness of his being remembered in another 20 years (a bold prognostication, as he is still remembered after 50, his first book having been published in 1959), and his making her feel when she reads him that he is sitting on her face. [-] Now that the Bad Sex Awards have become predictable an inaugural Carmen Callil "Is He Sitting on Your Face" Prize, judged by her alone, as that's the system she prefers, is something I, for one, would welcome. And why stop there? Wouldn't it enliven the exam papers English literature students have to plod through if the questions acknowledged the Callil methodology? As for example, and this is just a first stab at it: 1) Name at least one writer of poetry and two writers of prose, each from a different century, who can fairly be described as sitting on your face. 2) Is there any contemporary English or Commonwealth writer on whose face you would like to sit? Please give reasons. 3) Jane Austen describes the heroine of Mansfield Park as "my Fanny". Discuss with reference to the Roth/Callil fracas. "

- noga1

June 2, 2011 at 12:06pm

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Noga, you are SO lucky I wasn't sipping a cup of very hot tea when I arrived at number 3!

- ironyroad

June 2, 2011 at 12:44pm

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I read Thomson's review. I guess I'll check it out again after I see the movie. One thing though, for as much as I generally like Woody Allen's movies: he's made some really good ones, I ask if he has ever made a great one? I don't think so. His stand up comedy before his movie making was great. I'd argue he was a better stand up comedian than he is a film maker, even though he's no slouch as the latter.

- basman

June 2, 2011 at 2:59pm

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I'm sorry about that. My old friend Oded used to make outrageously funny comment or gesture, and time it exactly to the second when I was just taking a sip from my cup of tea or coffee. When it happened twice, I realized I was the target of a premeditated strategy, and determined to be very careful not to be caught offguard, but he still managed to blindside me, every single time.

- noga1

June 2, 2011 at 3:01pm

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Must we expect more than a pleasant divertissement? I mean, with Owen Wilson, this film works quite well -- as Night at the Museum III.

- IraRAllen

June 2, 2011 at 3:40pm

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Thomson's dreary pessimistic evaluation of Allen's movie seems to be contagious. I still don't get what he is kvetching about. The treachery of audiences when they allow themselves to be entertained? The treachery of Allen, who disappoints Thompson by refusing to make a movie in which "love’s bliss and broken hearts are caught in a dance"? And what does this mean "Midnight in Paris is an extended trailer—but it is better than Woody has done for a while. It’s that dismal"?? Thomson seems depressed and blaming his depression on Allen.

- noga1

June 2, 2011 at 4:07pm

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Well, maybe this "dismal" filmmaker continues to attract "promising" actors because five actors in his films have won Academy Awards--four of them women--and another ten have been nominated. And, oh yeah, he's in the all-time top five for Best Director nominations. By all objective criteria, Woody Allen is among America's best film makers. Thompson's one of those critics (those who can, do, those who can't...) trying to make a reputation by dismissing a legend.

- cbharris

June 2, 2011 at 4:07pm

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Still waiting for someone's nomination of a Woody Allen movie as great as opposed to good or very/really good.

- basman

June 2, 2011 at 4:38pm

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"I still don't get what he is kvetching about." So why are you still here, kvetching? If his article doesn't mean anything to you, move on.

- arnon

June 2, 2011 at 4:56pm

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"Critics and audiences are wrong..." especially mr. thompson where is stanley kaufman when we need him

- spearl

June 2, 2011 at 5:00pm

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"If his article doesn't mean anything to you, move on." We get the general idea about you, arnon, that you are an ungracious, boorish bully. FYI, I paid for my subscription and access to the boards so I have as much right to stay and around and kvetch as you do. Here is Woody Allen explaining to a sympathetic audience how happy he is to finally be a "European film maker": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbdpo-niFmA I am puzzled as to why diminishing Allen's work and success is so important to some posters. There is something going on which I must be missing.

- noga1

June 2, 2011 at 5:10pm

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"Still waiting for someone's nomination of a Woody Allen movie as great as opposed to good or very/really good." If by great or even, really good you mean a film worth seeing more than twice, I would suggest "The Purple Rose of Cairo." It’s not “great,” the way, say Citizen Kane is great, but that is to its credit. It’s modest, he wasn’t trying to be original and that is its strength. It contains within its modest script allusions to the history of cinema and literature. It works on a number of different and antithetical levels like realism and fantasy. In this sense it is more like “To Be or Not To Be,” by Lubitsch. Woody must have written it when he wasn’t trying to be a “great” auteur. Many directors have such single films where it all comes together.

