I watched the recent PBS American Masters documentary on Woody Allen, Woody Allen: A Documentary, online, and it was surely a disappointment. It covered, in its three and a half hours, many of his films, his early life and break into show business, but it offered almost nothing of depth- oddly recapitulating the flaws of Barbara Kopple's 1998 documentary on the same subject, Wild Man Blues. In a sense, the film gives the best representation of the critical cribbing that is killing most film criticism, by having vapid and flat out bad critics opine on subjects they do not understand, but it does little to give one a better understanding of the filmmaker, for the so-called talking head 'experts' it relies on are the dense and pretentious film professor Annette Insdorf, the lifeless hack film critic Richard Schickel, the ebulliently vacuous film critic Leonard Maltin, a film critic priest named Robert Lauder, who utters
well, nothing of value about Hannah And Her Sisters, a number of Allen's co-stars and actors, who burble on cluelessly, and, worst of all, utterly unknown schlock filmmaker and critic, F.X. Feeney, who displays he has absolutely no clue about films, in general, much less Allen's, in particular. The much better insights into Allen's life and art come from his non-screen cohorts: comic and talk show host Dick Cavett, managers Jack Rollins and Charles Joffe, cinematographer Gordon Willis, and co-writers Mickey Rose and Marshall Brickman. The only other filmmaker of note to appear on screen is Martin Scorsese and he mostly rambles on about how his New York and Allen's are like visions from two different worlds. Well, duh, Marty. Exactly how and why is that is never broached by Weide.
Nonetheless, there are worse ways to spend 210 minutes. The problem is, there are almost as many ways to better spend such time. I recommend the latter option, especially with the knowledge that most Allen films are crisp enough that almost three full features of his can be squeezed into that same timeframe. My recommendation? Try Stardust Memories, Another Woman, Crimes And Misdemeanors, and, for dessert, Allen's truly greatest comedy: Radio Days. You can thank me later.
Nonetheless, there are worse ways to spend 210 minutes. The problem is, there are almost as many ways to better spend such time. I recommend the latter option, especially with the knowledge that most Allen films are crisp enough that almost three full features of his can be squeezed into that same timeframe. My recommendation? Try Stardust Memories, Another Woman, Crimes And Misdemeanors, and, for dessert, Allen's truly greatest comedy: Radio Days. You can thank me later.