My Favorite Woody Allen Movie
What’s my favorite Woody Allen movie? That’s a hard question to answer, but generally, my answer is Crimes and Misdemeanors. But after reading Dylan Farrow’s 2014 letter to her adoptive father alleging abuse, I had to take a step back before answering that question anew. To be honest, somehow that letter alone was not enough to persuade me that the allegations were true, I’m embarrassed to admit. Maybe I didn’t want to believe it, or maybe it seemed too horrible to be true, or perhaps it was a combination of both; an underage girl is one thing — but a seven-year-old? One you were purportedly parenting? And Woody Freaking Allen?!?
I think my reluctance to believe Dylan’s story was due to a mix of my love for Woody Allen’s films and my quietly growing sense of skepticism towards what was in my view a belligerent #MeToo movement gone off the rails. That movement lost me by conflating Al Franken with the likes of Harvey Weinstein, by not allowing nuance into the conversation, by disregarding the complexities of human relationships on the rising tide of cancel culture. But whatever reasons I had for disbelieving Dylan’s accusations were shattered after I watched the recently released series, Allen v. Farrow. Now, there is no doubt in my mind that Allen is guilty as charged, and that his position as an unparalleled writer/director and powerful New York icon enabled him to skate away on the thin ice of a new day, Judah Rosenthal style, facilitated by people in high places working behind the scenes to condemn the accuser and her mother in their efforts to cover up his heinous crime.
Speaking of crime, let’s get back to Crimes and Misdemeanors for a moment. One reason I often cite it as my favorite Woody Allen movie is that it continues the dialogue started by Fyodor Dostoevsky 133 years earlier. The film of course is a modern-day response to Crime and Punishment, in which Dostoevsky explores guilt and the premise that even if you’re not caught and held accountable for your actions, you will be punished by your own conscience. The allusory title and inherent rebuttal to the main theme of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece were part of what made Woody Allen’s work so appealing and indispensable to me and others for so many years. I am interested in philosophy, existentialism, in the big questions, and in the art that dares to tackle them. Whether I agree with the premises or whose side I take in this debate across the centuries is beside the point; the point is that Woody Allen in this film as in so many of his other films is taking on the big questions, examining them in poignant, imaginative ways, and in so doing is carrying on the transcendent, timeless dialogue of philosophers, artists, and thinkers across the ages.
I fell in love with this film and many other Woody Allen films over the years, long before I ever heard about Dylan’s allegations. Where, then, does this leave me now, this latest revelation that she was telling the truth, that the filmmaker I admired more than any other was an incestuous pedophile? Would I ever be able to watch another Woody Allen film again, as many people are saying they would not be? And while we’re at it, what am I to do with Polanski’s movies, Michael Jackson’s music, Picasso’s paintings, Salinger’s novels, or the art of any other artist probably guilty of horrible things?
The answer for me lies in the definition of art, or my definition of art, and how art relates to the artist. In my opinion, art takes on a life of its own and is no more responsible for the transgressions of the artist than a child is responsible for the transgressions of the parent. A work of art is more than just a commodity; it is an entity with the power to affect, move, and inspire people for better or for worse. Nothing you can tell me about Frank Zappa is going to deter me from listening to Thingfish as I did this morning, starting my day with the Mammy Nuns expounding upon the perils of Galoot Cologne while I sipped my coffee. Nor is anything you can unearth about Johann Sebastian Bach going to tear me away from my laborious hours at the piano blundering through the Well-Tempered Clavier.
Mark David Chapman was probably influenced by The Catcher in the Rye in his decision to shoot John Lennon; he sat clutching a copy of the book outside of the Dakota after shooting the legendary songwriter, perhaps thinking that he himself was acting the part of the catcher and sparing Lennon the inevitable, multi-faceted decline of aging. Should we burn our Salinger books? Conversely, works such as A Christmas Carol or Les Miserables likely influenced many people to be less selfish and more empathetic; irrespective of their creators’ failings. These are just a few top-of-mind examples, but there are countless others that speak to the power of art and its ability to inspire people and effect change, both good and bad.
I think oftentimes when people talk about never watching another Woody Allen film or listening to another R. Kelly song, or watching another episode of the Cosby Show, they are thinking about punishing the artist. They think, understandably, “why should I continue to support this artist financially or morally after what they have done?” That’s a point I agree with — let me be clear: I would be thrilled to see Woody Allen behind bars. Lock him up and throw away the key. Take all his money and give it to Dylan. Punish him in any way that justice sees fit; just don’t drag his movies into it. Art, particularly great art, is much more than just a commodity.
