Woody Allen
5 titles · american classical
Annie Hall opens with a man telling the audience two jokes about how bad life is and then explaining that his relationship ended. Talk carries the films: anxious, allusive, delivered by neurotic New Yorkers who have read enough to make themselves unhappy. Manhattan shoots the city in black and white with Gershwin over it. The later work keeps the shape and moves the setting, and Blue Jasmine strands a ruined socialite in her sister's San Francisco flat.
Signature
- Verbal comedy carried by anxiety and cultural reference.
- New York filmed as an idealised place.
- Fourth-wall breaks and narrating protagonists.
- Comic structure holding genuinely bleak material.
fit
Lineage
Earlier films these works draw on, and the films they went on to shape — each link checked to name a film that actually came first.