A Companion to Woody Allen

594 Pages·2013·3.997 MB·English

A Companion to Woody Allen
Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Film Directors
The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Film Directors survey key directors whose
work together constitutes what we refer to as the Hollywood and world cinema
canons. Whether Haneke or Hitchcock, Bigelow or Bergmann, Capra or the Coen
brothers, each volume, comprised of 25 or more newly commissioned essays
written by leading experts, explores a canonical, contemporary and/or controver-
sial auteur in a sophisticated, authoritative, and multidimensional capacity. Indi-
vidual volumes interrogate any number of subjects – the director ’ s oeuvre;
dominant themes, well-known, worthy, and underrated fi lms; stars, collaborators,
and key infl uences; reception, reputation, and above all, the director ’ s intellectual
currency in the scholarly world.
Published
1. A Companion to Michael Haneke, edited by Roy Grundmann
2. A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock, edited by Thomas Leitch and Leland Poague
3. A Companion to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, edited by Brigitte Peucker
4. A Companion to Werner Herzog, edited by Brad Prager
5. A Companion to Pedro Almodóvar, edited by Marvin D ’ Lugo and Kathleen Vernon
6. A Companion to Woody Allen, edited by Peter J. Bailey and Sam B. Girgus
7. A Companion to Jean Renoir, edited by Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau
8. A Companion to Francois Truff aut, edited by Dudley Andrew and Anne Gillian
9. A Companion to Luis Buñuel, edited by Robert Stone and Julian Daniel Gutierrez-Albilla
A Companion to
Woody Allen
Edited by
Peter J. Bailey and Sam B. Girgus
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
This edition fi rst published 2013
© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to Woody Allen / edited by Peter J. Bailey and Sam B. Girgus.
pages cm. – (Wiley-Blackwell companions to fi lm directors)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4443-3723-5 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Allen, Woody–Criticism and interpretation.
I. Bailey, Peter J., 1946– editor of compilation. II. Girgus, Sam B., 1941– editor of compilation.
PN1998.3.A45C66 2013
791.43092–dc23
2012042384
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: Woody Allen, c. 1985. Photo © Terry O’Neill / Getty Images
Cover design by Nicki Averill Design and Illustration
Set in 11/13 pt Dante by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited
1 2013
Contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Acknowledgments xii
Introduction 1
Peter J. Bailey
Part I Biography/Autobiography/Auteurism 13
1 The Stand-up Auteur 15
Cecilia Sayad
2 Which Woody Allen? 35
Colleen Glenn
3 Woody Allen and France 53
Gilles Menegaldo
4 “Raging in the Dark”: Late Style in Woody Allen’s Films 73
Christopher J. Knight
5 A Diffi cult Redemption: Facing the Other in Woody Allen’s
Exilic Period 95
John Douglas Macready
6 Comic Faith and Its Discontents: Death and the Late Woody 116
Robert M. Polhemus
Part II Movies about the Movies 145
7 Critical Theory and the Cinematic World of Woody Allen 147
Stephen Papson
8 Crimes and Misdemeanors: Refl ections on Refl exivity 170
Gregg Bachman
vi Contents
9 Play it Again, Woody: Self-Refl exive Critique in Contemporary
Woody Allen Films 188
Claire Sisco King
10 Jazz Heaven: Woody Allen and the Hollywood Ending 207
Christopher Ames
Part III Allen and His Sisters: Cultural Critiques 227
11 “Here . . . It’s Not Their Cup of Tea”: Woody Allen’s Melodramatic
Tendencies in Interiors, September, Another Woman, and Alice 229
Cynthia Lucia
12 “It’s Complicated, Really”: Women in the Films of Woody Allen 257
Joanna E. Rapf
13 Woody Allen’s Grand Scheme: The Whitening of Manhattan,
London, and Barcelona 277
Renée R. Curry
14 Love and Citation in Midnight in Paris: Remembering Modernism,