- arnon

June 2, 2011 at 5:11pm

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Noga is still singing the same old boring song. S/he just has to be the life of the forum even if it means changing the topic of the forum.

- arnon

June 2, 2011 at 5:13pm

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So what exactly is your beef with Woody Allen, arnon, can you explain? We understand that you think he is mediocre and undeserving of public accolades and such things. You made your point in many ways. But why does it appear that you have a personal interest in deflating his importance and reputation?

- noga1

June 2, 2011 at 5:21pm

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I wasn't writing to you, Noga. Go bother someone else.

- arnon

June 2, 2011 at 5:33pm

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Arnon, no disagreement about Purple Rose which I have seen more than once. And by the criterion of want-to-see-a-movie-again or even again-and-again, Woody Allen has plenty of very/really good movies. But between them at one end and pantheon type movies--Citizen Kane--at the other I can't think of one of his filim's I'd call great or even approaching greatness, including my favourite Broadyway Dany Rose, Manhattan. Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters, the very smart and thematically probing Crimes and Misdemeanors, others. What I mean by great but not in the pantheon is the remade True Grit, altogether different from what Allen does, of course, but just to illustrate my idea of great. Another is Tender Mercies. Of course there are tons more--Altman's Kansas City, more recently, Mystic River, or Crazy Heart--but these form the kind of movie I'm talking about--deeply, deeply affecting. I agree with you when he's bad he's really bad-Interiors, Stardust Memories, others.

- basman

June 2, 2011 at 5:35pm

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Gotta' go: flowers to water, a few cardio machines to sweat on, a basketball game to watcg, but I'll pop by later.

- basman

June 2, 2011 at 5:39pm

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"What I mean by great but not in the pantheon is the remade True Grit, altogether different from what Allen does, of course, but just to illustrate my idea of great." I loved the end scenes of True Grit which made the film near great in my estimation. I liked the dialogue and language of the original True Grit better, though. There is no other Woody Allen film that I wanted to see more than once and many of them I am sorry I saw them even that one time. I don't wish to get into lists of "great movies" or" bad movies," but to me Altman is as pretentious as Woody Allen.

- arnon

June 2, 2011 at 6:08pm

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A propo the Coen Brothers: http://israelity.com/2011/05/16/coen-brothers-keep-it-low-key-in-israel/ "So the Coen Brothers are in Israel this week to collect the Dan David Prize for their contribution to filmmaking. It was a wonderful media opportunity, except for the fact that the highly talented brothers, who’ve made classic movies like No Country for Old Men, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and True Grit, are notoriously reticent and barely said a word to the press. On my way to the awards ceremony at Tel Aviv University, I met a journalist working for an international news outlet who’d just attended their press conference. Waste of time, he grumbled. No one could get anything out of them." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTyMGVqTuXE

- noga1

June 2, 2011 at 7:55pm

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basman, I have a couple of nominations for the great Allen film, with brief justifications: 1. Annie Hall -- a beautiful and vital account of love and relationships in the 1970s, famous for e.g. the showdown with the loudmouth in the movie theater queue, Alvy's inability to deal with Annie's hospitable, friendly midwestern family, the use of subtitles to reveal the gap between thoughts and words, among others. 2. The Purple Rose of Cairo -- for itself, and for that moment when he realizes that in real life the kiss actually takes place. 3. Vicky Cristina Barcelona -- I don't know how opinion will shape up over time, but I think the way in which a film that could have been a narcissistic male fantasy is clipped and transformed into something more complex puts this one potentially on the 'great' list. No American film director -- except perhaps in Big Love on HBO -- appears able to even conceive of doing such a story without locker-room guffaws and winks. A few runners-up, Shadows and Fog, Alice, Love and Death, but the above stands.

- ironyroad

June 2, 2011 at 8:20pm

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The one thing I mostly remember from "The Purple Rose of Cairo" is how obvious was the love Woody Allen bore for his leading lady. The movie is peppered with affirmations for her beauty. Impossible to look back without poignant awareness of the irony of it all.

- noga1

June 2, 2011 at 8:28pm

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Assuming you are right, Ironyroad, that's two (maybe three films) out of about sixty movies he made. That's pathetic, isn't it? Compare this to the films made by John Ford, Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, or even Von Sternberg, (who made many fewer films), Sidney Lumet, or many other directors working in Hollywood.

