The Best Of Film Babble Blog (A Self Indulgent 20th Anniversary/Birthday Post)

Film Babble Blog has been AWOL since my DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE review as things have been hectically busy lately, but I’m back to make a self-indulgent post on my Birthday. I’ve been meaning to do something to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of this blog (first post was March 12, 2004) all year, and I finally came up with compiling a list of my Top 10 favorite posts.

 

Among the movie reviews have been assorted articles, lists, and interviews and this what I consider the cream of the crop. By the way, the pic at the top is from Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation of THE GREAT GATSBY (I just wanted to have a lavish big screen party scene image, the movie isn’t even mentioned in any of these posts).

So let’s get right to ‘em (click on the highlighted titles to read the posts):

1. In Memorium: My Dearly Departed Cat Squiggy (September 14, 2014)

Of course, #1 would be honoring my first adoptive cat, Squiggy, who passed away 10 years ago (Sept. 12, 2014). This remembrance might be too icky for some who are not cat or pet people, but I think most folks will appreciate the sentiment. Squiggy lives!

 

2. William H. Macy Chats With Film Babble Blog About His New Film KRYSTAL (April 12, 2018)

Over the course of Film Babble Blog’s first two decades, I didn’t do many interviews, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to talk to the great William H. Macy. He was promoting his second film as director, the odd Rosario Dawson vehicle KRYSTAL, and it was an insightful, fun phone chat with the acclaimed actor. 

3. Ingmar Bergman: The Woody Allen Angle (July 31, 2007)

 

When the iconic Swedish filmmaker Igmar Bergman passed on 2007, instead of doing a standard obit, I decided to do a deep dive on his influence on the films of Woody Allen. Now Allen is a controversial figure these days, but this film geek’s noting the many elements whether they be thematic, technical, personal, or personnel that Woody Allen has borrowed from the movie master still holds up to me.

 

4. Apocalypse Then (September 11, 2021)

My 20th Anniversary recollections of the week of the tragic events of 9/11, which started off with a Birthday viewing of the then new APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX is one of my favorite pieces as it captures my what my world felt like during that sad, shocking time when it felt like the world stopped.

 

5. That Time Orson Welles Ended His Career (And Life) On An Episode of Moonlighting (December 30, 2023)

I was reminded of the legendary filmmaker’s final moments in front of a camera when Hulu started streaming the hit ABC series, Moonlighting, late last year and I exercise-bike binged it. It’s an interesting tale of how fortunately the late, great CITIZEN KANE actor/writer/director had one last gasp meaning that his ridiculous voice turn in the 1985 animated TRANSFORMERS wasn’t his last credit. The Film Babble Blog favorite Welles was also featured in the posts, A Birthday Tribute To Orson Welles With 10 Welles Wannabes (May 5, 2008), and Classic Cinematic Cameo: Orson Welles in THE MUPPET MOVIE (MAY 6, 2022). 

 

6. That Time THE BODYGUARD Soundtrack Saved Nick Lowe’s Ass (August 12, 2021)

An amusing look back at a happy happening involving the great British singer/songwriter benefiting greatly by the use of one of his classics (albeit a cover) on the best-selling soundtrack of the Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner hit, THE BODYGUARD. 

7. The Legacy Of Mrs. James Bond 007 (September 10, 2020)

Much like the Bergman post, I was wanting to pay tribute to a legendary figure who had passed (in this case Diana Rigg), but through an specific angle that most obits mentioned but didn’t fully investigate. Another post in this same vein is: How James Bond Was Indiana Jones’ Father Long Before Sean Connery Played Indiana Jones’ Father (October 31, 2020)

 

The final posts are lists, which I’ve done a lot of over the years. A few of these were featured on the Internet Movie Database when they used to update a “Hit List” on their main webpage. That got my page a lot of action back in the day, which I miss now.

 

8. 20 Great Modern Movie Cameos (6/5/07)

9. 10 Definitive Films-Within-Films (7/4/07)

10. 10 Movie Soundtracks That Think Outside Of The Box Office (9/01/09)

So there you go. Hope you enjoyed this trip down Film Babble Blog’s memory lane.

