Thursday 8 March 2012

Woody and his women (1)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


9 March

Now, don't get me wrong, because Allen has written some great screen parts for women, but I'm thinking - as I do incessantly, thoughts feverishing racing around my head, trying to catch up with each other and sometimes crashing - about this collection Mere Anarchy yet again.

What does he read (or hear) that he writes such things in these stories for his male characters to write (or say) about women*?:


* The twin dirigibles that stretched her silk blouse to the breaking point

* Hoping to revel in tableaux of raven-tressed sinners looking like they’d come directly from the pages of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue as they undulated, seminude, in sulphur and chains

* Once she wiggled her award-winning posterior into the lift


Not, by any means, that sex - particularly oral sex - hasn't always been a preoccupation since Allen's earliest films (such as Bananas (1971), Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), and Annie Hall (1977)), but maybe, despite the humour (which is maybe a bit too unsubtle), it's that it passes by quickly onscreen as cheeky, rather than as smutty or prurient...


End-notes

* There is another in this collection of around 18 pieces, but I have mislaid it: it must be resting in Father Ted's account, I think. (None is narratated by a woman.)


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