“Allen’s development in the eighties, his rate of work, and the sophistication of narrative were all seemingly devoted to ideas and attitudes against the grain of that decade. Yet Allen’s audience relied on urban yuppies, and his films only fostered that group’s self-satisfaction. He has tried darker views — in Stardust Memories and Crimes and Misdemeanors — and he has become very skilled with extensive, seething social contexts in which one piece of behavior is made more complex by the doings of others. He has fascinating ideas and ambitions as a screenwriter. Yet which Allen film challenges or threatens us, or burns into our memories? The films may run together – are we certain where that joke or this meeting occurred? Sometimes the context is so large as to be blurred, escape and slipperiness become more facile. There is something in Allen that always makes fun of ego, privacy, and obsession, and so with all his proclaimed inwardness he seems fearful of letting characters possess large inner lives. He makes many cameos of loneliness, but these are too often cute snapshots rather than tributes to an intractable condition.
But who else in American film provokes such arguments? And if Allen now faces a crisis because of his own behavior, we should recollect how smart and resourceful he is. Perhaps his indefatigable unconscious mind knew he needed trouble and disruption. That does not seek to excuse any damage he has done. But suppose real damage could become his subject – as opposed to wisecracks about it? If Allen could be persuaded to quit his own films as actor and work more sparingly, with unmistakable lead actors (as opposed to a stock company of guest shots), then there is still a chance that he could create something close to gravity. For he is the most inquiring dramatist at work in American film. He could yet be the kind of writer desperately needed by Coppola, Scorsese, and so many others.
By the end of the twentieth century, it was clear that Allen’s fecundity was chronic — though economics and his break with producer Jean Doumanian were further threats to the automatic one-film-a-year routine. Or was it that the routine, the momentum, kept Allen from proper examination of his work? Had habit overwhelmed the chance of art? It seemed to me that there was a wave of restored excellence — Everyone, Harry, and Celebrity — which came close to a really novel and brave scrutiny of modern reputation. But then Woody darted away into his own cuteness.
So there’s too much – or too little reflection. Still, there are Annie Hall, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days, Deconstructing Harry. That’s four brilliant films that no one else could have dreamed of. And that’s what it’s all about.”
From David Thomson’s The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Expanded and Updated
