This post is a continuation of yesterday’s entry in which I served up my favorite sequences from Woody’s films.
The opening to “Broadway Danny Rose”
If there’s one thing you have to give Woody credit for it’s that, for the most part, he doesn’t depict the characters he plays in a flattering light. Instead, he portrays them as selfish, passive aggressive, so hopelessly neurotic that they never experience such a thing as growth; they’re just as rigidly stuck by the third act as they were at the beginning. From “Annie Hall” to “Deconstructing Harry”, Allen’s protagonists are complicated and difficult; at times, I myself have wanted to jump into the screen, Purple Rose-style, and give them a swift kick in the pants. The exception is the lovable Danny Rose. A theatrical manager for third-string novelty acts like “the one-legged tap dancer,” Danny is devoted to his clients; in fact, he’s the only one who genuinely believes in their odds for success. He will bend over backward to make them happy, a trait that gets in trouble and triggers the entire plot. (Talk about the perfect example of character determining plot!)
The movie is framed around a story told by a group of comedians and small-time showmen who frequent the Carnegie Deli. This is not just a narrative device to set up the story, though; it also serves as a lovingly documented study of a subset of New Yorkers, caught on film in all their glory. In framing it as such, we get to sit beside them and take in their gorgeous New Yorkese, and vicariously live the show life during the waning days of the Catskill circuit.
Fugitives from the chain gang from “Take the Money and Run”
Allen used to complain that audiences only wanted the funny stuff from him when he wanted to be taken seriously, but who can blame them? In “Take the Money and Run,” he used a mockumentary style years before it became common, right down to his use of interviews and a narrator who spoke in the cadence of 70s PBS documentaries. His comedic gifts verged on surrealistic, such as this sequence from “Take The Money and Run.”