Woody Allen acknowledges he’s something of an enigma.
“So much of what has filtered out about me over the years has been completely mythological, completely exaggerated or downright untrue,” Allen says.
“And some if it has been true, of course.”
The legendary Allen speaks those words in the opening few minutes of Woody Allen: A Documentary. The two-part special airs Sunday, Nov. 20 and Monday, Nov. 21 on most PBS affiliates as part of the American Masters series (check local listings).
The press material declares it took filmmaker Robert Weide “20-plus years of convincing” to get Allen to participate in this biography project.
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If accurate, that’s indicative of the odd split-personality aspect to creative people such as Allen, who are so reclusive in some ways and yet so willing to fling themselves out there in others.
“The big shock is that Woody is now 75 years old,” Weide said at the Television Critics Association tour in Los Angeles last summer. “He has been doing a film a year for 40-plus years now.
“Every time people sort of assume that maybe he’s down and out or he’s played out, along comes Match Point or Vicky Cristina Barcelona or Midnight in Paris. There’s no stopping him.”
Creative renaissance notwithstanding, Allen went through a period of years in the 1990s where, instead of writing memorable punch lines, he became one because of his personal life.
His longtime relationship with actress Mia Farrow fell apart in nasty fashion when it was discovered Allen was involved with Farrow’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.
Allen and Soon-Yi eventually got married and still are together, but the scandal painted Allen as a “dirty old man” and changed his reputation forever.
The Soon-Yi issue is dealt with in the second half of Woody Allen: A Documentary, but it portrays Allen as something of a victim of a media frenzy. The doc side-steps any morality discussion about Allen having a sexual relationship with his de facto step-daughter (Allen and Farrow never technically were married).
“Believe it or not, I didn’t think I was that famous to warrant such coverage,” Allen says. “But apparently, it was a good, juicy story, a very juicy story. It took a little edge off my natural blandness.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, the controversy had less of a lasting impact on Allen’s stature in Europe than it did in his native United States.
But no matter what you may think of Allen personally, there’s no denying that - especially pre-scandal, although some may argue otherwise - his body of film work puts him in a unique club.
“To really contextualize Woody Allen in the history of American cinema, one does have to go back to Charlie Chaplin,” says Annette Insdorf, a film professor at Columbia University, in the doc.
“(It’s) the idea of an actor who becomes the writer, the director, the true auteur, who places himself at the centre of that cinematic universe consistently through a number of films, so that ultimately the persona does enter the culture.
“The reality is, Woody Allen has managed to do that in our own time.”
bill.harris@sunmedia.ca
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