More later...

New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 6/11/13

The two biggest titles releasing today, Sam Raimi’s OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL (no colon) and Tommy Wirkola’s HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS, are both the stuff of modernized fairy tale fodder, which makes it hard to believe that Tim Burton had nothing to do with either of them.

Anyway, OZ, starring James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, and a bunch of green screen/CGI effects, which I wrote was “Not a bomb, but no magical masterpiece either” (3/8/13) is available now in the standard Blu-ray / DVD / Digital Copy package. Special Features include six featurettes: “Walt Disney and the Road to Oz” (10 minutes), “My Journey in Oz” (a 22 minute sampler of a video journal by Franco). “China Girl and the Suspension of Disbelief” (5 min), “Before Your Very Eyes: From Kansas To Oz” (11 min), “Metamorphosis” (8 min), “Mr. Elfman’s Musical Concoctions” (7 min), and 5 minutes of bloopers. My review from its theatrical release last March is here.

HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS, starring Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, which I liked a lot less, is out in a likewise Blu-ray / DVD / Digital Copy edition, but adds a UltraViolet copy. Its Special Features are only 3 featurettes: “Reinventing Hansel & Gretel” (15 min), “The Witching Hours” (9 min), and “Meet Edward the Troll” (5 min). None of these extras are likely to sway me from re-thinking my description of the film last January that went like this: “From the same lack of inspiration that brought you ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’” comes this muddled mixture of the action genre with fairy tale mythology.” Read the rest of my review here.

Having only seen the film on a crappy truncated VHS release back in the ‘80s, it’s cool to see that Paul McCartney and Wings’ ‘70s concert film ROCKSHOW is out now on both Blu ray and DVD, marking the first time in over 30 years that the full over 2 hour program is available to the public. There’s only one bonus extra, a 10 minute backstage featurette entitled “A Very Lovely Party,” but the 30 songs of vintage Beatles, solo, and Wings classics from McCartney and crew’s 1976 tour of North America contained in this package should be satisfying enough on their own.

I skipped Ric Roman Waugh’s SNITCH starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson when it was released theatrically early this year, but folks who are into such action genre exercises should know that its new release (Blu-ray + UltraViolet + Digital Copy) is outfitted with Special Features like a 50 minute ‘Making of’ doc entitled “Privileged Information,” commentary with Director Waugh and Editor Jonathan Chibnall, and deleted scenes.

A more appealing looking title from earlier this year out today on both formats is Im Sang-Soo’s South Korean erotic thriller THE TASTE OF MONEY, available with sparse extras (“Behind the Scenes” featurette, trailer) on both 1-disc Blu ray and DVD editions. Other new movies hitting home video today include: Quentin Dupieux’s WRONG (Blu Ray + Digital Copy), and Jared Moshe’s 2012 Western DEAD MAN’S BURDEN (only on DVD).

Last week, this New Releases feature reported about the release of the Lifetime TV movie RING OF FIRE, a biopic about June Carter Cash as played by Jewel. This week, another RING OF FIRE comes out, but this one is a TV miniseries produced by REELZ about an oil rig causing a volcanic eruption in a small town starring Michael Vartan, Terry O'Quinn, and Ian Tracey. Since end-of-the-world scenarios are hot right now, maybe more folks than who saw it when it aired last March will check out this release (available in both 1-disc Blu ray and DVD editions), but probably not. Its lone Special Feature is a Sneak Peek of Reelz’s follow-up miniseries Eve of Destruction, which aired in April and is releasing next month on Blu ray and DVD.

Despite getting mixed reviews and a lot of internet ridicule for its unrealistic and pretentious agenda, Aaron Sorkin’s preachy HBO series The Newsroom was renewed for a second season that premieres next month (July 14, 2013). Folks who want to catch up with the trials and tribulations of self righteous news anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels), his neurotic executive producer (Emily Mortimer) and his mostly inexperienced staff at the fictional Atlantis Cable News (ACN) channel can pick up The Newsroom: The Complete First Season now out on 4-disc Blu ray (+ DVD Combo + Digital Copy) and DVD sets. 