- arnon

June 2, 2011 at 9:02pm

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A few things: I don't see either Altman or Woody Allen as pretentious though being so prolific they obviously have had their less than better moments or works. I maintain there is no comparison between the two True Grits, the first essentially a vehicle for John Wayne being his larger than the film he's in self. Both movies had a lot of Portis in them, all to the good, but the second True Grit had the added virtue of the Coen brothers knocking it out of the park by being faithful to the novel, restraining their tendency to be ironic and so hip it hurts and by laying into the movie great overarching , world making themes. As to justification for the three suggested Woody Allen movies being great, I appreciate their mention and the brief arguments made therefor. First, if it's stipulated that they are great, then, no matter how many movies he made, to produce three great works of art is hardly pathetic, especially given the shlock and crap and mediocrity we are inundated with. But leaving that stipulation aside, maybe it's just that greatness in these matter rests with the beholder. Or maybe it's just me. But for me to feel, sense a movie's greatness, I need to feel deeply moved, intensely affected, swept into a world, made to marvel, struck by complexity, generically feel compelled. I have never felt that way by any Woody Allen movie for as much I have been greatly entertained by so many of them. Jacko said above the Woody Allen's movies are masturbatory. I don't agree with that but I have a sense of what he means. There is this pervasive sensibility that prevades them all, a kind of neurotic self obsessed, comically tormented, needy, whiney, clositered qualiity--a lack of spaciousness-- that, for me, cuts against greatness in his movies.

- basman

June 2, 2011 at 11:23pm

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“I maintain there is no comparison between the two True Grits, the first essentially a vehicle for John Wayne being his larger than the film he's in self.” I disagree, basman.

- arnon

June 2, 2011 at 11:30pm

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...I disagree, basman... What can I tell you?

- basman

June 3, 2011 at 1:23am

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You can't assume I'm right, arnon, as my criteria are not shared by everyone and ultimately it's a kind of loose consensus over time that says that, for example, Hamlet is a great play but Casablanca a memorable but not really great movie, or that The Sun Also Rises is a great novel but The French Lieutenant's Woman, although an intriguing and even moving experiment, is sort of forgettable in a way that Hemingway isn't. However, it's not about statistics, and the relationship of candidates for great works to the number of works by any particular artist is not relevant. For example, how do you calculate the statistical weight of greatness to mediocrity for Herman Melville, for Alfred Hitchcock, for Virginia Woolf. Not any easier than for Woody Allen, I'd say.

- ironyroad

June 3, 2011 at 3:53am

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I remember we had a similar discussion in 10th grade of whether authors can really be great if they write for money and calculate the number of words they produce by their need to feed themselves. Shakespeare was a mercenary author, as were Dickens, Balzac, Jack London. Purists believe that the creative process must be protected from mercenary considerations in order to be genuinely authentic, or great, whatever. I'm wondering, according to arnon's rule of greatness, at which number of produced work does an artist, an author, a film maker, stop being a candidate for greatness? Would Allen be considered great if he stopped making movies after "The purple rose"?

- noga1

June 3, 2011 at 7:47am

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Ironyroad “You can't assume I'm right, arnon,…” This is specious. I didn’t say you were right, I was reacting to you subjective view. Why are you arguing against your own reaction? “for example, Hamlet is a great play but Casablanca a memorable but not really great movie, or that The Sun Also Rises is a great novel but The French Lieutenant's Woman, although an intriguing and even moving experiment, is sort of forgettable in a way that Hemingway isn't.” These argument are irrelevant, Ironyroad. We are not comparing books or movies, we were talking about film directors, (you can also talk about authors, of course.) Most critics would that Theodor Fontane is a forgettable writer except for Efie Briest which is a masterpiece. (I assume that most people will not know who the author is though some may have heard of the novel.) There are some authors and directors who while not first rate did produce single masterpieces. Is Woody Allen among them? Too early to say, though I do think that Purple Rose of Cairo will stand the test of time as opposed to his other films. I think the fact that a director or writer produces mostly mediocre work but manages one great one does say something about the author. As for Casablanca, the director made better films, like Mildred Pierce and on the whole he is a better film director than Woody Allen, though he is not an auteur. Personally, I never liked Casablanca that much though the director turned it into a better film than it otherwise might have been.

