Woody Allen: The Director and the Character

by Paul Mikesell

The collective works of Woody Allen tend to feel as though they are parts of a larger work better than most modern directors. Part of this feeling comes from the fact that Allen directs, writes, and stars in nearly all of his films. Even as he experiments with various genres, his films maintain the feeling that is present throughout his other films. Three of his most well-known and respected films are Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters. 1977’s Annie Hall is often considered Allen’s best film and won the Academy Award for Best Picture (beating out Star Wars in what today would seem nearly impossible). It describes the beginning through the end of a romance between Alvy (Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton). Allen’s comedic follow-up to Annie Hall, 1979’s Manhattan, reunites him on film with Keaton in an extremely stylistic film shot in black and white that tells the stories of multiple relationships and the accompanying loneliness. The final film I will be looking at is 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters. This film presents three sisters, Hannah (Mia Farrow), Lee (Barbara Hershey), and Holly (Dianne Wiest), who all face instability within their relationships with their family, friends, and significant others.

In all three of these films, Allen plays a leading role, and in what is a common criticism, it can often seem as though he is playing the same character throughout each film. In his original review of Annie Hall, critic Roger Ebert mentions this assessment (which interestingly enough, would only become more widespread as Allen continued to make films that had more serious topics):

We’re all familiar by now with “Woody,” the overanxious, underachieving intellectual with the inept social life. We’ve watched him develop from bits in a stand-up comedy routine to a fully developed comic character in the tradition of Chaplin’s tramp or Fields’s drunk. We know how “Woody” will act in so many situations that we’re already laughing before the punch line. Maybe nobody since Jack Benny has been so hilariously predictable…So Woody Allen perhaps really is insecure about his height, shy around girls, routinely incompetent in the daily joust with life. (Ebert 1)

There is obviously going to be an element of the real Woody Allen present throughout his films, especially when he assumes multiple roles in the creation of the final product (writing, directing, acting). Two themes that are consistent with his characters in these three films, Alvy in Annie Hall, Issac in Manhattan, and Mickey in Hannah and Her Sisters. All three of these characters share being artists as writers and/or comedians, but deeper threads exist between them also. I will address Allen’s role as the “outsider” in all three films and his attempts to communicate directly with the audience.

Annie Hall has become such a cultural milestone that some parts of the film are well known even to those who have never seen it. One of these scenes is when Alvy and Annie are at a party and are going to try cocaine. This scene more than nearly any other in the film shows Allen illustrating his character as being an “outsider.” His character (and the real Allen) is older than the ones surrounding him and there are certain generational things he cannot understand. His date with the Rolling Stone journalist is ruined because he does not care about the rock musicians that she enjoys writing about. This scene has him reluctantly trying cocaine. Alvy seems more interested in the inner workings of possessing the drug than the actual effects of it. In the classic moment that everyone remembers, he sneezes and the expensive cocaine goes flying all over the frame. This is a cultural experience that has passed Alvy by and even as he tries to take part in it, his efforts are thwarted by a natural impulse. Alvy is not part of this “scene” and even if he tries, he still cannot be a part of it.

In Manhattan, the intellectual divide that Allen briefly addresses in Annie Hall with the scene in line at the theatre where the “intellectual” is describing Marshall McLuhan, who Alvy in turn pulls out from behind a poster to tell the “intellectual,” “You know nothing of my work!” The discourse between those who possess actually knowledge and those who have it solely to impress others is presented again in the scene where Isaac and Tracy meet Mary for the first time. Everything Issac finds interesting in the museum, Mary hates and vice versa. This conflict continues as the two couples are walking out on the street and Mary and Yale discuss the “Academy of Overrated.” Issac states how he thinks all of the people the mentioned (Carl Jung, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lenny Bruce, etc.) are all terrific, yet the conversation between Mary and Yale continues without pause as they battle to see who can come up with the most revered individual to describe as overrated. Isaac’s sarcastic attempt to give them a ridiculous person to be overrated with Mozart, is taken as a legitimate suggestion and followed up with “Vincent van ‘Gock’.” This disconnect between Allen’s character and the supposed intellectuals is fascinating as it illustrates Allen’s own distaste for the elitism amongst intellectualism. Mary’s claim to justify herself is that “I’m from Philadelphia. We believe in God,” which is a strange attempt to make one seem down to Earth right after dismissing many of the greatest minds of all time. The use of a single shot as these characters walk down the street is interesting to use as it captures all four of them all the time (a trademark of Allen’s films) and allows the viewer to see each person’s reactions to every remark, most notably the one’s on Isaac’s face after each name is mentioned.

