Author | Brother Liang
Produced by | One Piece Movie
Exactly 40 years ago, when Woody Allen made Annie Hall, would he have guessed that this would be the only film in his life that would win him the Academy Award for Best Director?
Probably not, I would rather believe that this is a love letter he dedicated to his own goddess Diane Keaton, giving the goddess a Wenqing name as the title of the movie, pushing the boat along the water, no ambition.
If an extra layer of meaning, Anne Hall is a tree hole at best. In addition to the different names, he plays himself in the film: over 40 years old, has experienced two failed marriages, stand-up comedians, neurotic, chattering... Woody Allen used this film to suck in the messy thoughts that were hanging in his head at the age of 40.
Before Anne Hall, Hollywood loved The Godfather, Flying Over the Madhouse, and Rocky, and that same year, Star Wars appeared. If Brother Liang had sat in the audience at the Academy Awards and heard that the best picture had been given to "Annie Hall", he would have been surprised first, and then showed a bad smile.
If only I were who I am now.
Many years later, when I re-watched "Annie Hall", I also experienced two or three relationships, traveled to four or five cities, and felt that every frame of this film was so convincing, and every paragraph was so chewy. Lying down and watching, sitting and watching, the smile of the middle-aged idiot on my face has not stopped, how I love this movie!
So today's film history, let's write "Anne Hall".
“
They think I'm an intellectual just because I'm wearing glasses, just because I lose money on all my films, so they think I'm an artist.
It was the only time Woody Allen had ever said anything at the awards ceremony.
I would say that Woody Allen is probably the most anti-intellectual among the intellectuals in the world.
Anne Hall is his seventh film and the most important one he has established as a director, which can be summed up in two words: mockery.
Movies are full of mockery, from street-side passers-by, to couples lined up in movie theaters, to intellectuals pretending to be at cocktail parties, Woody Allen's mockery doesn't distinguish between status, race, or color.
More crucially, Woody Allen's taunt turned out to be a two-way street, denying both stupidity and ignorance and showing off knowledge. The whole film is in the philosophical proposition of negation of negation.
For example, he would meet a young couple on the street and ask them why they were so happy, and the answer would be: "Because we have no brains, it is as empty as two blank pieces of paper." ”
But he also meets "college professors" who come to see movies in line at the movie theater, enduring his chattering and ostentatious explanations. At the cocktail party, he hid in the house to watch baseball because he couldn't stand the atmosphere full of cultural celebrities.
More importantly, he is still denying himself. At the beginning of the film, he says to the camera, "I would never join a club with a member like me." At the end of the movie, he said it again.
One of his most famous quotes was, "The only regret I have in my life is that I am no one else." ”
Woody Allen was worshipped as a deity by the "tone-of-mouthed" Frenchman. The French loved him to death and named him "the only intellectual among American filmmakers." How did he respond to this? He made a film specifically to ridicule the French, in which a blind director made a random film that did not know what to do, but it was very popular in France.
In his other work, "Midnight in Paris", he even ridiculed a large number of great writers and painters who have been worshipped by intellectual youth in the past and the present.
A man who lives in deep contradictions – I give Woody Allen such a definition. He is like a person who looks at his own life coldly, although he is committed to the ranks of "intellectuals", he is afraid of being labeled as an intellectual by others.
His spiritual qualities of self-loathing and self-doubt pervade the work, as if he were spitting his tongue out to the heroic and energetic Hollywood of the 70s and 80s.
Because of the Jewish sense of marginalization? Or is it because of the frustration of a failed marriage? Or is it simply because he's a stand-up comedian? There is so much research on woody Allen's writings that I won't speculate here. But I believe that a person who thinks too much will always end up with self-doubt: What I tout, must be good? What I believe must be true? Do I think I am the way I really am?
"Anne Hall" is actually a concentrated expression of Woody Allen's doubts, because the person he mocks the most in this movie is himself.
Contradictions, self-doubt, self-denial, not even in this film, but spread throughout his creative process, and he has made literary films such as "Anne Hall" and "Manhattan" as well as commercial-oriented works such as "The End of the Race". When it comes to making movies, he seems to be afraid of being defined as "what kind of director you make," and the more you define me, the more I have to do the opposite.
This constant self-denial is fortunate for fans, because he always wants to use a new film against the previous film, so he has become one of the most prolific film directors in the world. From 51 years, he has shot 48 films as a director, almost one a year. Even at the age of 80, this is still the case. It is not like some "big directors", sitting on their own classics to enjoy the worship, rest assured that others have labeled themselves as genre films.
Woody Allen's motives, you understand Anne Hall, you understand.
Your short, lewd body,
Curled up in a small, dirty apartment,
It's a real fire.
”
This passage comes from Woody Allen's film The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, in which the heroine describes her love for Woody Allen.
To be honest, the first time I watched Annie Hall, I didn't quite understand why a girl would fall in love with such a lewd little old man. The first time Anne Hall saw Woody, it was so violent that I almost broke the law.
