The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Woody: Movies from Manhattan by Julian FoxJohn O'Brien
Julian Fox. Woody: Movies from Manhattan. Overlook Press, 1996. 285 pp. $26.95.
I very much wanted to like this book because the work of Woody Allen is due serious, critical treatment, but Fox’s study is, finally, disappointing. With no thesis that I could detect, the book proceeds from movie to movie, providing sometimes interesting (read: gossipy) background information (where certain scenes were shot, which actors were considered for roles but later dropped, reactions of actors to a kind of controlled chaos of Allen’s methods, Allen’s original conceptions that frequently got changed radically, sometimes during the filming itself or in the editing room). Fox attempts to play the role of fan/enthusiast and critic/scholar, a role he does not balance very well. Though several people and sources are quoted, Fox does not use footnotes and sometimes does not even attribute the quotation to anyone; we almost never know when he is drawing upon previously published materials and when his quotations or observations are derived from interviews he conducted. Perhaps most bothersome is that there is no theory to his approach, and therefore no guidelines that he draws upon––why invoke biographical details? why not? why mention where certain scenes were filmed but omit many other significant ones? why tell us what the actors thought? Anything and everything seems to be open for inclusion or exclusion.
Oh, well. The book is worth reading if only because of various background materials that Fox does provide (I had thought that the philosopher-psychologist who commits suicide in Crimes and Misdemeanors was based on Bruno Bettelheim, but Fox gives some evidence that it was Primo Levi). Still, Woody Allen, America’s greatest narrative master of the last thirty years, needs his Boswell, or better, his Kenner. [John O’Brien]