Woody Allen: Lost in the City WOODY AL L EN HAS CAPT U RE D THE UR B AN EXPER IENCE MOR E SUCCINCT LY T H AN ANY OT HER DIR ECTOR , ARGUES ADAM LEE DAVIES
H
e was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat. New York was his town, and it always would be…” Few modern artists have been so closely associated with any one city as comedian, actor and filmmaker Woody Allen. The very titles of his films – Manhattan Murder Mystery, Bullets Over Broadway, New York Stories, Broadway Danny Rose, Manhattan – tell of a long, enduring love affair with the Big Apple. Unlike fellow New York directors Martin Scorsese and Sidney Lumet, Allen’s metropolis is not a boiling ethnic cauldron of violence and redemption, but an alchemical wonderland where magic lurks around every corner and
fortunes can change in a New York minute. Just recall the iconic moment during his signature film Manhattan when the Queensboro Bridge is transformed – courtesy of a Gershwin ditty and a little early morning mist – from a rusty hunk of everyday utilitarianism into an elusive urban dreamscape. This city exists not as a melting pot but an illuminated and ever-shifting framework across which Allen’s characters scale the heights and plumb the depths of joy, love, success, celebrity and infamy. If Scorsese’s mean streets chronicle the ways in which the city rubs up against itself, Allen’s films take a wry look at how we might best attempt to iron out the subsequent wrinkles. 61