(Editor's note: OWF's Stu Cummins unfortunately had some personal issues to resolve this week, so our Top 10 Tuesday has now come on a Thursday! Tom Barnard has stepped in with this top ten list celebrating Woody Allen...) To celebrate the release last week of You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, the following is my top ten selection of the famous neurotic's greatest cinematic individuals. Entries are listed in chronological order, and aren't specific to characters played by Allen himself.
10. Miles Monroe (Woody Allen), Sleeper (1973)
There's a tendency to pigeonhole Woody Allen characters as reoccurring versions of himself. After all, they often share mannerisms and a unionised sense of morality, but real pleasure can be gained from spotting the fundamental personality differences in these very individual creations. The aforementioned similarities became somewhat of a negative critique in Allen's work as his career hit its peak in the late 70s. With his earlier comedies, nobody was complaining. Sleeper gives us one of Allen's uncompromising slapstick performances. Miles Monroe, a simple health food store owner, is transported to the future. There, he must face all kinds of innovation (including the infamous "Orgasmatron") with mixed results. Monroe is as bumbling a character as Allen ever managed. The array of facial expressions he conjures in Sleeper alone must have been exhausting for the then-young comic. Luckily, audiences found them hilarious.
9. Boris Grushenko (Woody Allen), Love and Death (1975)
Love and Death, a dissection and homage alike to Russian literature, gave us one of Allen's wittiest performances in Boris Grushneko. Trapped in a world of conflict and deep, profound contradiction, Boris seeks to understand why he must suffer for a crime he never committed: life itself. Love and Death offers genuine, bonafide laughs and an Allen performance that somehow manages to strike a tone of endearment through the chaos. He struggles, and squirms, but never quite gives in. Above all, Boris is a man who asks "Why?" and for that, it's easy to admire him. His complaisant view on God? "The worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."
8. Alvy Singer (Woody Allen), Annie Hall (1977)
Allen's most famous performance might also be his best. Alvy Singer is typical of the traits and idiosyncrasies that Woody Allen has become renowned for: neurotic, literate, funny, obsessed with sex and death, and very, very Jewish. He also shares a personal history with Allen himself, namely his role as a comedy writer for television. When Alvy meets the ditzy Annie Hall, he falls in love, and we sit back and watch as the relationship breaks down, piece by piece. For everything that is so admirable of Alvy, Allen makes no mistake in pointing out that he is highly flawed, and it's his unwillingness to change or try new things that ultimately serve to sever his ties with Annie. He's New York and she's Los Angeles. But it's the sentimental coda that finishes Annie Hall that assures Alvy Singer a place in this list. With tired honesty, he laments on love: "I guess that's how I feel about relationships. You know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and€ but, uh, we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us, need the eggs." In all of art, it might never have been put better.
7. Annie Hall (Diane Keaton), Annie Hall (1977)
Where would Annie Hall be without Annie Hall? And if the entire ethos of Annie Hall is as an ode to Diane Keaton, the film is the very essence of the character she inhabits. And what a character she is. With recognition to Allen, he is one of very few filmmakers who crafts his female characters with as much workmanship as their male counterparts, and Annie is a prime example. Whereas Alvy's perspective often proves overbearing and jarring, Annie never strays far from her genuine, endearing self. She isn't smart. She doesn't have famous lines from important novels stored in her brain. But she's warm and sincere, and does what feels right. Alvy obviously agrees: the final moments of the film ("As Time Goes By") is a tribute to her very sensibility. Whereas Allen's female characters would become intellectuals and academics in the years to come, nobody ever quite comes close to Annie. Which proves brains really aren't everything.
