As a filmmaker, Woody Allen has had to confront many of the same problems as Mel Brooks. There has been an element of spoofery in all his films except Annie Hall. In general, he's been able to keep it under better control. His films are about people and ideas as well as movies. Like Brooks, too, he has had to deal with his own comedian's persona. But he started as an actor, and he has appeared in all his films so far (except What's Up Tiger Lily?, a success, and Interiors, a failure). As a result, his films are not only more cohesive than Brooks's but also—at least in my view—more authentic. (p. 240)

His first directorial outing was Take the Money and Run (1969), in which he played the archetypal Allen bungler as crook. The film had a fresh, semidocumentary approach which set it immediately apart from the general comedic stream. Allen's films still benefit from this visual realism, much richer and more engaging than Brooks's glossy, glassy set constructions. Take the Money and Run worked as a showcase for the Allen comedy with which audiences had become familiar through his television appearances, but he was just beginning to discover how to translate the monologist's style into cinematic language. Again, the difference is between telling and seeing. During a prison sequence in Take the Money, our hero is sadistically sentenced to three days in a sweatbox, with an insurance salesman. Listening to this, you laugh; watching it, you say, "That's Funny."

Each of Allen's next three films had its experimental aspect. Bananas (1971 …) took the Allen schlemiel out of his native habitat, making him the unlikely hero of a South American revolution. Now the tenuous balance between visual and verbal jokes was further complicated by Woody's newly discovered interest in the art of film. He began sticking in parodic shots and scenes, such as the recreation of the famous Potemkin baby-carriage-on-the-steps sequence. Again, whatever laughter the scene elicits depends on recognition. Brooks moved further in this direction as his career progressed. Allen, conversely, discovered that the spoofery very often worked against the basic tone of his comedy. "Many times I've filmed terrific gags," he told an interviewer, "in a kind of arty way, but you always screw up the gag and you always cut it out of the picture." As a result, he developed a strictly functional visual style, to focus attention on the gags. (pp. 241-42)

Allen's film work is carefully thought out, and a close study of his films in sequence would make an excellent course in comic film technique. Each film has been measurably more efficient than its predecessor.

Sleeper (1973 …) is Allen as sketch comedian in top form. By now, he had developed some elaborate ideas about what he could and couldn't do with the medium. There are still visual gags (the giant fruit, for example), but most of the comedy depends on the concept. The framework of futurism—Miles Monroe wakes up in 2173, wrapped in aluminum foil—allows him to build a rapid-fire string of comments on the world of 1973, each of which has added humor because it's phrased in the past tense. (p. 243)

The most surprising fact about Annie Hall … is that it took Woody Allen so long to make it. It is the most obvious and effective solution to all his esthetic problems; it's much closer in spirit to Allen's monologues and prose humor than any of his previous films; and it marks a quantum jump for him as a filmmaker. Comedy as style is rightly superseding comedy as genre, and Allen's performance shtik—the persona he built on television and in night clubs—is neatly integrated into a classically structured, yet refreshingly contemporary narrative. (p. 244)

[We] need comedy, even from a schlump like Woody, who doesn't own a car, or a mantra. Somebody has to be in charge of keeping things in perspective, and Woody Allen does the job exceedingly well.

And this is why Allen's long-threatened "serious" film, Interiors (1978), is so heartbreakingly disappointing. Coming from another filmmaker, Interiors might just have some mild excuses to make for itself. But coming from Woody Allen it looks like a violent act of self-mutilation, and those of us who greatly value his other films, books, plays, articles, and performances react instinctively against the rigid—nearly catatonic—strained seriousness of Interiors as if to a personal betrayal. We have depended on Allen for more than ten years now as a champion against just this particular sort of bad-faith artiness and the midcult bourgeois sensibility from which it stems. Now, it seems, not only has Woody gone over to the enemy, but he's apparently been secretly enamored of the opposite camp during the very time we trusted him. (p. 245)

Even if it had been made by someone else—if it were, for example, Ingmar Bergman's first American film (and it is in a way), Interiors would be cause for concern. Allen's study in "beiges and earth tones" is the ultimate midcult American movie of the 1970s; it shares all of the failings of that bourgeois sensibility. For these reasons it has considerable historical significance. Fifteen years ago, when the reigning American cultural set was Philistine, Interiors wouldn't have been given a second thought by most critics, who would have dismissed it out of hand as some "egghead" nonsense. Now that the dominant cultural sensibility has reached the level of midcult—now that we all know about gourmet cuisine, study "films" rather than "movies" in college, and go to Europe regularly—now Interiors is not only acceptable, seeing it is a sign of our own seriousness (and therefore, our class). (pp. 246-47)

On a technical level, Interiors is clearly well made, and this is a primary criterion of midcult criticism. More important, it is full of allusions and symbolism of the sort dear to every English teacher's heart. All the colors are muted browns, tans, and grays, see, except this one lady, Pearl, the life force in the film. She wears red. Get it? And her name, too, see, that's symbolic: she gleams, like, among the rest of these tortured people. And there are three sisters…. There was this play this Russian writer wrote about these people who could never get to Moscow, and that was called Three Sisters. And at the end there, where the three sisters, so nicely composed, are staring out the window at the sea (please be ready to talk about Sea Symbolism on Tuesday's exam), and one of them says, "The water's so calm," and the other replies, "Yes, it's very peaceful," and that's the last line of the play—I mean film … well, that's an allusion to … well, I know it's an allusion to something. I'll think of it. Just a moment.

In the age of midcult, this is what we are taught is art, and no doubt Interiors will get steady play on the high-school and college circuit. (p. 247)

No doubt such people as the writers Allen concerns himself with in Interiors do exist. All sorts of people exist. The question is, why choose to build a movie around such characters? There is an ethical problem here, too. Except for Pearl …, Allen is merciless with his characters. He has designed them as perfect, finished neurotics. He gives them no room to act, to breathe. They can only think, and in thinking suffer. There is no sense of politics here; in fact, politics as a possibility of action is expressly denied: we hear that Fred is a filmmaker working on a film about politics, but the subject intentionally never comes into play.

Yes, Interiors is very much like a Bergman film, but in this case, imitation isn't the sincerest form of flattery. Allen's movie is so close to Bergman that it's eerie…. Allen's deathly clone has the net effect of making it difficult even to treat Bergman with respect again: we'll always hear the ghosts of Interiors murmuring just off-screen. (p. 248)