- arnon

June 3, 2011 at 9:21am

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Arnon has a point when he says if a guy makes a passel of movies and only one is, let's grant, great, the others mediocre, that says something abut that director. What it says to me is that we would say about that director is "he's a mediocre director who made one great movie." We wouldn't say "he's a great director." But the comparison to literature raises different intuitions in me. If a guy writes one great novel in a career of otherwise indistinguishable writing, I'd be inclined to say he's a great novelist. I don't know who Theodor Fontane is but that's the kind of examle that makes sense to me. I was thinking specifically of Malcolm Lowry. Too, if Shakespeare had only written Lear, all the rest mere trash for the groundlings or whatever, we would, I intuit, call him a great playwright. Maybe all this is just my idiosyncracy but I'm wondering why movie making raises counter intuitions in me about assigning greatness to "one hit wonders." I assume it's tied up with the collaborative nature of movie making and hence the diffusio of contribution. I'm also with Arnon in thinking Casablanca, for enjoyable as it is, less than great.

- basman

June 3, 2011 at 10:15am

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...I'm also with Arnon in thinking Casablanca, for enjoyable as it is, less than great... With Irony too on that.

- basman

June 3, 2011 at 11:02am

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"We are not comparing books or movies, we were talking about film directors, (you can also talk about authors, of course.)" I don't quite understand your point, arnon, as you seem to forget both what I wrote and what you wrote. basman asked originally if anyone was willing to name a Woody Allen movie or movies that would qualify for the adjective "great." I took up his challenge, naming three examples. You then responded by asserting some kind of quantitative comparison, citing "the films of" a bunch of other directors, which I felt was shifting the grounds to a separate question, although a legitimate one in its own right. So, simply: My point: three examples of great Allen films for basman, with brief justifications. Your point (?): ratio of successful films to total output as criterion for greatness of respective director.

- ironyroad

June 3, 2011 at 12:27pm

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Now playing in my town. Gonna' see it this weekend.

- basman

June 3, 2011 at 2:40pm

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My point is that a single very good or even great film doesn't make a director great.

- arnon

June 3, 2011 at 4:06pm

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...My point is that a single very good or even great film doesn't make a director great... As noted, that's at least one point we agree on given the issues roaming around here.

- basman

June 3, 2011 at 4:12pm

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A reasonable point, but as noted it doesn't really contravene mine, which was simply a shortlist of Allen movies that imo warrant a slot marked "great" without saying anything about the director per se.

- ironyroad

June 3, 2011 at 5:05pm

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Total and complete and 93.45% digression: listen to Cristor Redentor by Donald Byrd which Im listening to right now on my computer on kjazz--introduced to me by my old cyber buddy jmrice. It was composed y Harvey Mandel of all people. Here ya' go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2KvM2T40RQ

- basman

June 3, 2011 at 6:06pm

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“A reasonable point, but as noted it doesn't really contravene mine, which was simply a shortlist of Allen movies that imo warrant a slot marked "great" without saying anything about the director per se.” I couldn’t disagree more, Ironyroad (Basman, I realize you don’t feel the same way about it). First a director who has worked for half a century and produced one greta film can be said to be great if the rest of his work supports a certain clear vision about art or some other theme which that one great film finally clarifies. You see that in directors like Hawks, or Frank Capra are like that, (Capra is not a favorite of mine, but he does have a vision about both art human character that comes through in his films.) I would guess that Pedro Almodovar and the Coen brothers are like that too, though I haven’t studied their films that closely. The Coen brothers tackle both evil and illusion in a clear and sometimes original way. I hadn’t noticed that in the Coen brothers till I did a close analysis of “No Country for Old Man.” Other directors like Allen could produce a great film even a masterpiece that seems almost an accident. Allen is all over the place with themes and situations and some of his movies are almost incoherent. I’d like to know what his artistic vision is. Yet in the Purple Rose of Cairo he produced a consistent work of art that tackles illusion, imagination, stupidity and delusion among some other motifs in a coherent manner. This is why the movie works while his other movies though have their moments don’t work for me. When I watch an Allen film I get the impression that the material gets away from him. This is why I agree with Thomson's analysis.

- arnon

June 3, 2011 at 6:24pm

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"Casablanca" is a movie I can no longer watch without a certain scorn for the overt sexism and condescension to women that is sewn into the ethos of the story.

- noga1

June 3, 2011 at 6:25pm

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I hope this back and forth between irony and arnon continues a little over the weekend when I see Allen's movie. Arnon I trust that you have seen it already because it would seem odd to agree with Thomson before seeing it, unless it's in relation to some general comments about Allen. Anyway, it might be interesting to kick around a recently seen specific movie--this one-- as way of talking both specifically and generally about Allen. As a postscript, I question an aesthetic criterion that calls for inter-movie thematic, other, coherence. I can't see why directors are to be less accorded if there is inconsistency amongst their works, but their discrete works are good or great. That criterion sounds somewhat extraneous and may tend to be prescriptive.