Remembering Woody 294
Katherine Fusco
Part IV Infl uences/Intertextualities 319
15 Taking the Tortoise for a Walk: Woody Allen as Flâneur 321
William Brigham
16 Lurking in Shadows: Kleinman’s Trial and Defense 339
Iris Bruce
17 Woody Allen and the Literary Canon 359
William Hutchings
18 “Who’s He When He’s at Home?”: A Census of Woody
Allen’s Literary, Philosophical, and Artistic Allusions 381
J. Andrew Gothard
19 The Schlemiel in Woody Allen’s Later Films 403
Menachem Feuer
20 Barcelona: City of Refuge 424
Brian Bergen-Aurand
Part V Philosophy/Religion 441
21 Woody Allen and the (False) Dichotomy of Science and Religion 443
Mark T. Conard
Contents vii
22 The Philosopher as Filmmaker 460
David Detmer
23 Disappearing Act: The Trick Philosophy of Woody Allen 481
Patrick Murray and Jeanne A. Schuler
24 Love, Meaning, and God in the Later Films of Woody Allen 504
Sander Lee
25 Hollywood Rabbi: The Never-Ending Questions of Woody Allen 520
Monica Osborne
26 Allen’s Random Universe in His European Cycle: Morality,
Marriage, Magic 539
Richard A. Blake
27 Afterword: The Abyss: Woody Allen on Love, Death, and God 559
Sam B. Girgus
Index 573
Notes on Contributors
Christopher Ames is Vice President of Academic Aff airs at Shepherd Univer-
sity. He is the author of T he Life of the Party: Festive Vision in Modern Fiction (1991,
reprinted 2010) and M ovies about the Movies: Hollywood Refl ected (1997). He has
published articles on literary modernism, the Hollywood novel, and fi lm.
Gregg Bachman teaches cinema studies and screenwriting in the Communica-
tion Department at the University of Tampa. In addition to Woody Allen, Dr.
Bachman, the co-editor of the volume American Silent Film: Discovering Margin-
alized Voices, has written on such diverse topics as westerns and silent movie
audiences.
Brian Bergen-Aurand teaches cinema at Nanyang Technological University,
where he specializes in fi lm, ethics, and embodiment. His recent work has appeared
in Information Ethics , Intercultural Studies , and New Review of Film and Television
Studies , including articles on Antonioni, Almodóvar, and Fassbinder. Currently, he
is writing on Chaplin and fi lm ethics.
Richard A. Blake , S.J., is Co-director of the fi lm studies program at Boston
College. His books include W oody Allen Profane and Sacred and Street Smart: the New
York of Lumet , Allen , Scorsese and Lee . He was the regular fi lm reviewer for A merica
magazine for 35 years.
William Brigham , M.A., M.S.W., has taught fi lm studies at various institutions of
higher education in California and is the author of published essays on family in
the fi lms of Woody Allen, depictions of homelessness in American fi lms, and the
rage of African American fi lmmakers.
Iris Bruce is Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature at
McMaster University, Canada. Her research interests are Kafka in his time and
contemporary popular culture, German-Jewish Studies, and Israel Studies: the
Notes on Contributors ix
literature of Israel and Palestine. She is the author of Kafka and Cultural Zionism.
Dates in Palestine (2007).
Mark T. Conard is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy
and Religious Studies Department at Marymount Manhattan College in New York
City. He is the co-editor of The Simpsons and Philosophy , and Woody Allen and Phi-
losophy ; he is editor of T he Philosophy of Film Noir , T he Philosophy of Neo-Noir , T he
Philosophy of Martin Scorsese , The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers , and The Philosophy
of Spike Lee .
Renée R. Curry , Ph.D., English, is Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and
Social Sciences at California State University Monterey Bay. She is the editor of
Perspectives on Woody Allen ; editor of S tates of Rage: Emotional Eruption, Violence, and
Social Change and White Women Writing White: H.D., Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath
and Whiteness .
