I can’t believe I failed to mention Love & Death. When we first got a VCR many years ago my mom borrowed a tape of it and I must have watched it a hundred times. So very funny. (Although Allen did the “I could have gotten this ring for…” joke again, tho I don’t recall where.)
–Cliffy, again
I’m a lifelong Woody fan. I was 10 when Annie Hall came out, and I had already seen every other movie he had made (my favorite was, and is, Love and Death). Although I don’t love every movie he’s ever made, I love a lot of them.
I just watched Manhattan again, and I think it’s his best movie, though Annie Hall and Crimes and Misdemeanors are also nearly perfect.
Who else has had the career that Woody has?
He started selling jokes professionally while still in high school. He soon graduated to writing for television. (No, no matter how many times you read it, despite all the quotes you can dig up, no, he never wrote for Sid Caesar on “Your Show of Shows.” Never. He wrote for the Caesar’s Hour specials several years later.) While still in his twenties he was making $1700 a week.
He gave that up to start honing a stand-up act. After two years of prep, he struck it big with his first comedy album in 1964. The three albums he put out rank among the very best stand-up comedy ever done, and are hilarious in a way that nobody has ever matched: a combination of sheer audacious fantasy and carefully honed self-deprecating humor to create a personality as instantly identifiable as Groucho’s.
The stand-up made him a star and he branched out in every direction. He appeared all over television. Playboy used him regularly in comic pictorials. He was asked to write for big-budget motion pictures comedies.
Then he started writing comic pieces for The New Yorker. From his very first one, he was hailed as the successor to Robert Benchley and S. J. Perelman. And rightly. His three collections of comic pieces rival any three other collections I could name. (And I’m a collector of American humor collections.)
Then he conquered Broadway. Don’t Drink the Water was a minor success, but Play It Again, Sam, which he starred in, was a classic.
What’s left but Hollywood? His early comedies were unlike anything being done in the late 60s- early 70s, and again rank among the best comedies ever.
Then he started a more mature style with Annie Hall. All it did was win him the Oscar for Best Director, and added Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Actress wins and a Best Actor[!] nomination for himself. This was before all those other actor-directors like Redford, Costner, and Eastwood got into the game.
Whatever you might think of his more recent pictures - I admit they are not nearly as good as his earlier work - he remains one of the only (who else? Altman, maybe) American directors to be able to work outside of the system and make any picture that he wants without a thought as to box office. Actors clamor to work for him, several have won Oscars for their work in his pictures, and he’s been personally nominated (for Best Director and Best Screenplay) about as often as anyone in history.
That’s an unparalleled career. I can think of no other artist who rose to the top in so many facets of show business and remained excellent for so long. (Bob Hope, whom Woody always mentions as a major influence, is a contender, but he relied on legions of writers for material that Woody writes for himself.)
I haven’t done more than glance at some of those threads that ask who will be remembered 50 years from now, but my guess is that Woody Allen’s name is rarely if ever mentioned. And my guess is that he will be remembered as one of the pre-eminent figures of the second half of the 20th century.
And he blows a mean clarinet, too.
My only nitpick with Exapno’s excellent presis is the exact turning point from slapstick to slicker stuff - I alwas put it at Love and Death, my personal favorite.
My Top Ten (in alphabetical order):
Annie Hall (1977)
Bullets Over Broadway (1994)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
Deconstructing Harry (1997)
Everyone Says I Love You (1996)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Husbands and Wives (1992)
Manhattan (1979)
Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)
Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
And Cliffy, based on your comments from a Woody thread a year or so ago, I did watch Broadway Danny Rose again. I did gain new appreciation for it (although not enough to crack my top ten), so thanks for that.
I’ll also say that, in my opinion, the opening five minutes of Manhattan is the best opening five minutes in movie history. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.
New York was his town . . . and it always would be.
Pash
Yeah, I loved the vivid realism of him being shot out of a cannon. Not to mention the subtle naturalism when he was walking off the battlefield alongside Death. 
Just want to chime in and say I absolutely adore Purple Rose of Cairo and Bullets Over Broadway.
For me it’s like there’s two different Woody’s to consider.
The zany, crazy stuff:
And the more poignant, real-life stuff:
If I had to pick one, though, I think “Hannah” is probably the best constructed, and also has some of the most classic scenes (the doctor giving the results of the brain scan is probably the all time classic !).
That said, as I look over the list, there are some of these movies that I’ve never seen. And some that I have seen so long ago, I don’t really remember whether I liked them that much.
But I have to confess I never made it through “Everyone Says I Love You” (and I normally like musicals).
I agree with your sentiments about Allen, but Eastwood had already been an Actor/Director in several movies by 1977, including Play Misty for Me and The Outlaw Josey Wales.
I suppose what I have admired most about Allen’s work is that the comedy came from the interaction of characters and the conflict of personalities. Cerainly there were always a fair amount of gags and one-liners, but often those moments revealed something about the characters while delivering a laugh.