Special Features include “The Rundown,” (an 25 minute long discussion about the show with Sorkin, Daniels, Mortimer, Waterson, executive producer Alan Poul and co-executive producer Greg Mottola), five commentaries with Sorkin, Poul, Daniels, Waterston, Mortimer and others, “Mission Control” (a behind-the –scenes featurette), “Inside the Episodes” (individual featurettes about each episodes), and deleted scenes. Now folks who loved hating the show will have a lot more material to “hate watch.”

The complete first season of Netflix’s much hyped series House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey as ruthless U.S. Representative Frank Underwood, hits Blu ray and DVD today in 4-disc sets. The very entertaining and addictive show, episodes of which were directed by David Fincher (SE7EN, FIGHT CLUB, ZODIAC, THE SOCIAL NETWORK) and Joel Schumacher (a much less impressive filmography including THE LOST BOYS, BATMAN FOREVER, and THE NUMBER 23 - see what I mean?), also stars Robin Wright, Kate Mara, and Carey Stoll. Like many people did when all 13 episodes dropped on the streaming service last February, you can still watch the whole season in a little over half a day, because this release has no bonus material (no commentaries, featurettes, nothing) to add to the running time. No word yet about when the second season, now in production, will air.

Despite its similar title to the Will Smith sci-fi summer bomb AFTER EARTH, the History Channel’s 3-Disc Collection, AFTER PEOPLE, out today on DVD only, is a fascinating breakdown of what life on this planet would be like if the entire human population went extinct. Made up of 4 extended programs from the History Channel series Life After People, the set has no Special Features, but at its 288 minute running time, they’re really not needed. It may be too intensely scientific for some folks, but the insights and speculations, as well as all the CDI-ed global destruction, should strongly draw most interested viewers in.

On the older film front, titles new to Blu ray out today include a couple of early ‘70s Clint Eastwood Westerns (John Sturges’ JOE KIDD and Don Siegel’s TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA), Phil Alden Robinson’s 1992 Robert Redford thriller/comedy SNEAKERS, and the Criterion Collection edition of Igmar Bergman’s 1957 classic WILD STRAWBERRIES.

More later…

Seven Years Later, Does MULHOLLAND DRIVE Make Any More Sense?

Short answer: Maybe a little.

Long Answer: Last Friday night as part of a series on film noir, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh had a screening of David Lynch’s twisted surreal drama MULHOLLAND DRIVE. The film was introduced by Independent Weekly Arts Editor David Fellerath who considers the film a masterpiece and one of the greatest of the last 10 years. 

Fellerath asked how many folks were seeing the film for the first time and a surprisingly huge amount of hands were raised. After some background and an attempt at plot summary, he assured the almost full room that 95% of the film holds up to “logical scrutiny.” I’m not so sure about that, but the film did seem to gain levels of coherence that it lacked for me back in 2001. Fellerath had also stated that if anybody still had problems with the film’s meaning afterwards - “there’s lots on the internet.”

There sure is lots on the internet, starting with one of the lengthiest Wikipedia entries for a film that I’ve ever seen with content headings like "Interpretations and Allusions," detailed character breakdowns, and long intricate paragraphs on the style and critical reception. 

The references for the entry site 82 articles with such titles as “Nice Film If You Can Get It: Understanding Mulholland Drive” (The Guardian) and Salon.com’s “Everything You Were Afraid To Ask About Mulholland Drive” (which Roger Ebert considers “the best explanation”). 

Another worthwhile read is Anthony Kusich’s “Mulholland Drive…Explained” which deals which the 10 clues that Lynch included in the notes for the original DVD release. The existence of the clues is curious because Lynch was quoted in the New York Times a few years later as saying that DVD extras can “demystify” a film. 

Perhaps what Lynch and many critics have proposed is the most sensible way to take MULHOLLAND DRIVE – not to try and make sense of it. Just absorb the mood and visual tones winding through the various narrative strands. Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring are either friends turned lovers named Betty and Rita in a dream or the former lovers now estranged Diane and Camilla in reality or vice versa. 