- basman

June 3, 2011 at 7:14pm

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"I couldn’t disagree more" It would help if I knew what precisely you are disagreeing about, arnon. Let's clarify: 1. I offered three example of films by Allen that I think qualify as "great" -- a subjective evaluation but I offered some grounds also. 2. I did not assert on that basis that Allen is a "great" director, but I didn't deny it either -- it wasn't the point at issue. 3. I suggested to you that, as a general matter, a quantitative assessment of "great" works to the total number of works of an artist (whether in movies, literature, or whatever) is a possibly valid but hardly universally accepted criterion. Which of these do you have a problem with?

- ironyroad

June 3, 2011 at 8:21pm

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Basman, “I question an aesthetic criterion that calls for inter-movie thematic, other, coherence. I can't see why directors are to be less accorded if there is inconsistency amongst their works,….” This is not what I said, Basman. I said that ‘in general, the great director does have a vision about both art human character that comes through in his or her films.’ If you disagree, fine, but do quote me correctly.

- arnon

June 3, 2011 at 10:53pm

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Ironyroad “It would help if I knew what precisely you are disagreeing about, arnon.” For starters, I think that Vicky Christina Barcelona is an awful movie: the acting is awful and unconvincing, the story is inane (he has told the same story for more than 25 years. The setting is a pretty tourist card. Was he paid by the Catalonians to set his film there? Everything about it rang false to me. Does Woody even know Spanish? Hoe could he cast a Madrilena like Penelope Cruz in a film about Catalan? The scenes in Oviedo were pure fantasy. Has anyone looked up the history of Oviedo? (I don’t’ mean the tendentious Wikipedia history, were it’s stated: “The Siege of Oviedo in 1936 was a memorable event in the Spanish Civil War. The army garrison rose in support of the coup d'état and stood a siege of three months by an improvised force, loyal to the Republican government until relieved in 1937.” In any case, nothing but the pretty side of the city was shown. Woody probably got his history of the city from Wikipedia. And the painter’s father was supposed to be what? A transplanted Yiddish poet? The whole thing was. And don’t get me started on what passed for passion and sex in movies, and especially not on the blonde character “analyzing her situation.” So much for that film. I'll respond to your other points in a subsequent post.

- arnon

June 3, 2011 at 11:05pm

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Let's clarify: “1. I offered three example of films by Allen that I think qualify as "great" -- a subjective evaluation but I offered some grounds also.” Ok, I responded to that above. “2. I did not assert on that basis that Allen is a "great" director, but I didn't deny it either -- it wasn't the point at issue.” The issue was more basic: is Allen a competent director at all, and did he make any great film. We dealt with that above. “3. I suggested to you that, as a general matter, a quantitative assessment of "great" works to the total number of works of an artist (whether in movies, literature, or whatever) is a possibly valid but hardly universally accepted criterion.” I believe I answered this too, above.

- arnon

June 3, 2011 at 11:09pm

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1. I gather you didn't like Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Ok, I get that. There's room for disagreement (and I did allow for changing perceptions of VCB as it's so recent). In any event, I was presenting my choice, not yours. 2. That's NOT the issue I was adressing. The matter at hand was basman's request for anyone to list any films that s/he thought warranted the title "great." You were adressing a related but clearly separate issue and you appear to continue to be confused about this. Indeed, your comment "is Allen a competent director at all, and did he make any great film?" seems to contradict what you also said above about Purple Rose of Cairo. 3. You did? I'm sorry, I didn't notice.

- ironyroad

June 3, 2011 at 11:58pm

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"You did? I'm sorry, I didn't notice." That's the one thing we can agree on.

- arnon

June 4, 2011 at 12:01am

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Arnon, Basman, Irony, just to throw in another director, but I think Scorcese qualifies as "great." I 'd say greater than Allen. It's far more visceral with Scorcese, and yet greatness can be that you watch the movie several times and don't get bored. It's just as great a pleasure the third time. I'm thinking Annie hall and the scene with the brother in the car. The performances of actors alone make these great movies. I think some definitions of greatness here are too narrow. And as for slightness, I'd call it a lightness. Capra's movies have that very same quality. Allen is also consistently funny--without being crass. If you know anything about comedy, that's nearly impossible. Though I love crass--it has it's place.