David Detmer is a Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University Calumet. He is
the author of Phenomenology Explained (forthcoming), S artre Explained (2008), Chal-
lenging Postmodernism: Philosophy and the Politics of Truth (2003), and Freedom as a
Value (1988).
Menachem Feuer currently teaches in the Jewish Studies Department at the Uni-
versity of Waterloo. He has published essays and book reviews on philosophy,
literature, and Jewish studies in several peer-reviewed journals including M odern
Fiction Studies , Shofar , MELUS , German Studies Review , International Studies in Phi-
losophy , Comparative Literature and Culture , Ctheory , and Cinemaction .
Katherine Fusco is a Senior Lecturer in English and Assistant Director of the
Writing Studio at Vanderbilt University. She has published essays on celebrity
and cruelty in contemporary fi lm, D.W. Griffi th ’ s adaptation of Frank Norris, and
Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Her book project is tentatively titled “Effi ciency Aes-
thetics: Time, Narrative, and Modernity in Silent Film and US Naturalist Litera-
ture, 1895–1915.”
Colleen Glenn is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department at the University
of Kentucky. Her dissertation deals with Jimmy Stewart ’ s post-World War II fi lms
as representations of war trauma. A portion of her work on Stewart will be pub-
lished in the Quarterly Review of Film and Video . Glenn is currently working on an
edited collection with Rebecca Bell-Metereau titled Star Bodies and the Erotics of
Suff ering .
J. Andrew Gothard earned his BA and MA in English from the University of
Alabama at Birmingham. His most recent publication, “ ‘Your Immediate Superior
in Madness’: Orton ’ s W hat the Butler Saw and Foucault ’ s M adness and Civilization ,”
x Notes on Contributors
is in Text and Presentation . His research focuses on twentieth-century British
and Irish literature with particular interests in modernism, postcolonialism, and
working class studies.
William Hutchings is a Professor of English at the University of Alabama at
Birmingham. He is the author of Samuel Beckett ’ s Waiting for Godot: A Reference
Guide (2005), two books about David Storey, and numerous articles on James Joyce,
Harold Pinter, Joe Orton, Anthony Burgess, Woody Allen, and others.
Claire Sisco King is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication
Studies at Vanderbilt University, where she also teaches in the Film Studies
Program. She is the author of W ashed in Blood: Male Sacrifi ce, Trauma, and the
Cinema . Her work has also been published in Text and Performance Quarterly , Quar-
terly Journal of Speech , C ommunication and Critical Cultural Studies , and C ritical
Studies in Media Communication .
Christopher J. Knight is a Professor of English at the University of Montana. His
most recent book is Omissions Are Not Accidents: Modern Apophaticism from Henry
James to Jacques Derrida (2010).
Sander Lee is a Professor of Philosophy at Keene State College Keene, New
Hampshire. He is the author of Eighteen Woody Allen Films Analyzed: Anguish, God
and Existentialism (2002) and numerous additional essays. In 2006, he won the
Keene State College Faculty Award for Distinction in Research and Scholarship.
Cynthia Lucia is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Film and
Media Studies Program at Rider University. She is author of Framing Female
Lawyers: Women on Trial in Film and co-editor of the four-volume W iley-Blackwell
History of American Film . Among her recent essays are those appearing in Film and
Sexual Politics: A Critical Reader and Authorship in Film Adaptation .
John Douglas Macready is a doctoral student in philosophy and adjunct instructor
at the University of Dallas, where he is focusing his research on the concept of
human dignity in the work of Hannah Arendt. He has published reviews and
articles in F ilm-Philosophy , B orderlands , P urlieu: A Philosophical Journal , and R amify:
The Journal of the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts .
Gilles Menegaldo is a full Professor of American Literature and Film Studies at
the University of Poitiers. He has co-written a book on Dracula , published many
articles on Hollywood genres and edited collections of essays on F rankenstein , H.P.
Lovecraft, R.L. Stevenson, A. Conan Doyle, Jacques Tourneur, fi lm and history,
crime fi ction, and horror fi lms.