Allen’s character in Hannah and Her Sisters is a smaller role, but it still maintains the idea of him being an outsider. Mickey is seen throughout the film (until the end) as the one major character that doesn’t currently have a strong tie to Hannah and her sisters. This is also illustrated in the scenes where Mickey is trying to find something to believe in. As he attempts to convert to Catholicism, his parents become distraught at the idea of him converting from Judaism. As the film continues, we see that Mickey identifies as this “outsider” because “it’s all very well for these people to engage in their lives and plans and adulteries, because they do not share his problem, which is that he sees through everything, and what he sees on the other side of everything is certain death and disappointment” (Ebert 2).

Allen’s characters in all three of these films appear as outsiders, and this may be a parallel to Allen’s own career. He was hitting his artistic peak right at the time that summer blockbusters were becoming the standard in Hollywood. As mentioned earlier, Annie Hall defeated Star Wars for the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1977. Allen’s film have continued to be low budget and more importantly, avoid the Hollywood system simply due to their locations. Except for his recent forays to England with Match Point and Scoop, nearly all of Allen’s films have been made in New York City. It is hard to imagine a director who illustrates New York with more detail than Allen. And where films set in New York are often filmed on soundstages in Hollywood, the real streets of the city are used in Allen’s films. Woody Allen’s film career doesn’t fit in with the rest of Hollywood, and this may be able to help explain why his characters don’t seem to either.

In each of the three films mentioned in this piece, Allen makes a direct contact with the audience. Each film uses a different technique, but the resulting audience reaction is the same every time. Annie Hall takes the most direct approach. Alvy breaks the fourth wall to talk to the audience throughout the film. This may be a way to unite the sensibilities of the stand-up comedian Woody Allen with the filmmaker Woody Allen (and it also ties in to the fact that Alvy is a stand-up in the film). A comedian is able to talk right to the audience, and it is often difficult for a filmmaker to do this. “Alvy Singer, like so many other Allen characters and Allen himself, accompanies every experience in life with a running commentary” (Ebert, 30). The most notable example of this is how Allen chooses to open the film. Instead of dropping the viewer right into the action, we are greeted with a monologue from Alvy, starring right into the camera and speaking directly to the audience, he delivers an introduction filled with self-deprecation. This single shot serves to introduce the film, the characters, the tone, and establish that the film is essentially a flashback. It takes the characteristics of the comedian Allen, the one that gained his initial fame and recognition and slowly brings the audience into this more dramatic film, although it is still filled with humorous parts.

Manhattan’s major scene of communication directly to the audience also comes at the immediate start of the film. Instead of a monologue, the viewer is given a voiceover of Isaac’s attempt to start writing a book with various constant revisions to his opening. Paired with the gorgeous black and white shots of New York City, it seems almost as if he is narrating in real-time. Many of the potential opening lines for his novel could also be applied to Manhattan. Much attention must be paid to the fact that Isaac continues to modify his word choices when describing his character’s relationship with the city. The character he is describing is essentially himself. “He wants, but doesn’t know what he wants. He quits his job in an attack of ethics but has no backup plan…He had her but he lost her, and now they both know their time has passed. He isn’t planning the future, but trying to rewrite the past” (Ebert, 288). As the viewer has not yet been exposed to any of the past when the film is just starting, we are more opening to each rewriting that Isaac (and Allen) present.

The conversation with the audience in Hannah and Her Sisters is not quite as direct. There are no characters breaking the fourth wall, and while the internal thoughts of the characters could be viewed as this communication, I feel that they do not as these thoughts are not made with the intention of anyone else hearing them. Instead, the title cards of each segment of the film act as not only a preview to the audience, but also as a way of enhancing the overall theme presented that the organization of life can overlap the meaning. “Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters, the best movie he has ever made, is organized like an episodic novel, with acute little self-contained vignettes adding up to the big picture…By the end of the movie, the section titles and quotations have made an ironic point: We try to organize our lives according to what we have read and learned and believed in, but our plans are lost in a tumult of emotion” (Ebert 2).

To criticize Woody Allen for playing nearly the same part in all of his films would be like criticizing any artist for putting a piece of themselves into their work. The consistent mannerisms of Allen’s characters are there because they are his own mannerisms, and frankly are what he knows better than anyone else can. The fact that this character remains even as he experiments with different genres says something about his filmmaking ability and his overall body of work. This idea is challenged, though, but the trend in recent years for Allen to write a part in his film that twenty years ago he would have played, but now since he is too old for it to be realistic, he has a younger actor essentially play “Woody Allen.” Seeing someone else attempt these mannerisms and material only serves to strengthen the fact that while Woody Allen may be playing similar characters in his films, he’s the only one that can do it.