- MOLLYSIMON

June 4, 2011 at 3:23am

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Here is the trailer for the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRWfS2s2v4 A memorable quote: "I'm not quite as taken with him as you are. I mean, he is a pseudo-intellectual..."

- noga1

June 4, 2011 at 8:27am

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What I tried to respond to Arnon was you saying: ...First a director who has worked for half a century and produced one greta film can be said to be great if the rest of his work supports a certain clear vision about art or some other theme which that one great film finally clarifies.... Now you know what you intended to say and I don't. I just tried to paraphrase what i took to be the/a point I construed you to be making. To me the logic of your first statement *suggests* abounding mediocrity/or less than greatness in a director can be understood/accommodated in the the working out of a particular theme or vision of life or art which finally gets clear expression in hos one (stipulated) great film. That was to be contrasted with a director who has one great work but, by you in response to Irony and I think to me, is not to be thought of as great because his less than great films do no exhibit that working out. I always welcome clarification, refinement, distinctions, examples, being shown my logical, empirical, other errors, for anything in a word that contributes to clear and clearer thinking. So I ask you in relation to the contrast I drew between the positions about who might or mght not be a great director on the basis of only one (stipulated) great work, what am I missing about what you're saying? Molly in a nutshell, and without getting into it now at length, I agree with you about Scorcese. I'd only draw a distinction I find between watching movies pleasurably three and more times over the years: some that I love to watch and watch and always get into are assuredly not great--one example is The Rounders; another is The Hustler--which is better than the book and arguably verges on being great; the other category is movies I consider great and I watch again and again but see something different and fresh in them each time like for-one my truly great ones--Godfather Part 2. There are others distinctions biting at my heels in these considerations but I'll leave it here. Hopes this keeps up till tomorrow cuz that's when I'm going to see the Paris movie.

- basman

June 4, 2011 at 10:18am

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p.s. Molly it's been a while. Nice to talk to you again, here, there and everywhere. Where've I been? Where've you been? :-)

- basman

June 4, 2011 at 10:31am

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All I can say is that in relation to Woody Allen is that I find no clear thematic vision either about life or art and their interrelation in his films. Make of this what you will. To me the closest he came to articulating such a vision was in “Purple Rose of Cairo.”

- arnon

June 4, 2011 at 11:24am

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I'll write something here tomorrow, or I plan to anyway, about the Paris movie annd Thomson's Paris Review-get it Paris Review-to no doubt a collective yawn from the indifferent multitudes.

- basman

June 4, 2011 at 1:22pm

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Just back from night out, drinks and then a late dinner with a friend who knew a Shiraz from an Amarone. Strolled around Yorkville, smoked a cigar, and fit right in with my town's beautiful people, so I keep telling myself. That's so nice to know Basman, thanks for the update. Sure, and you're welcome Basman

- basman

June 5, 2011 at 12:51am

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Looks like you said it all. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

- ironyroad

June 5, 2011 at 3:56am

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2 today seeing Midnight in Paris, topless.

- basman

June 5, 2011 at 11:43am

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Ironyroad, what did you like about Vicky Cristina Barcelona?

- arnon

June 5, 2011 at 4:24pm

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I took the family to see "Midnight on Paris" yesterday afternoon. It's not a great movie but it is joyful and clever about nostalgia, denial and longing for something more meaningful in the life one leads. A literary romp which should be irresistible to those yearners among us, who are tethered by commonsense and rational expectations. The movie is framed like a book: the front cover -- pretty sentimental picturesque view of the city -- and the back of the book, a short summation, and in between, a fantasy about a bygone age. I thought Owen Wilson did an excellent job conveying that feeling of hopeless hapless and helpless yearning. To his credit, he did not try to imitate Woody Allen's schtick. His performance was in character: sweet and bumbling, puzzled and delighted. I noticed at least one discrepancy in the plot, something that disappointed me because I expected more perfect control from Allen. The movie feels somewhat unfinished and rushed. I would have liked the film to be longer and to have taken the time to tell us more about this man, who moves from child-like wonder with Paris to a much more mature, realistic and therefore more satisfying, type of love for the city.

- noga1

June 5, 2011 at 7:29pm

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Well, in brief, arnon, pretty much as I wrote above. The premise of the plot is something that at first glance might be filed away under "narcissistic male fantasy," but the triangular relationships between V, C, and Juan Antonio, as well as C, JA, and Maria Elena, involve a kind of opening up on all sides, so that the characters begin to know more about themselves and each other. It can't and doesn't last, but it's not clear whether the general idea of polyamorous relationships is fatally flawed, or whether it's simply not possible with a passionate figure such as Maria in the equation -- but if the latter, how do you do passion without the passionate, is the question. Ironically, you need exactly the kind of person who will bring the thing to a crisis. In its relaxed and almost self-deprecating unfolding of personality and non-regulation desire, I think the movie is something quite special. Really only HBO's Big Love has had the nerve and empathy to approach a story of non-monogamous love without, as I said, either pre-emptive hostility or locker-room nudges and winks.

