Mia Farrow doesn’t show up, obviously, but plenty of other Allen exes and collaborators do, enriching the gripping new film biography, airing tonight and Monday, celebrating Woody Allen as an “American Master” on PBS.
“Woody Allen: A Documentary” airs 9-11 tonight and 9-10:30 p.m. Monday on Rocky Mountain PBS.
Validation from Diane Keaton, Louise Lasser, Mariel Hemingway, Mira Sorvino, Scarlett Johansson, and manager-producer Jack Rollins is interspersed with clips from Allen films. Film critics and scholars offer perspective on his amazing output. Old friends Dick Cavett and Martin Scorsese attest to his unique worldview. The highlights, however, are the present-day talks with the auteur himself.
Born Allen Konigsberg in Brooklyn in 1935, and graced with any number of neuroses and phobias which he incorporated into his comedy over the years, Allen is famously private. Yet here he shares his thoughts on the formation of his public persona, his writing habits, what he meant to express in various films, plays and short stories, and how he was influenced by his idols, Ingmar Bergman to Bob Hope.
Robert Weide — (“Curb Your Enthusiasm” and biographies of Lenny Bruce, W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers) — coaxed for 20 years and finally was granted unprecedented access to Allen to make this film. For two years, Weide trailed Allen to his jazz clarinet sessions and to Cannes, interviewed him at home with his vintage typewriter, got a tour of his boyhood neighborhood and more. Telling bits from Allen’s mother and sister fill out the portrait as the man evolves from red-haired court jester to silver-haired legend, ever insecure.
If only he’d been older as a child, he would have had an easier time of it, Allen muses.
Allen’s start submitting gags for newspaper columnists, then writing for television, his early standup and eventual move into films are chronicled, all the way through “Midnight in Paris,” his most recent and most successful feature.
The thorough biography briefly includes the controversial chapter of Allen’s life, reprising the scandal over his love affair with Farrow’s adopted daughter, now his wife of 15 years, Soon-Yi Previn. At the time, he was 56, she was 21, and the tabloids had a field day. Allen and Soon-Yi claimed they never had a parent-child relationship; Farrow and her biological son with Allen disagreed, calling the situation a “moral transgression.”
Those who cannot separate an artist’s personal life from his creations vowed never to see his films again, and won’t watch this biography. Here, his creative genius wins out.
Who else has had this kind of staying power and impact, with an average output of a film a year for 40-plus years? John Ford? Of course they weren’t all great or even good films, but there’s something to admire in every one.
Most haunting is Allen’s lament that he always wished he’d been born a gifted tragedian.
“The only thing standing between me and greatness is me,” he says.
He’ll never be happy that he’s not Bergman. But his gifts lie elsewhere. At least at this stage of life he seems more at peace with those rabid fans who prefer his earlier movies, “the funny ones.”
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