Tracy is a refreshing addition to Woody Allen's entire film cannon. For starters, she's below the age of twenty, a trait rarely afforded in this territory. Secondly, Tracy remains free of the burdens that Allen's characters so often bear. She isn't neurotic or troubled or obsessed with the afterlife, she's young and in love and having a good time. Allen's Isaac Davies sees it as his job to tell her how it all works and to prepare her for everything terrible that is coming her way, but Tracy just brushes it off. When he breaks up with her for selfish means in a beautifully-acted but tragic sequence, Hemingway sobs with real conviction. Mariel Hemingway hadn't appeared in much before she was cast in Manhattan. Allen obviously saw something special, and it got her an Oscar-nomination, aged just seventeen. To date, her performance remains the most enchanting in all of Allen's work. During one scene, devoid of his relationship with Tracy, and attempting to self-motivate, Isaac begins to list things that make life worth living. Out of his inner-consciousness (and after Groucho Marx and Swedish movies, naturally), he mentions Tracy's face. It makes sense. Who could forget that face?
4. Elliot (Michael Caine), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
The role that won Michael Caine his first Oscar is also the best performance in one of Allen's most critically lauded films. As Elliot, Caine proves he has real acting chops, a husband caught in a serious predicament: he feels alienated from his wife, and has fallen for her sister. Allen's characters often find themselves in these love triangle-type situations, and Caine does well to bring a freshness to a role on Allen's habitual narrative terms. Though we feel badly for his wife, we can't hate Elliot ("For all my education, accomplishments and so-called wisdom, I can't fathom my own heart"), and that's a compliment to Caine, who listed this as one of five favourite films he's appeared in. The real compliment, of course, is that in a film of pitch-perfect performances, Caine makes Elliot shine through.
3. Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau), Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989)
Allen chose to evoke the moral themes of hefty Russian novel Crime and Punishment with his own Crimes and Misdemeanours, and cast Martin Landau as his man with a situation. Judah Rosenthal is a successful doctor with everything going for him. A problem, however, lies with his mistress. Having grown tired of the lies, she threatens to tell his wife unless Judah leaves her. Judah's reaction? He chooses to have her murdered. It's a lot to gauge in a performance if it's going to be conveyed right, and nobody could do it as well as Landau does. He seems to weight it up as his character might have to, and acts with a dark and realistic tact. Even if we don't agree with the choices Judah makes, we believe the path he chooses. Landau makes that very difficult path very plausible in our imaginations.
2. Juan Antonio Gonzalo (Javier Bardem), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Javier Bardem's performance in Vicky Cristina Barcelona is all about control. It's so controlled, in fact, it's hard to take your eyes away. Juan Antonio is the catalyst in this Allen drama/comedy: his direct tone and the ease at which he carries himself is exactly what tourists Vicky and Cristina need to send things spiralling. They both fall for him, and Bardem makes it easy to believe that he would be interested in each of them (and that Vicky and Cristina would be interested in him). Of course, Juan Antonio is having his cake and eating it. The touch of genius here is that we don't really ever realise that until way after the film is over. Bardem has played his character so airily - so without consequence - that we can't not go along with him. Allen, of course, doesn't let his character get away with it (although that hasn't been unheard of). He takes away the ingredient crucial to Juan Antonio's happiness: the third person, leaving the sensual Spaniard right back where he started.
1. Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
I suppose the huge draw to working with Woody Allen lies with the notion that he's brought so many of his actors win Oscars (and even more nominations). Then again, it's as if this character was written with Penelope Cruz in mind: a compliment, given the way she seems to absorb Allen's dialogue with such natural rhythm. And so Cruz picked up an Oscar for her turn as the feisty Maria Elena, Juan Antonio's former lover. Maria Elena arrives about halfway into the picture and makes a point of dominating every scene. Cruz is a force to be reckoned with, an unpredictable, emotional roller-coaster. That is, until she decides to embrace her new-found situation and make good of it. In fact, Cristina is the missing piece of the puzzle. By the time the credits roll, Maria Elena has fired the only gun in this romantic comedy and left her mark. Of course, she didn't need the gun to make an impact. Tom Barnard You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger is currently on release in the U.K. See our review HERE.