Are Woody Allen’s filmmaking days over?
With so much controversy surrounding the veteran director, Jenny Mccartney wonders if his career might now be on the rocks
Until very recently, the chance to work with the writer, director, actor and stand-up comedian Woody Allen was one that most performers would jump at, with established stars routinely accepting a fraction of their usual fee for a role in one of his films. The durability of 82-year-old Allen’s success in a precarious industry has been extraordinary: he has won four Academy Awards, three for best original screenplay and one for Best Director (Annie Hall), and been recognised with a string of nominations in numerous categories. Artistically he has appeared untouchable, despite increasingly mixed critical fortunes and the personal scandal that has dogged him for decades – chiefly, the allegation of child molestation against his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow.
For many years, his quirkiness has worked in his favour, as has his relentless work ethic. Say Allen’s name and a very particular world comes to mind: where wit and anxiety, flirtation and complication intermingle, all channelled through the persona of a melancholic, hypochondriac Jewish New Yorker who is a sucker for jazz, twinkling lights and bittersweet, bickering romance. Meanwhile, Allen’s love of routine has long meant that devotees were supplied with regular hits: he plays clarinet every Monday night at New York’s Carlyle Hotel, and he famously makes a film a year, come hell, high water or a run of bad reviews.
Yet now there are signs that Allen’s career may, finally, be about to hit the rocks. It will not be because of the recent string of indifferently received films. Allen’s diehard fans in both the public and the critical establishment routinely forgive him his failures, in homage both to the enduring strength of his earlier work – films such as Annie Hall and Manhattan still regularly top best-loved film lists – and his ability still to pull occasional, surprise hits out of the bag, the most recent of which was 2013’s Blue Jasmine.
The danger for Allen comes instead from a different, yet now familiar direction: the growing outspokenness of his estranged adopted daughter Dylan, now 32, who continues to allege, ever more vocally, that he molested her as a seven-year-old. In 2014, outraged after Allen won a Golden Globes lifetime achievement award, she wrote an open letter detailing her account and calling on celebrities to denounce him. Yesterday, she repeated her claims in a TV interview with CBS, saying that Allen took her up to the attic, instructed her to play with her brother’s toy train and, “as I played with the toy train, I was sexually assaulted”. Allen for his part, issued an angry response, saying “I never molested my daughter”, and claiming that the Farrow family was “cynically using the opportunity afforded by the Time’s Up movement to repeat this discredited allegation”.
The nature of the accusations against Allen have been public knowledge since his acrimonious child custody battle with Mia Farrow in the early Nineties, when Farrow alleged that he had behaved in an inappropriately obsessive and sexual manner around Dylan, and accused him of molesting the child. But the official findings on whether this had indeed happened were inconclusive, and no prosecution of Allen was forthcoming. The break-up between Mia Farrow and Allen had been highly acrimonious, triggered by her discovery of explicit photos of her adopted college-age daughter, Soon-yi Previn, taken by Allen. Soon-yi and Allen married in 1997 and adopted children of their own – a resolution that permitted the film industry to consign the case to the category of deeply messy family politics and move on.
But, in a post-weinstein world, and as the #Metoo hashtag triggers an avalanche of women’s complaints of sexual transgressions, increasing numbers of actors are finding Dylan Farrow’s impassioned claims – backed by her mother Mia and her journalist brother Ronan – impossible to ignore.
The trouble intensified for Allen last October when Griffin Newman, an actor in his forthcoming romantic comedy A Rainy Day in New York, broke ranks, announcing that he would be donating his fee to charity, and saying he “learned conclusively that I cannot put my career over my morals again”. But in the last week, the trickle of dissent has turned into a stream. Two of Newman’s co-stars, Rebecca Hall and Timothée Chalamet, said that they too would donate their fee to charities combating sexual harassment and abuse. Meanwhile, Mira Sorvino, who won an Oscar for her role in Allen’s 1995 film Mighty Aphrodite, wrote an open letter of apology to Dylan Farrow for working with him, and actress and director Greta Gerwig, referring to her role in Allen’s 2012 film To Rome with Love, said: “If I had known then what I know now, I would not have acted in that film.”
It’s worth noting that the Allen case is very different, in many regards, from that of Harvey Weinstein. While there are multiple accusations of abuse in a professional context against Weinstein, there are none against Allen, who appears to have had a respectful working relationship with actors on set.
And he still has some defenders: back in 2014 – when Dylan Farrow first wrote her open letter – his exgirlfriend and frequent co-star Diane Keaton said: “I love Woody. And I believe my friend.” On Tuesday, Alec Baldwin, who worked with the director on Blue Jasmine and
To Rome with Love spoke up to say, “Woody Allen was investigated forensically by two states (New York and Connecticut) and no charges were filed. The renunciation of him and his work, no doubt, has some purpose. But it’s unfair and sad to me.” As recently as last December, Kate Winslet, who starred in his latest cinema release Wonder Wheel (due to open over here in March) praised him as “an incredible director” and “an extraordinary writer”.
But, while the alleged facts of the case have not changed in 25 years, the climate around it has. Post #Metoo, society is now more sympathetic to the view defined by Dylan Farrow in her interview: “I think it’s important that people realise that one victim, one accuser, matters. And that they are enough to change things.” The cynical may argue that, as with Weinstein, Allen’s fall is tied up with his declining industry stock. Not only has his recent work got patchier, but his once trailblazing strain of neurotic comedy has become so influential that younger directors and actors such as Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig are taking it forward for a fresh age without him. The vision that he sketched – of emotional messiness without squalor, of a certain type of gilded metropolitan bohemianism – perhaps had its strongest appeal to an older generation.
Yet this is not to deny his cinematic genius, and filmgoers have certainly been thrown into a state of confusion on how to deal with the legacy of one of cinema’s best-loved icons: a director who defined a state of mind.
As things stand, it seems possible that Allen’s directorial career could be over – it’s difficult to see, given its stars’ tacit renunciation of their involvement, how A Rainy Day in New York can be successfully released, and, unusually, he has no other forthcoming projects on his schedule.
The question also arises of how we should view his existing oeuvre. That partly depends on where one stands on Allen’s alleged culpability. Yet is it also possible to separate the man from the art, especially in cases where the man – presented as a lovable, tormented, wisecracking Everyman – remains so central to it?
The trouble in Allen’s case is that many of his films echo themes that have arisen in his life, notably those that deal with the disruptive effect of sexual desire within a family setting, or the attraction of an older man to a much younger woman. In Manhattan, Allen’s 42-year-old character has an affair with a 17-year-old (Mariel Hemingway), while A Rainy Day in New York reportedly features a middle-aged married man (Jude Law), engaged in a sexual relationship with a character played by Elle Fanning, whose allegedly tender age is part of a plot twist.
The controversy surrounding the director does not invalidate Allen’s films, but it will inevitably complicate how we watch them. I watched his masterpiece Annie Hall again recently, in which the comedian Alvy Singer (Allen) reflects on his lost love affair with the scatty, unforgettable Annie (Diane Keaton). The performance, the lines and the immortal lobster scene were as fresh and funny as ever, its sweetly nostalgic charm was intact, and yet the experience carried an unintended layer of sadness. Out there beyond the enchanted borders of Allen’s clever, beguiling fictions, a darker, messier reality had lost its innocence.