Woody Allen's Film philosophy

Coffee Commune, the opening film of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, was written by his 81-year-old father, Woody Allen.

this work, set in Hollywood in the 1930s, tells the story of a young man who comes to Hollywood to pursue his movie dream, then falls in love and indulges in the famous "coffee commune" of that era. The whole film has a strong Woody color, full of retro feelings of the golden age of Hollywood.

speaking of Woody, maybe everyone knows. Today, he seems to have become a representative of a specific culture and an indispensable leader in the literary and artistic film industry.

there are too many people talking about Woody, and there are all kinds of movie magazines and long or short reviews on the street, and dazzling articles keep telling the story of this man with a frame, a bitter face, nervous and garrulous, but there is no lack of profound literary geeks in humor. The literary and artistic youth in the world regard Woody Allen as a benchmark, and everyone says that Woody's films are the mecca of literary and artistic youth. Because there is no lack of literature, art, philosophy and all kinds of political theories in his films. In movies, he is always happy to borrow the mouth of the characters to express his mockery of human nature, life and reality.

Coffee Commune stills

Woody's works are always so beautiful and important, because his film style is always changeable.

Woody was born on December 1, 1935, in Brooklyn, New York, to a poor Jewish family. After graduating from high school, he joined the Sid Xizhe TV Troupe, writing scripts for TV shows with his funny genius. After nearly a decade of training and the pain of failing in school and unhappy marriage, Woody resigned from Gary Moore in 1961 to become a comedian, performing in taverns, nightclubs and small theatres in Greenwich Village.

it is the training experienced during this period that gives Woody more advantages and talents in scripting comedies.

talking about Woody Allen's movie genre

Woody's films can be roughly divided into several types:

starting from his works in recent years, Woody's films always run through the characteristics of "vanity", "strong inferiority complex" and "fame desire" of the characters themselves.

the works of this period exude romanticism, focusing on the perceptual aspects such as life experience and character ideals.

Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.

about Literature

starting from his works in recent years, Woody's films always run through the characteristics of "vanity", "strong inferiority complex" and "desire for fame" of the characters themselves.

the works of this period exude romanticism, focusing on the perceptual aspects such as life experience and character ideals.

Let's start with Midnight Paris, in which the hero is not satisfied with his days as a screenwriter in Hollywood. As his fiancee, a typical member of the small capital class, comes to Paris and experiences fantastic things after 12:00, he meets a series of famous figures represented by Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Stein, thus from the very beginning he has no choice but to be ostentatious about Paris. In the later stage, I envy the state that other people's life is better than their own.

Midnight Paris stills

obviously, Woody's mockery of this attitude towards life is sharp but gentle, because it finally gives the protagonist a wake-up call. And start a new relationship. But unlike the protagonist, the fictional character of the era that the hero once admired, "a woman active between Hemingway and Picasso," she chose to stay in the golden age of self-recognition after crossing again. I am duty-bound to indulge in the beautiful world of my inner fantasy. Through the potential comparison of the two, it exposes a kind of vanity that envies others and never lives in the present. This illusion of life leads to contradictions and uneasiness in the appearance, and makes a mess of the life state of the characters.

Midnight Paris stills  Midnight Paris  people say that Midnight Paris is a love letter from Woody to Paris. In this film, he delves deeper into the relationship between France and the United States, history, art, life, excitement and differences in people's life choices. Woody's films are good at grasping the storylines of individual characters, so as to narrate, complain and show the joys and sorrows of the characters in all aspects. The general environment of the film is the whole bright yellow, cheerful atmosphere, but the comedy color of the story hides the most ridiculous part of human nature. The same plot appears in other movies. For example, Love in Rome, released on June 22, 2012, is about several stories that do not disturb each other. The main line of the four people revolves around their branch lives, including lengthy dialogues and hilarious passages, as well as Woody's retired opera director, who is not tired of expounding all kinds of life philosophies. and consistent innuendo sharp complaints.

inertia leads to 2/3 of marriages. And love causes the remaining 1/3 of marriages.

about Love

unlike Midnight Paris, which is full of nostalgia, modernism and existentialism, Love in Rome is more like a prose. Unlike novels, movies are not always about the beginning of the story and the best part of the ending. Instead, it is a kind of relaxed and interesting Woody love letter.

the ancient Greek culture is full of ancient Greek culture, which is also used as an assistant to repeat itself in Woody's films.