It appears that Justin Theroux is one of the only constant characters – an arrogant film director who is pressured by Mafioso types, to cast Camilla in his newest film. In one of the most memorably amusing scenes has Theroux meet a cryptic character called “The Cowboy” (Lafayette Montgomery) who tells him: “A man’s attitude goes some ways. The way his life will be.” 

When The Cowboy can be seen passing through the background of a party scene later on it is impossible not to take as intensely comical.

A turning point comes when Betty and Rita doing some detective work because Rita has lost her memory (she took her name from a Rita Hayworth movie poster) locate a woman’s dead body.

Identities then blend (the Igmar Bergman-esque screen capture above says a lot about the merging of identities I believe) with Rita donning a blonde wig and then they shatter completely with the aid of a shiny blue box (that of course appears with no explanation) and then reassemble or emerge from a dream - as when The Cowboy says: “Hey, pretty girl, time to wake up.”

Many elements familiar to fans of Lynch fill the frames throughout - among them the darkened old fashioned back room of the mysterious movie studio string puller Mr. Rogue (Michael J. Anderson) wouldn’t have been out of place in the dreams of Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) on Twin Peaks and the creepy Club Silencio that Betty and Rita attend one fateful night is somewhere you would expect to see Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) from BLUE VELVET lounging around in.

Writting before about the “love/WTF?” relationship I’ve had with the films of David Lynch (“Inland Empire Burlesque” and “Hey, I Finally Saw...ERASERHEAD”) I had decided to let go of the idea of determining definitive meanings and just go with the freaky flow. 

Wading through the various analyzing articles previously mentioned of this particular film though is still extremely fascinating because many interpretations can exist side by side, none more valid or more convincing than the other. 

Maybe MULHOLLAND DRIVE doesn’t make any more sense now than it ever did but its captivating spell has indeed grown and its perverse passion is definitely more powerful than when it was first shown in the heady distracting days shortly after 9/11. 

For those who haven't seen it before and lived with it for a while, I have to relate this - while the end credits were rolling at the Art Museum last Friday, a irrate woman who was obviously one of those who had earlier raised their hands, was heard complaining: “I’m very upset - it didn’t make any sense! Even PULP FICTION made sense! At the ending it all came together. I mean even AMERICAN BEAUTY made sense too!” 

So much for discussion, huh?

More later…

What's Up With Woody? Case In Point - CASSANDRA'S DREAM

It used to be that a new Woody Allen movie opening was an event. 

In the summer of 1989, the North Carolina Museum Of Art in Raleigh had a film festival focusing on the acclaimed writer/director/star.

Every Friday night a different Woody Allen film was shown in chronological order. and I went to nearly every one (I missed HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, but had seen it already if I remember correctly). It was timed to lead up to the release of CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS that fall.

After that, throughout the '90s, Woody Allen movies played at many theaters in the Triangle area, mostly art houses, but there was some multiplex action too, so it was a bit of a sobering slap to have his latest film be the first one in my lifetime to not play in my hometown of Chapel Hill. 

I grew up with Allen’s films - my parents told me that they took me to see SLEEPER at the Plaza theater (now an empty lot) when I was four years old, but I don’t remember the experience. 

Of course not, right? Despite the declining quality of his recent work I’m pulling for the Woodman - I believe he can still pull a great movie out of his ass one day. But, sorry to say, this one, newly released on DVD, ain’t it:

CASSANDRA’S DREAM (Dir. Woody Allen, 2007)

There is a scene early on in Woody Allen’s 38th film as director in which the protagonists (Ewan MacGregor and Colin Farrell) in the middle of a discussion in a garage leave the shot while the camera stays still.

While the dialogue of their tense talk is still audible they exit into a back room for a few moments then reappear with no breaks; no cuts. It is notable because it is one of the only times, apart from the standard white on black opening credits that is, that this British brothers gone bad thriller feels like an actual Woody Allen movie. 

