Down With... Woody Allen
Throughout the 1980s and 90s, including a Woody Allen film in any film series would not have been considered especially controversial. Whether it was the "early, funny ones" (Sleeper; Love & Death; Bananas) the "iconic" ones (Annie Hall; Manhattan) or the "mature" ones (Zelig; Hannah and her Sisters; Crimes and Misdemeanors) Woody Allen was consistently regarded as one of the finest film-makers of his generation. His films regularly featured prominently in the Oscar Nominations year after year (although he never turned up to collect them, because that would mean going to California) and he was practically the only film-maker in the United States who was able to make his films with no studio interference whatsoever.
Today, Woody Allen has effectively been "cancelled". American studios have stopped distributing his films, Amazon reneged on a multi-picture deal they had signed with him, and his book publisher was persuaded to abandon its plans to publish his memoirs after its staff staged a mass walk-out in protest (although he very quickly found a different publisher).
The accusation that led to Woody Allen's cancellation is as simple as it is disturbing. He is alleged to have sexually molested his adoptive daughter in 1992, when she was seven.
Over the last three decades this accusation has been examined and re-examined, and I am not inclined to add my own voice to the cacophony. For our purposes this week, the event supposedly occurred just as Woody Allen's twelve-year relationship with Mia Farrow was going up in flames, and while they were working on the film that was to become their final collaboration.
It was during the production of Husbands and Wives that Mia Farrow learned Woody Allen was having an affair with her 21-year-old adopted daughter.
Much has been written about that as well; a lot of it as it was happening. This was, after all, the first time that Woody Allen had ever done anything to attract the attention of tabloid-headline writers, and oy, did he start at the deep end.
A great deal has happened in the decades since these events took place. Multiple criminal investigations found no evidence to support the alleged sexual assault, and Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn are still a couple, over thirty years later (this is the longest relationship Woody Allen has ever had).
The point of this week's screening is neither to bury Woody nor to praise him. Some people believe Woody Allen assaulted a seven-year-old and got away with it. Others believe that Mia Farrow manipulated her daughter into falsely accusing the man who had humiliated her in public.
One could argue that these events do not require our belief. Believing something strongly enough does not make it true. This is not Peter Pan's "clap if you believe in fairies" and we have neither the information nor the authority to render judgement on a sequence of events from someone else's relationship thirty-one years ago.
What I do want to do is re-visit the last film they made together, which happens to be (I personally think) Woody Allen's very best film, although it was largely drowned out by the scandal of outside events that surrounded its creation.
Husbands and Wives follows the fortunes of two married couples, one of which is portrayed by Allen and Farrow. It's an insightful, articulate film that doesn't shy away from the dark shadows of long-term relationships, but one can't help but view it in the context of what was happening to these two in real life, even as the cameras were rolling.
Woody Allen and Mia Farrow ultimately made thirteen films together before their relationship collapsed, and those films represent (I believe) the creative high point of both their careers. Cancelling Woody Allen (or cancelling Mia Farrow, for that matter) deprives everyone of a significant episode in American Cinema.
We will re-visit that episode (specifically, Husbands and Wives) at 7.30pm on Thursday, the 11th of May at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.
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