Though Stardust Memories is a film often dismissed (even by fans), I think there are some memorable moments. I found the final shot of Allen quite poignant. I believe it is intentionally ambiguous whether he is still in character or playing himself as he leaves the theater. While I’ve read the arguments that it was self-indulgent and/or a ripoff of Fellini’s 8 1/2, they don’t diminish my opinion of the movie.
I meant merely that he was given the Oscar before the others, although most people associate the start of actors winning Best Director with Redford in 1980. Even so, Woody had triple-threated several pictures before Eastwood. For that matter, Mel Brooks got there first with The Producers in 1968, a year before Take the Money and Run. (I don’t count What’s Up Tiger Lily.)
But the true model for writer-director-star in the modern era has to be Jerry Lewis. Redford (who didn’t even star) and Warren Beatty with Reds only get the credit because they weren’t doing comedy.
I get your point Exapno. I wasn’t knocking you, BTW, I was just tossing in an observation on your previous post (which I thought was excellent).
Sleeper is one of the earliest films I remember watching as a child. I remember nearly pissing my pants at Woody beating back the giant pudding with a broom!
I’ve always thought Sleeper had one of the best soundtracks of all his films. Why, oh why, can’t I find a soundtrack?!
I take Radio Days to be my official mental image of the 1940’s. Fantastic opening scene - pure Woody in terms of comedy.
And what can I say about Annie Hall that hasn’t been said? Too many great comedic moments to list.
No problem. You pointed out something unclear in my post, so I clarified it. No knock on you either.
Ah, the lovefest that is CS. 
One of the things I like about the early comedies is that some scenes, usually between Woody and his leading lady, were clearly improvised. Extremely rare in feature films, I daresay. Sleeper, Bananas, and Take the Money and Run all have such sequences.
We haven’t talked much here about Woody’s serious works, me mainly because frankly I’ve paid less attention to them. What do people think about Interiors, September, and the others? Second-rate Bergman rip-offs, or good serious films from someone who wasn’t expected to make them? Should I check them out again?
Crimes and Misdemeanors
For me this is his masterpiece. It has both the funny plot, and the serious plot and he manages to bring them together at the end in a way that is just perfect.
My favorites:
Annie Hall
What’s Up, Tiger Lily?
Love and Death
Manhattan Murder Mystery
I lost interest a while back, though. I think Manhattan Murder Mystery is the last of his movies I saw, and I haven’t been that compelled to see the rest.
It wasn’t even the personal stuff that made me lose interest (although I can’t watch Manhattan anymore without getting a little creeped out), just the idea that he seemed to be making the same movie over and over again.
Yes, I would agree that the most recent stuff doesn’t draw me in. I’m still enjoying discovering some of the earlier films that I’ve never seen, and rewatching others.
The most recent film of his that I saw (in the cinema, I think) was a tedious affair involving a baker’s shop. Helena Bonham Carter rings a bell too as the snooty wife with him as the slobby armchair sports nut. Rubbish, anyway. And Helena’s so irritating - in anything.
Needs to be stuffed in a box after having her arms and legs removed.
I lean towards the idea that his farces and comedies can be seen as deeper social commentaries than any of his “serious” stuff. Of course, it can also be viewed as simply silly fun when one doesn’t want to put any effort into the viewing. To me, that’s what makes him a genius.
The bakery movie is Small Time Crooks. Allen is a bank robber who rents a vacant store in order to dig to the vault next door. His wife (Tracy Ullman) opens a cookie bakery in the store as a front. The heist is a flop but the bakery is wildly successful. The second half of the movie deals with the classless but now moneyed Ullman trying to drag herself up into polite society with the “help” of Hugh Grant as a penniless but upper crust con man. It’s funny, if disjointed, but there’s some interesting stuff going on in the second half. In some ways it could be a metaphor for Allen (a scrappy, athletic kid from lower-class Brooklyn) trying to fit in amongst the intelligentsia who watch his movies. Not one of his masterpieces, certainly.
Helena Bonham Carter is Allen’s wife in Mighty Aphroditie, in which he discovers his adopted son’s birth mother is a ditzy hooker (Mira Sorvino) with whom he begins to fall in love. I can see why you’d get them confused – they’re only five movies apart. (Heh. With any other director, that’d be an absurd statement.)
This brings me to another point – even ignoring his TV work, Tiger Lily and Oedipus Wrecks, Allen has directed 33 films. What other director has made that many movies? Yes, it was common during the days of the studio system, but those guys were mostly done by the '60’s, and they didn’t have to worry about writing the things.
–Cliffy
Of the more recent batch, I would recommend checking out Deconstructing Harry. I think it keeps the spirit of his earlier films, and Judy Davis’s rant in the first five minutes is worth the rental fee alone. Plus a completely watchable performance by Robin Williams (which are so, so rare). To me, it was Woody’s last great film (until his next great film).
Pash