As it goes on with the questionable character of their Uncle played by Tom Wilkinson, fresh from his crazily sane (or sanity-driven insanity) turn in MICHAEL CLAYTON, showing up with a out to the brothers’ financial worries, a few unmistakable Woody Allen themes pop up - jealousy and greed to be exact. 

A murder movie in the mold of Allen’s last hit MATCH POINT is the order of the day but since I was in the minority that was unfavorable to that first foray into British societal class crime, I am even less forgiving to this unmoving neo-noir creeper caper.

Comparisons are inevitable to BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD, Sydney Lumet’s thriller also involving corrupt money-mad brothers doomed to fail in matters of finance and family; but this can’t really be considered a copy-cat because production of it was well underway years before that film was forged and it certainly doesn’t have anything in common with its narrative structure. 

Still it doesn’t bode well that that fine film would so definitively overshadow Allen’s incredibly self-conscious effort to make such an uncharacteristic and cold morality play as this. MacGregor and Farrell put in solid performances that show signs of rehearsing and multiple-take re-focusing but the material they have to work with feels like it came from pages of a first draft with the repetition fat uncut.

Wilkinson energizes the few sweaty desperate scenes he’s in but he acts as if he has secrets he’s not willing to share with the brothers, the audience, and even the movie. The female characters don't make much of a mark either - as gorgeous as Hayley Atwell, Sally Hawkins, and Ashley Madekwe are they are just decorations on a boy’s club class project. 

CASSANDRA’S DREAM, named after a boat the brothers name after a race winning dog at the tracks that doesn’t really have much of a consequence to the movie’s themes, is unfortunately another movie misstep for Woody Allen. In trying to make a movie so unlike any other from his canon he ended up with a film so indistinct that it is instantly forgettable.

Whew! Next Time I'll Tell you what I really think. This August comes yet another Woody Allen film - VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA which as a Spanish murder movie (that's just going by the trailer) doesn't look like a very characteristic work either. The oft repeated line from STARDUST MEMORIES (and real life) was that of his movies folks prefered “the early funny ones” well I’m going to start calling all his filmography before the last decade - “the early good ones”. So for the blogosphere film geek record here’s my list of my top 10 favorites of the early good ones:

Film Babble Blog’s Top 10 Woody Allen Films

1. CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (1989) 

As the title pretty much states this is a serious drama with a comic subplot. Martin Landau plays a wealthy ophthalmologist whose massive guilt over murdering his mistress (Angelica Huston) puts him in existential turmoil. 

In the subplot Woody Allen plays a struggling documentary film maker in a bad marriage who pines for a PBS producer (Mia Farrow) while he has to do a fluff piece portrait of a man he despises - a corporate TV bigwig played by a perfectly smarmy Alan Alda. 

A top notch screenplay filled with great lines like: “Comedy is tragedy plus time” and “Show business is, is dog-eat-dog. It’s worse than dog-eat-dog. It’s dog-doesn’t-return-other-dog’s-phone-calls.”

2. MANHATTAN (1979)



Shot in widescreen black and white with a Gershwin score, and again a magnificent script this a rich rewarding movie over and over. Relationships, digs at shallow popular culture, pithy party repartee, heart breaking partings, and so on - Allen captures New York in the “Me Decade” like nobody else could. The great cast (Diane Keaton, Michael Murphy, Mariel Hemmingway, Meryl Streep) all inhabit the material beautifully. 

Of course again, there are the great one-liners: “My analyst warned me, but you were so beautiful I got another analyst.”


3. ANNIE HALL (1977) Allen’s most popular movie (it won the Best Picture Oscar) is an obvious but crucial choice because it signified a new direction and style after years of silly (but still terrific) comedies. 

Diane Keaton (who won Best Actress) as the title character and Woody as, well, Woody (actually his comedian character's name is Alvy Singer) do their crazy chemistry thing over an almost surreal mix of 4th wall breakage, childhood memory revisionism, overlapping comic dialogue, and even animation. “If life was only like this!”Allen says directly to the camera at one hilarious point and yes, I often wish it was. 

