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IFI to host Woody Allen season
IFI to explore the many guises of Woody Allen in a major three month season to celebrate his 40th feature
May’s Cannes Film Festival is to host the world premiere of Woody Allen’s 40th feature, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, while June sees the Irish release of Whatever Works. To mark the occasion, the IFI is delighted to mount a major three month retrospective of Woody’s extensive back catalogue running from the 1st of May until the end of July.
Like all artists, Allen has his recurrent obsessions, but what is striking about his work is not its repetitiveness but its extraordinary variety. The movies in this first instalment see Allen’s screen persona shift from film farceur and comic loser to cultural commentator and embittered superstar. His style matures from the formal roughness of Bananas to the breathtaking virtuosity of Zelig, and his influences range from Bob Hope to Ingmar Bergman. The great thing about his career is that he has succeeded in being three things that are almost impossible in today’s cinema: prolific, unpredictable, and consistent.
The May instalment of the season features films from 1971-1986 and includes Annie Hall, the Oscar-winning love story that pairs Allen as the nervous wreck and Diane Keaton as the neurotic romantic, of which Allen said: “I really feel it was a major turning point for me. I had the courage to abandon just clowning around and the safety of complete broad comedy. I said to myself: ‘I think I will try and make some deeper film and not be as funny in the same way. And maybe there will be other values that will emerge, that will be interesting or nourishing for the audience.’ And it worked out very well.” Other highlights include Manhattan which critic Andrew Sarris has described as “the only truly great American film of the Seventies”; and Hannah and Her Sisters, a beautifully constructed Chekhovian study of three sisters and Allen’s most successful film of the 1980’s.
The season will continue with two full segments yet to be announced in the June and July monthly IFI programmes so whether you prefer Woody as a clown, a casanova, a hypochondriac or a nervous wreck there is no excuse for missing the chance to catch him back on the big screen this summer.
See www.ifi.ie for more info.