Once an artist completes a work, that work is, in effect, born. It is released into the world to be felt, experienced, even lived, for those more sensitive individuals capable of experiencing art in such a visceral way. I wonder, might it be accurate to say that the better a work of art is, the more autonomous it becomes, the more independent of its creator, the more alive it is? Is that a stretch? Is R. Kelly’s I Believe I Can Fly to be uttered in the same breath as Beethoven’s Ode to Joy or a Brahms Intermezzo, or does Battlefield Earth have any place in a discussion about Hannah and Her Sisters? Perhaps, if the point is to illustrate the extremities of quality. But I digress; quality of art and the line between the subjective and the objective is another topic for another place and time. But I mention it because it is the great works of art, whether in music, film, sculpture, literature, architecture, or painting that best illustrate the point that they are so impactful as to become largely independent of the human that created them and do indeed take on a life of their own.
Watching the clips of Mia Farrow‘s home in Allen v. Farrow, I was struck by how warm and lovely it looks to me, complete with a piano covered with framed family photos, dark wood, intimate spaces encased in books, sun-drenched rooms with rocking chairs, waterfront views replete with magical light and weeping willows, right down to a perfect kettle in the kitchen. I can scarcely imagine a more perfect home, at least until a monster was unwittingly invited inside. I couldn’t help but be reminded of one of my most cherished Woody Allen scenes, that of the living room from Hannah and Her Sisters where the piano sits at the heart of the warm home, acting as a kind of centerpiece for the artistic family, radiating warmth across the generations at the family gatherings, rich with tradition and even facilitating healing. At the end of the film, it is at the piano that the barely reconciled couple, the elderly parents of the eponymous sisters, sing together with the family gathered around, like a ritual celebrating the triumph of forgiveness over the inevitable hardships of life. What irony, to juxtapose that scene with Mia’s real-life living room, knowing now how authentic one portrait is and how contrived the other, one gradually built over years in the real world out of love, sweat, and tears, the other quickly fabricated by set designers like a bottle of ginger ale champagne from The Purple Rose of Cairo.
Clearly, I will never look at Woody Allen films the same way again. Scenes like this one from Hannah and Her Sisters take on a newfound irony just as the central theme in Crimes and Misdemeanors is suddenly imbued with new layers of meaning. ‘Separate the art from the artist’ has long been my mantra, but now I am discovering it is easier said than done. In Deconstructing Harry, Allen has created a thinly veiled self-caricature about a man who can only function in art, but not so much in the real world. Woody’s eccentricities in real life made that easy to decode (as if the Harry/Woody similarities were not enough of a clue), but that was before we knew the depth of his dysfunction.
In Crimes and Misdemeanors, Woody rebuts Fyodor’s assertion that you cannot escape from your own conscience if you commit a terrible crime. In the closing conversation between characters Judah Rosenthal and Clifford Stern, Judah, a successful uptown ophthalmologist who has just escaped unscathed from having his threatening mistress snuffed out by a lackey of his mobster brother says:
“And after the awful deed is done, he finds that he’s plagued by deep-rooted guilt. Little sparks of his religious background, which he’d rejected, are suddenly stirred up. He hears his father’s voice. He imagines that God is watching his every move. Suddenly, it’s not an empty universe at all, but a just and moral one, and he’s violated it. Now, he’s panic-stricken. He’s on the verge of a mental collapse, an inch away from confessing the whole thing to the police.
And then one morning, he awakens. The sun is shining, his family is around him and mysteriously, the crisis has lifted. He takes his family on a vacation to Europe, and, as the months pass, he finds he’s not punished. In fact, he prospers. The killing gets attributed to another person — a drifter who has a number of other murders to his credit, so I mean, what the hell? One more doesn’t even matter. Now he’s scott-free. His life is completely back to normal. Back to his protected world of wealth and privilege.”
Woody Allen released this film in 1989, just 4 years before he sexually abused his then 7-year-old adoptive daughter. How can one not draw parallels between that cinematic exploration of overcoming guilt and the real-life guilt deflections of the incestuous pedophile? Were it not for this latest meticulously researched series, Allen v. Farrow, fans like me might have gone on disbelieving and Woody Allen, like Judah Rosenthal, would have conquered whatever semblance of a conscience he had.
Speaking of Rosenthal — John Leventhal — the slimebag doctor who headed the Yale-New Haven cover-up for Mr. Allen — I hope to God somebody rises up and prosecutes him as well and teaches him that crime and punishment are not so far removed from one another, even for those who worship nothing but money. But, as any good existentialist worth his window knows — God is a luxury that the financially wealthy but morally bankrupt John Leventhal and Woody Allen cannot afford.
Listening to the clips of Mr. Allen’s gnarled, whiny voice in the excerpts from Apropos of Nothing that appear in Allen v. Farrow, he sounds unrecognizable to me, a defensive wimp always at his worst when he waxes autobiographical as in the eternally dull Wild Man Blues, but never as bad as this. On listening to that warbled caricature of a New York accent, that disgusting shadow of his former self, I cannot help but come to the conclusion that Dostoevsky had it right: even if you don’t have a moral compass, even if you think you can buy yourself a clear conscience, beware: punishment comes in many forms, and few may be as painful as the slow, public demise of your once lofty esteem.