stills of Love in Rome

Opera director Jerry, an opera director dissatisfied with his retirement, who is played by Woody himself, always wants to make a comeback, and Simon Montgomery in Magic MoonlightCobney plays the role of an out-of-date magician who uses deception to retaliate for his discontent and jealousy of not being famous on the stage. Another typical character in Love in Rome, the ordinary Roman citizen, the well-behaved and boring Pizanello (Robert Benigni), finds himself a celebrity one morning. The all-pervasive paparazzi and the temptation to come in one after another have greatly changed this man's life. At the end of the film, Pizanello lost his attention and regained the peace of life, but he was suddenly anxious and restlessly looking for someone who knew him in the street.

actor Robert Benigni

once said to Pissanello's driver, "Life is sometimes very cruel, people are often dissatisfied with life, it has nothing to do with whether he is a rich celebrity or an unknown poor person, but in between, it is much better to be a rich celebrity."

with the help of the driver, Woody clarified his true thoughts on fame. In addition to satirizing those celebrities who do not live up to their names, it also shows that fame is an illusory thing, which instantly puts people in the center of the spotlight and makes people fall to the bottom of the valley. Like Pizanello, people adore this reputation, get dizzy from it, then fall to the bottom, become depressed when no one is interested, and can only comfort themselves by recalling the days when they were famous. What Woody wants to show is his indifference to fame and the temptation to ask how much the essence of human nature can withstand.

I've never been an intellectual, but that's what I look like.

about Comedy

back in 1964, Woody, who was nearly 30, wrote and starred in "how's the Cat?" and became a success. As a result, it also laid the commercial foundation for Woody to officially go to the film. In 1969, with Woody's film experience becoming more and more mature, the success of the stage play also stimulated Woody's interest in movies, so Woody directed and starred in a movie "A fool in prison" and officially began the movie road.

stills of "A fool in prison"

in this first film directed by Woody, it continues the success of Woody's previous two years, and still takes subversive genre as his responsibility. Create a comedy role type with personal characteristics. This time, the use of genre films, due to Woody's own overall control, is not limited to the simple subversion of satirical imitation, but begins to create Woody's own film characters and film world.

when the Oscar jury called me, I panicked. I thought they wanted the Oscar they gave me back, and the pawnshop had been out of business for a while.

about excellent works

for a director, the most important thing is to win public praise as well as awards.

Anne Hall in 1977 became a milestone in Woody's film career. Not only because the film received rave reviews, but it also changed Woody's previous comedy-based film style and created a new film model. The film won four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actress, as well as many awards such as the American Film critics Association, the New York Film critics Association, the Golden Globes and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Selecting from short formal dresses for juniors to perfectly illustrate the essence of fashion. A great collections are on hot sale now!

Anne Hall stills

this model can be regarded as Woody's further benchmark on the basis of the original comedy. There are no Hollywood-style scenes or Woody's usual funny scenes and not many characters, but the film is dotted with trivial pieces of life, personal memories, occasional feelings and idle banter.

such a loose film, the most prominent is the rich flavor of life, not only pretending to understand life, but also full of the inevitable sentimentality of bourgeois. In this film, we can see Bergman's thoughts on life and interpersonal relationships and the interweaving of Fellini's dream and reality. Since then, "Stardust past" and "Hannah Sisters" have continued this style. Describe the joys and sorrows of the environment with the life experience of small potatoes. What is different, however, is that the Sisters of Hannah is made up of several parallel but actually unrelated stories, describing the three complex and changeable family history, love history and psychological history of the Hannah sisters. This is a family life film and ethical film, but in the form of comedy rather than Bergman tragedy, Woody really broke away from the imitation stage and stepped into his own personal film world. The three stories of the film no longer have a fixed protagonist, or several characters can be said to be the protagonists of the film, although the title of the film is "Hannah Sisters". In this film, Woody shows the excellent skills and observation of depicting reality, integrates tragedy and comedy into one, and incorporates the surreal effect in the realistic technique, which can be called a classic.

stills of "Hannah Sisters"

but Woody didn't give up.

with the continuous accumulation of film experience, Woody's movies begin to move in a more complete direction. The whole trend includes the nonsense style of the earliest comedy, coupled with the later romantic elements, reached a more mature state.