4. HUSBANDS AND WIVES (1992) Hard to separate this from the real-life break-up of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow but this take on Bergman’s SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE has a lot more going for it than what is now dated gossip. 

The late great Sydney Pollack, in what is definitely his best performance, and Judy Davis announce their divorce to Allen and Farrow, before their planned dinner out together mind you, and the two couples struggle through crises caught on a shaky cam with odd cuts and a docudrama style. Juliette Lewis as a writing student of Allen says: “Life doesn’t imitate art - it imitates bad TV”; in this film though, art does a pretty good impression of awkward desperate living. 

5. HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (1986) Smack dab in the middle of the Reagan era and Woody’s Mia Farrow era as well, this is another sweet blend of comedy and drama. A large cracking cast including Diane Wiest, Barbara Hershey, Michael Caine (who won an Oscar for it), Sam Waterson, and Carrie Fisher keep the proceedings lively but Allen on the verge of suicide and getting rejuvenated by a chance midnight moviehouse showing of the Marx Brothers’ DUCK SOUP is why this movie makes the list.



6. THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (1985) At the movie theater I work at part time one of my co-workers, who has worked at theaters for over 20 years, often remarks that this is his favorite Woody Allen film. Fitting for a projectionist to love a movie that largely takes place in an old 30’s movie palace. 

One of Allen’s best premises, a character (Jeff Daniels) in the movie within a movie of the title walks off the screen and into the real world of the depression because he falls in love with a woman (Mia Farrow) in the audience. Farrow sighs: “I just met a wonderful new man. He’s fictional but you can't have everything.”


7. ZELIG (1983) Looking a lot like I am stuck on 80’s Woody Allen, huh? A mockumentary (I don't care if Christopher Guest hates the term) about a human chameleon played by Allen who can change his form or ethnicity depending on the company he keeps. 

Through the movie magic of editing and insertion Zelig finds himself rubbing shoulders with key players in early 20th century history - Hitler, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, Babe Ruth, Charlie Chaplin, and James Cagney are among those who convincingly appear in archival footage. Forget the forgery that was FORREST GUMP, and relish ZELIG.

8. LOVE AND DEATH (1975)Woody’s War and Peace! Much headier than the comedies that made his name this was the most ambitious of his early career - an epic period piece with battle scenes and much Foreign film influence but the silliness and rapid-fire jokes ranks this as one of his all time funniest films. Another great pairing with Diane Keaton and yes, another great script. One of many hilarious one-liners: “There are worse things in life than death. If you've ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, you know what I'm talking about.”


9. DECONSTRUCTING HARRY (1997) The last great Woody Allen movie IMHO. It is different terrain with vulgarity, profanity, and depravity and that’s just what comes out of scorned lover Judy Davis’s mouth! Woody Allen plays Harry Block, rumored to be based on author Philip Roth, who takes everyone’s suffering and turns it into literary gold, as his ex-wife says. 

His creations catch up with him and he takes a look back at his parasitic existence with help from a large cast featuring Robin Williams, Billy Crystal (as the Devil!), Richard Benjamin, Demi Moore, Tobey McQuire, and a clever cameo by Mariel Hemmingway. Maybe the most acerbic and divisive film of Allen’s career.



10. TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN (1969) I have a soft spot for this one because it is the first Woody Allen movie I remember seeing as a kid on television. Maybe one of the first mockumentaries it tells the story of Virgil, a petty thief who goes from heist to the slammer again and again. Essentially a series of sketches filled with patented one-liners and sight gags, it remains one of my favorites of his early funny ones because of the sheer amount of material that works. 

I saw it again recently on TCM and it still holds up. Virgil on meeting his wife (Janet Margolin) for the first time: “After fifteen minutes I wanted to marry her, and after half an hour I completely gave up the idea of stealing her purse.” Okay! 

Now, there are a number of other Woody Allen films I love and recommend as well (like BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, RADIO DAYS, and SLEEPER) but that’s my top ten. Maybe this’ll encourage some young novice film geek to put some of the Woodman’s work in their NetFlix queue.