- ironyroad

June 5, 2011 at 8:49pm

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ironyroad, while I didn't see it that way, I appreciate your response. Thanks.

- arnon

June 5, 2011 at 9:28pm

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“The movie feels somewhat unfinished and rushed. I would have liked the film to be longer and to have taken the time to tell us more about this man, who moves from child-like wonder with Paris to a much more mature, realistic and therefore more satisfying, type of love for the city.” I haven’t yet seen the film, and your review hasn’t convinced me that I should waste a couple of hours on it. Your comment above rings true though of other Woody films. In his Barcelona film he didn’t seem to take the time to develop character and used the voice over to cover up his lazy and hazy portrayal.

- arnon

June 5, 2011 at 9:33pm

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I saw Midnight in Paris. It's delightful, very, very smart , gorgeously shot, and well scripted and acted but so light and slight it seems to float away--it's, I'd say, an entirely bearable lightness of seeing. That floating away lightness reminds of the evanescent feeling I get when I read Oscar Wilde's social comedies. Thomson's review makes little sense to me. I'm sure it's written in good faith but reads to me as if he's being a party pooping contrarian just for the sake of being one. And some of his criticisms seem eccentric. I was going to try to pick it apart specifically and maybe still will-probably not- but don't have the will and energy right now to do it. His querelous review is so starkly at odds with the luminescent, sweetly romantic ever so light feel of the movie. One neat point is that the obnoxious pedant in the movie is the one to make the thematic point early on that the movies turns on. I noted glancing at a few reviews one by Rex Reed--who knew he was still writing anything--saying that Owen Wilson is a terrible actor. Boy do I diagree with that and he was just right in this movie. All the acting was first rate. I'd recommend this movie to the right kind of person--it's not for everybody; my wife was much more ho hum about it than I was; she doesn't like Woody Allen's sensibility generally, just the opposite of me. Arnon, I don't know you but from what I've seen of your posts, I'd think you'd enjoy the movie. It's worth seeing.

- basman

June 6, 2011 at 1:21am

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...t floating away lightness reminds of the evanescent feeling I get when I read Oscar Wilde's social comedies.... Actually. now that I've slept on it, more like A Midsummer's Night Dream.

- basman

June 6, 2011 at 10:55am

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"... onically, you need exactly the kind of person who will bring the thing to a crisis." This is not how I read Maria Elena's role at all. In my view it was Christina who brought about the crisis by deciding to opt out of the "menage". She did it as breezily as when she agreed to participate in it, without considering the harm it would inflict upon M-E's very fragile mental balance. Christina was a curious but easily bored young woman, in many ways shallow and reckless. M-E was a fully loaded gun waiting to explode. Christina's desertion precipitated it. Thus she became responsible for what had later transpired. She wouldn't have been responsible had she simply walked away as soon as M-E showed up, or at least never responded to M-E's sexual move.

- noga1

June 6, 2011 at 12:46pm

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arnon, no problem. Noga -- that's a fair point that I would disagree with only with regard to how the movie frames the characters/choices. It's not so much -- in my view -- that M-E is a fully loaded gun and that Cristina is a curious but easily bored young woman, but rather how one is encouraged to view those types. My sense is that the movie is on Cristina's side, in that she's entitled to be what she is, and that part of life is making fickle choices AND dodging the Maria-Elenas. You could argue, though, that a more legitimate framework of values would be one that recognizes the M-E's in advance and judges accordingly. But then nobody would ever be young, curious, or reckless. One could also take your argument a step further by saying the Juan Antonio, as the one who knows M-E best, should not have introduced the girls to her.