Will women really fall in love with a so-called "sexy brain"?
I can't answer that question because I'm not a woman after all. In fact, Woody Allen himself could not answer, otherwise he would not have made such a contradictory love.
I think deep down Woody Allen must have guessed a woman. Women are a mystery to him, and they fall in love with him without knowing why they leave him. How determined you are to love, how crisp you are to leave, as if you are performing magic.
Such is the case with Anne In Anne Hall. The film is shot purely from the perspective of Woody Allen, without even a little attempt to get into Annie's heart, for whom Anne is an object of observation.
Even he viewed the relationship with complete objectivity, and after their first lovemaking, he said something: "Now our relationship is in the next chapter." ”
Pure objectivity, not romantic. Like the classic line in The Great Gatsby, "I'm within, and without." Being in it and being out of it.
I think this is also Woody Allen's own experience in love. I don't know if there is a sense of inferiority caused by the inferiority of appearance, but I believe that he is very cold to love. Like his doubts and sense of contradiction about himself, he has always been in the midst of these three pairs of contradictions:
I am confident in my own charm, but I don't believe that I have that much charm.
Both believing in the love a woman has for him and not believing that the woman will really give him a lifetime.
Both chase the most passionate love, but also treat love with the most indifferent attitude.
So many contradictions, love for him, must be a painful thing.
It is such a Woody Allen, but always have to chase the most perfect love. He once said, "Only women and death can free men." The phrase "True Celebrity's Self-Flow" was perfectly appropriate to put on him. He himself had five well-known relationships, including three marriages.
How perfectionist is he? In the movie, when making love to Anne, he asks the woman to be fully engaged in making love, and a little distraction can't do it. In order to make Anne the image of the perfect goddess in his heart, he encourages her to sing and go to school, but he is jealous of her knowing new men.
Men always want to make women what they think they are, and they don't know that no woman will be the person in your mind.
That's why Annie and Woody Allen were destined to break up.
In contrast, Manhattan, the sister story of Anne Hall, seems to be a good ending movie, where Woody Allen finds a woman who makes him "have a little faith of people", a purely emotional college girl.
After a woman like Anne touched a nail, perhaps he could only find an ideal love in a girl who was as simple as a blank sheet of paper.
This is actually Woody Allen's complete surrender to love, so he has said that Manhattan is one of his most hated works.
New York is his city
And always will be
This phrase appears at the beginning of the movie Manhattan, and I think it is very appropriate to use it as a footnote to the New York story of Annie Hall.
What is New York? Although Liang Ge has not been there, it is a hodgepodge to see from various things and heard from various populations. It's a place where everything that can be tolerated includes multimillion-dollar apartments, to the poor Blacks in Harlem, to the most elegant art and the purest of street culture. Celebrities from all walks of life and ordinary people mixed in with each other, taking what they needed and enjoying themselves.
It's a bit like the city of Beijing stripped of its political attributes.
I understand Woody Allen's love for New York, love for New York, but love for its fireworks. He shows us what a man who truly loves life looks like: in addition to making a movie and writing a novel every year, he is also a veteran jazz fan and clarinetist. As long as he was in New York, he would go to the fixed bar every day to play the clarinet, rain or shine.
It seems that only in New York can this thing be done so freely, so naturally. It is only in New York that the kind of love in Anne Hall can happen.
At the beginning of the novel that was repeatedly revised in Manhattan, I liked the phrase the most: "He loved New York and glorified it excessively... He is the embodiment of New York, and under the black-rimmed glasses, he is the wild charm of his jungle leopard. ”
New York is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Woody Allen's life.
Los Angeles, by contrast, is a much simpler city, built out of thin air in the desert, sunny every day, men and women are so glamorous, and everyone has the words "chasing dreams" and "success" written on their heads. Mr. Woody Allen must have hated this tone.
If it's not cloudy and rainy, what's the point of sunshine?
This kind of hatred even spread to Hollywood, and the old man never participated in any awards ceremonies, even if his work won countless Oscars. The only time I participated, I also said the yin and yang strange words at the beginning of the article.
Woody Allen in Anne Hall also suffers from a "Los Angeles disease", and when he arrives in Los Angeles, he has stomachaches, nausea and fever. That's my biggest laugh in the whole film.
When you say New York, you don't actually mean New York, you still talk about Woody Allen. Whether it's self-doubt, experimenting with love, or liking New York, it's all because of his heartfelt love for the world. If you really love the world, you will not love yourself so much, you will doubt yourself, and you will observe others.
And most people claim to love life, every day carefree, happy and happy, in fact, just love themselves too much - I am good, of course very happy.
In contrast, the neuroticism of the old man is so precious.
A long article, finally finished. Old man 82, I know you will not stop making movies, so I will not advise you to rest, then I wish you a long life and a hundred years!
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