I took an existential exam. I didn't write a single answer, so I got 100 points.

about philosophy

including "unreasonable people", it changes the way many people tell the story, focusing on the story of a male master, a frustrated philosophy teacher, and a female student. The man pretends to be a deep, hypocritical way of speaking, and is deeply involved in philosophical thinking.It attracts the admiration of female students (Emma Stone). Every time they discuss a philosophical topic when they are together, they have to praise the old man Woody for his proficiency in the dialogue of the film. The man's pursuit of existentialism was excited and trembled by a murder plan. The hero is always looking for the meaning of life, he is eager to change the reality, eager to participate in political or social transformation, to achieve their own value.

stills of "unreasonable people"

Sartre believes that life is meaningful because you choose to give it meaning. In Sartre's view, human nature is defined and shaped by himself in the process of his existence. The man himself chose to be an idealized political emissary, which, in Woody's view, was nothing more than unreasonable behavior. The man thinks that he brings meaning to the empty and boring life, but he wraps his criminal behavior as a rational and just act with the philosophical theory in his mind.

the murder scene of the unreasonable Man

Woody is good at bringing unexpected vision and thoughts to the audience with unexpected endings. In his eyes, philosophy is the product of non-superstition, and the meaning that people give to life is only a kind of self-attitude after the event. Life played a joke on the outlook on life, while Woody played a joke on the audience with the dramatic ending of the male lead.

in addition to the bright JAZZ dance music, Woody used bright yellow hues to express the film scene in a series of films such as "unreasonable Man" and "Magic Moonlight". This kind of filming technique, and the classical music interspersed with the whole film, undoubtedly added more auxiliary seasoning to the film. Only Woody can show such an irrational art form. While deeply dramatizing the film, I deeply experienced Woody's strong personal style. The neurotic director is arrogant, nostalgic and talkative. Every time, I can't help but let the viewer sigh that only he can show himself so clearly. Whether that depends on your free and easy self-confidence. It's also part of Woody's personal style.

I'm surprised that people want to understand the universe. It's hard for you to get lost in Chinatown.

about Life

after handing over the European Trilogy, Woody released a surprise film called Blue Jasmine in 2013.

it not only succeeded in attracting people's attention, but also won high praise, at the same time, it also accumulated at the box office.

the film, starring actress Kate Blanchett, focuses on Kate's role-a man who goes bankrupt, her husband commits suicide, and after her stepson runs away, he moves to his estranged sister's San Francisco home to start a new life.

however, this jasmine wrapped in lies and conceit, after losing the luxurious life of the past, is still trying desperately to become a member of the upper class. She kept talking to herself about her happy life in the past and the misfortune of the present. Constantly recall the past, constantly use lies to compile their own dreams of wealth. This conceit and vanity was severely criticized in Woody's movies. After she was in trouble, she blamed her sister, eager to distinguish the distance between him. This is nothing more than a series of tricks set up by Woody. Against the warm hue of the film, it is full of banter.

Blue Jasmine stills

Blue Jasmine is undoubtedly Woody's most successful work recently, because compared with the three styles involved before, in comedy, romance, love surrounded by multiple elements, more skillful use of these core elements, but also the most tragic elements of a film, so that the audience can not help but produce a serious, sad atmosphere.

Blue Jasmine stills

these plays, which absorb the advantages of silent comedies, are full of Woody-style witty dialogue, representing a strong local color from New York intellectuals. While the existential crisis reiterated many times in the film, Woody repeatedly thinks that it is a kind of tragic charm. "you are very lucky to be a sad person," he said. " So Woody did not give an unexpected ending to most of the characters he created. Unlike the grandeur of Hollywood hero movies, Woody seems to be more insipid. Because the process of these characters is enough to rise again and again. Just like Helena, who believes that the psychic is almost paranoid at last, Helena finally seems to find a partner, although all the characters in the play escape from reality by daydreaming and impossible plans when they encounter problems. However, it is undeniable that their so-called "efforts" will only lead them into a situation full of lamentation, unreasonable and even dangerous.?. These indispensable elements also prove the theme of "life is like drama, drama is like life". But these arguments, which are supposed to make the audience cry with sadness, are always endowed by him with a kind of natural, flowing vitality and vitality. on the contrary, the story itself is imbued with the brilliance of the sun everywhere and fascinates people inexplicably. And was taken out to make fun of it.

but in the final analysis, everyone loves this intellectual who is always amazing and follows his audience on crutches.