- ironyroad

June 6, 2011 at 2:55pm

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"But then nobody would ever be young, curious, or reckless." One can be young, curious and still responsible; it wouldn't take much pains for Christina to dodge Maria Elena. She knew about her from J-A's stories. I don't share your view that the movie is on Christina's side, as I don't think it is was the movie's intention for the audience to be on Judy's side as she was actively encouraging Vicki to have an affair with Juan Antonio. About J-A's responsibility -- as you'd say, it is a fair point. But somehow I don't expect men of J-A's type to be overly concerned about the well being of their women. He is excited by women, the attention, by love, by sex, and will have his way. He is exempt from responsibility because I took him to be irresponsible from the very first moment he enters the movie. Perhaps the flaw in this movie is the fact that none of the main characters offers a fixed moral point by which to relate to others. Even Vicky, who seems level-headed enough, succumbs to her fantasies. At the end we can only sigh in relief that the whole mess ended with just a graze to Vicky's hand. And J-A is rightly punished by having to tend to Maria Elena. He was once freed from her but I don't think he will be so lucky again.

- noga1

June 6, 2011 at 3:22pm

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"Perhaps the flaw in this movie is the fact that none of the main characters offers a fixed moral point by which to relate to others." Yes, but perhaps that isn't the flaw so much as the peculiar quality (rather like in Carson McCullers' novels) that makes viewing it a slightly strange experience. We keep looking for that fixed point but the movie keeps not responding in that way.

- ironyroad

June 6, 2011 at 5:15pm

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When you said: "My sense is that the movie is on Cristina's side," I thought you meant the movie encourages viewers to identify with her, to justify and even rejoice in her choices. As if being young IS all there is to it.

- noga1

June 6, 2011 at 6:10pm

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Yes, that's true, I think the movie does that, but (if I'm getting what you're saying) that's not quite a "fixed moral point." Narratives can take up a position that colors the action, nudges our assessment, but not necessarily in the sense of saying, here are the embodied values you should embrace as a viewer/reader. So I still agree with you on the lack of a fixed point, but VCB does have . . . preferences of perspective, perhaps?

- ironyroad

June 6, 2011 at 6:56pm

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Nice review of Midnight In Paris and literate too: http://tiny.cc/9pwwr

- basman

June 6, 2011 at 10:46pm

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p.s. Reductio ad absurdum: the infinite regress of nostalgia: a conceit in Midnight In Paris.

- basman

June 6, 2011 at 10:49pm

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I don't think you are getting my point, ironyroad. You are lecturing to me, that "Narratives can take up a position that colors the action, nudges our assessment, but not necessarily in the sense of saying, here are the embodied values you should embrace as a viewer/reader.". Isn't that basic reading comprehension? Heroes and heroines in a novel or a movie are interesting in that we can identify with their struggles and challenges while maintaining an ironic distance from them in order to assess whether any growth has taken place, any sort of learning achieved. Sometimes we stand behind them sometimes at an angle and sometimes we really get away from them, all the better to see what is happening to them. Christina offers nothing of the kind. She has learned nothing from her experience. By the end of the film she is exactly where she was at its beginning. It's not her values that bother me; it's her character which doesn't learn and is incapable of feeling any remorse or regret, self-introspection. I believe at the end the narrator tells us she is going to continue to search for herself. My guess is she will never find it because she is so shallow, stunted, and quite uninteresting, just listen to the clichees in her choice of language. Vicky does a little better. Maria Elena and Juan Antonio are both artists, narcissistic and little mad, so I'm not sure they are candidates for growth anyway.

- noga1

June 6, 2011 at 11:19pm

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I sincerely hope it isn't "basic reading comprehension" as I'd be out of a job if it were. In my experience, students (undergrads) are often quite clueless as to what narrative does and how it does it, and sometimes one can often get very interesting reactions as they wrestle with the various implications of reading for this vs. reading for that, ethical vs. aesthetic judgments and so on. I wouldn't necessarily challenge your comments above, but I also don't see how they diverge from with what you said above about the lack of a character=fixed moral point in VCB (which I also agreed with) -- I think you and I just value that crucial aspect of the film differently.

- ironyroad

June 7, 2011 at 9:51am

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I think it was Jacko who said, "Why don't I like Allen? I have never liked his stuff. Glorified hypo..... the art form of masturbation." I agree. Well, I did like Annie Hall a little bit, but then when I was a kid, I masturbated. [I presume everyone here, male or female, did not engage in "self-abuse." Which is what watching Woody Alllen movies is like. There is another issue, Woody Allen's ethics as a human being. This makes me think of Wagner. Assuming that Allen's "artistic" work has some aesthetic value, and that Wagner's work has some aesthetic value (both debatable points I would offer as a debating point), is the value of their artistic work devalued by their value as human beings. For that matter, was the Marquis de Sade a great artist, and if so, does the value of his art make him a groovy person?

- skahn

February 26, 2012 at 11:42pm

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