More later...

Ingmar Bergman - The Woody Allen Angle

LOVE AND DEATH (1975), arguably Woody Allen's most Bergmanesque work.

Isaac (Woody Allen) : “Bergman? Bergmans the only genius in cinema today, I think.”
Yale (Michael Murphy) : (To Mary) “He’s a big Bergman fan.”
Mary (Diane Keaton) : (To Isaac) “God, you’re so the opposite. You write that fabulous television show. It’s so funny and his view is so Scandinavian."
- MANHATTAN (Dir. Woody Allen, 1979)

Nearly every tribute to the late great Ingmar Bergman (July 14, 1918-July 30, 2007) notes his huge influence on Woody Allen. Allen’s 1988 quote that Bergman was “probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera" is being heavily circulated right now. Roger Ebert quoted the line in his fine In Memory article and said that Allen has “made some films in deliberate imitation of Bergman.” So lets take a look at some of those films and see just what elements whether they be thematic, technical, personal, or personnel that Woody Allen has borrowed from the movie master:

LOVE AND DEATH (1975): The first Allen film to overtly reference Bergman mainly in its use of the Grim Reaper, who oddly appears draped in white not the deathly black that Bengt Ekerot wore in THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957). Set in the Napoleanic era and despite being a satire of Russian literature (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and the films of Eisenstein) the Bergman steals are what makes the thing tick. The intense overlapping close-ups are taken from PERSONA (1966) and this strained but extremely funny Diane Keaton monologue reeks of Ingmar existentialism given a tongue-in-cheek approach:

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you’re getting this down.”

ANNIE HALL (1977): Allen's most popular film commercially and winner of the Academy Award for best picture has relatively few touches taken from the Swedish director - a few WILD STRAWBERRIES-like returns to childhood memories and some leftover PERSONA-like shots but it is amusing that the film that Alvy (Allen) refuses to miss the beginning of because of Annie’s (Diane Keaton) tardiness was Bergman’s FACE TO FACE (1976).

INTERIORS (1978): The Woodman's first drama (also his first film as director that he does not appear as an actor in) owes a lot and I mean A LOT to Bergman. The term “Bergmanesque” was coined by Richard Schickel (TIME Magazine) for this film and Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote:

“It’s almost as if Mr. Allen had set out to make someone else’s movie, say a film in the manner of Mr. Bergman, without having any grasp of the material, or first-hand, gut feelings about the characters. They seem like other people's characters, known only through other people’s art.”

The story is about three sisters (Diane Keaton, Mary Beth Hurt, Kristin Griffith) their suicidal mother (Geradine Page) their father (E.G. Marshall) who has a blustery new spouse (Maureen Stapleton) and all of their misery. Again the close-ups - like that shot above (also used as the poster picture) with the contemplative looks out the beach house window - definitively pay homage to the Bergman aesthetic : “For me, the human face is the most important subject of the cinema.”

MANHATTAN (1979)

For the lines at the top of this post alone this film should be noted but also because Allen met Bergman during the shooting. According to John Baxter’s Woody Allen: A Biography (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1998) Bergman reporatory member Liv Ullmann (and longtime companion - while she was not one of Bergman’s five wives she did produce one of his children) hooked up the meeting and Allen was surprised at how knowledgeable the Swedish director was of the Jewish comedian’s one-liners and film work. Shortly Before MANHATTAN opened to rapturous acclaim Allen screened Bergman's THE SEVENTH SEAL and CRIES AND WHISPERS (1972) one afternoon and confided to friend Eric Lax “I see his films and I wonder what I’m doing.” He needn’t have worried - he was doing just fine.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY (1982) Obviously Shakespeare inspired but Wikipedia says “The plot revolves around a weekend party bringing together six people, loosely based on Ingmar Bergman's SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT (1955).” The working title of the film was even “Summer Nights” but Allen has denied this connection repeatedly saying that SMILES was one of his least favorite Bergman films. Well A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY is one of my least favorite Allen films so let’s move on...

HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (1986): Truly the one notable Bergman connection here is the appearance of Bergman reparatory company member Max von Sydow who plays Frederick - a reclusive pretentious artist who has this incredible speech after channel flipping one night:

“You see the whole culture. Nazis, deodorant salesmen, wrestlers, beauty contests, a talk show. Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling? But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers. Third grade con men telling the poor suckers that watch them that they speak with Jesus, and to please send in money. Money, money, money! If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.”

SEPTEMBER (1987): Allen's first all and out drama since INTERIORS and again one which he does not appear (again I quote Wikipedia) is “a remake of AUTUMN SONATA" but then we get that [citation needed] red-flag and know not to trust everything we read. It has been a while since I've seen it so I can’t really comment - I just remember extended sequences of Mia Farrow weeping among family and an ex and a potential lover in another beach house like INTERIORS in yet another off season.

ANOTHER WOMAN (1988): Longtime Bergman cinematographer Sven Nykvist (1922-2006) works on Allen's third straight drama. It concerns Gena Rowlands as a professor working on a philosophy book who becomes obsessed with eavesdropping on the sessions of therapy patients which she can hear through a vent in her office. This allows for lots of opportunities for introspection about depression aided by Nykvist’s visual mastery in one of Allen’s most under-rated and worthwhile films. Nykvist would work as Director of Photography for three more Allen movies. While filming ANOTHER WOMAN Allen told an interviewer:

“Bergman likes to rehearse. But the reverse is better for me. It's part of our temperaments. He's a great artist and (laughs) I'm not.”

CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (1989): With its title, the eye of Nykvist, and through its exploration of a “Godless universe” we are almost completely submerged in Bergman at his bleak darkest territory here. Almost completely that is - because Allen's failed film maker subplot is the exception (the Misdemeanors of the title) but thematically and aesthetically we are witnessing a work made from a Bergman blueprint. Wealthy Ophthalmologist Judah (Martin Landau) suffers from existential guilt of universal proportions after having his unstable mistress (Anjelica Huston) murdered by his Mafioso brother (Jerry Orbach). He visits his childhood home and mentally interjects himself into a memory of a family dinner - yep, WILD STRAWBERRIES again. The best combination of comedy and drama Allen has ever created - it’s my personal favorite of his films.

HUSBANDS AND WIVES (1992): Right off the bat this film owes a conceptual copyright to Bergman’s SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. It takes the mock documentary style and introduces us to 2 married couples on the brink of divorce. The first couple - Gabe (Allen) and Judy (Farrow) seem content at first but tensions are mounting especially when told that their friends - the second couple Jack and Sally (Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis) are having a supposedly amicable split-up. We follow each character through flirtations, infidelities, and temper tantrums that recall the canvass of SCENES but Allen has his own stylistic touches on display in the handheld shakiness and the odd edits. The night that Allen and Farrow (who were breaking up in real life) separate they reminisce about watching an old classic movie on TV late one night - what movie you ask? WILD STRAWBERRIES! Which also has more than a little to do with:

DECONSTRUCTING HARRY (1997)

The fractured yet still sturdy structure here is definitely stolen from STRAWBERRIES - a noted academic setting out to receive an honorary award from his old university revisits major life situations and memories of lovers past. Also throw in the premise that Allen's author character disguises his private life and lovers as the lives of the fictitious characters he writes. It has been said that that element comes from author Philip Roth - evidenced in the name Harry Block (made me think of writer's block) but it also should be pointed out that the name of Max von Sydow's character in THE SEVENTH SEAL was Antonius Block. It's also been written that an artist manipulating real life for his art angle is in Bergman's THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY (1961) but I honestly can't vouch for that.

Okay, that's enough Bergman-Allen for now. I'll conclude by saying that Allen's next film after HARRY was CELEBRITY which again utilized Nykvist but Allen's films to the current day (labeled by critic Richard Schickel as “the later funny ones”) have been fairly bereft of Bergman influence. They've also been guilty of an absence of quality but that's another blog entry.

This post is of course dedicated to Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) R.I.P.

More later...