The Films Of Woody Allen

The quintessential illustrated guide to Woody Allen's lifetime of work, updated to include Cafe Society (2016) and Wonder Wheel (2017). Woody Allen has celebrated more than 50 years of filmmaking, averaging one movie per year. Respected critic Jason Solomons examines each of these films, from What's New Pussycat (1965) all the way to Wonder Wheel (2017). In addition to interviewing Woody himself, Solomons looks at the impact of Allen's comedy, his work as an actor and writer, and his profound effect on popular culture. Filled with fantastic shots of his films, as well as behind-the-scenes information, Woody Allen: Film by Film is a must-have for Allen fans new and old.

Publisher Description

Originally published by Random House in 1987, this collection of three of Allen's comedy screenplays includes Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose and The Purple Rose of Cairo, for which he won an Oscar for best screenplay.

The Long-Awaited, Enormously Entertaining Memoir by One of the Great Artists of Our Time—Now a New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller. In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working alongside comedy greats, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he achieved recognition and success. With his unique storytelling pizzazz, he recounts his departure into moviemaking, with such slapstick comedies as Take the Money and Run, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long, and enormously productive career as a writer and director, from his classics Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Annie and Her Sisters to his most recent films, including Midnight in Paris. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure. This is a hugely entertaining, deeply honest, rich and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time.

From What's Up, Tiger Lily? to Match Point, Woody Allen's work has generated substantial interest among scholars and professionals who have written extensively about the director. In The Films of Woody Allen: Critical Essays, Charles L.P. Silet brings together two-dozen scholarly articles that address the core of Allen's work from a variety of cultural and theoretical perspectives. With a special emphasis on his films of the 1980s, this collection includes both general essays that examine various themes and issues encompassed in Allen's repertoire, as well as discussions that focus on one or two specific films. General essays explore Allen's Jewish background as a religious and cultural facet, his apparent love affair with New York City, and his relation to various strains of humor_particularly American film humor, but also Allen's broad use of such traditional comic tropes as irony and parody. The essays on individual films include examinations of some of Allen's most significant work including Love and Death, Annie Hall, Interiors, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan, and Shadows and Fog. A number of the articles collected here were originally published in now hard to locate places, while others were selected from journals not usually associated with film studies. The result is an anthology of essays that presents an overview of the central issues raised by Allen's body of work as well as a close examination of fourteen individual films that convey these larger themes. A wide-ranging exploration of one of America's most innovative and productive modern directors, this book should appeal to both professionals and students of contemporary film comedy.

Three more marvelously readable screenplays of movies by the incomparable Woody Allen. Stills throughout.

Referentiality and the Films of Woody Allen is a scholarly collection that provides expansive exploration of the auteur's use of intertexuality, referentiality, and fusion of media forms. Its scope is framed by Allen's intermedial phase beginning in 1983 with Zelig and his most recent film.

Although Woody AllenÕs films have received extensive attention from scholars and critics, no book has focused exclusively on Jewishness in his work, particularly that of the late 1990s and beyond. In this anthology, a distinguished group of contributorsÑwhose work is richly contextualized in the fields of literature, philosophy, film, theater, and comedyÑexamine the schlemiel, Allen and women, the Jewish take on the Òmorality of murder,Ó AllenÕs take on Hebrew scripture and Greek tragedy, his stage work, his cinematic treatment of food and dining, and what happens to ÒJew YorkÓ when Woody takes his films out of New York City. Considered together, these essays delineate the intellectual, artistic, and moral development of one of cinemaÕs most durable and controversial directors.