Aspects of the Representation of French Culture in Allen’s Films

Allen has been associated with France since his first appearance in What’s New Pussycat? (1965) in which he plays chess with a young girl at a terrace of the famous restaurant La Closerie des Lilas. Allen wrote the script of the film set in and around Paris, but he was dissatisfied with the result and considered his ideas had been distorted or discarded. A bit later in Casino Royale, in which he portrayed James Bond’s small and evil brother, he may have met J.P. Belmondo, a young and promising French actor, impersonating a légionnaire. Since then, his films have included at least a passing reference to France: as a location, as names of artists, writers, filmmakers.

Indeed, Paris, which Allen visits regularly for the promotion of his films and interviews (also on his musical tour in 1997) and for sheer pleasure, is quoted in his films as an ideal city associated with romantic love. It’s seen either as a place to come back to or as a place to discover, as a goal for future escapades. It’s mostly a stereotyped vision of Paris with such clichés as the Eiffel Tower in Hollywood Ending where kissing Ellie appears in the eyes of Val as “the utmost romantic situation.” At the end, the reunited couple prepares to leave for Paris, where Val has been solicited to make a movie after the French praise of The City that Never Sleeps. In Husbands and Wives, Gabe Roth evokes Paris as a seductive place with Rain (Juliette Lewis), the young and bright student to whom he feels strongly attracted.

September opens on a nostalgic evocation of Paris. The frame is first empty and voices are heard offscreen, then the camera pans within a sitting room to reveal two characters (Howard and Lane) conversing in French before shifting back to English. In Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, while Maxwell complains he did not feel well in Paris because he was probably with the wrong person, Adrian replies that “if two people are really in love, a city like Paris becomes a great medium through which to explore their feelings.” In Manhattan, the reference to Paris is a direct quote from Casablanca. To Tracy’s question: “What happens to us?” Ike answers half-jokingly: “We’ll always have Paris,” which is quite meaningless, since they have no common memories there.

In Everyone Says I Love You, Paris is shown visually, but again more as a stereotype. Djuna, the young narrator, evokes her father Joe Berlin (Allen), a novelist who lives there in “exile” after his divorce. This justifies some shots of the city, including one in which Allen is seen crossing the bridge in front of the Conciergerie, a baguette under his arm! Having been let down by his French mistress, Giselle, Joe contemplates suicide by jumping off the Eiffel Tower, adding: “If I get the Concorde, I might be dead three hours earlier.” Later, as Joe manages, thanks to his daughter, to seduce Von (Julia Roberts), a beautiful dissatisfied woman, Paris crops up again as an ideal dreamlike place, part of Von’s fantasy. Long shots of roofs and churches are taken from a garret apartment in Montmartre, with a view over the Sacré-Cœur. Paris is last seen as a Christmas tourist location for rich American families. We get shots of various highlights: Place de la Concorde, les Champs Elysées, the stairs of Montmartre and the famous Saint-Germain café Les deux magots.¹ We also attend a comic carnival-like party scene at the Ritz,² where all the revellers wear Groucho Marx masks or mustaches, dancing and singing, in French, “Hooray for Captain Spaulding” (the character from Animal Crackers).

The only true emotional moment in the film corresponds to a tribute paid to Stanley Donen’s An American in Paris. Joe and his former wife Steffi (Goldie Hawn) walk along the banks of the Seine, visiting the place where they first met, evoking the past with a tinge of nostalgia and then start dancing. Far from trying to imitate Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, Allen uses special effects to suggest and even amplify the aerial quality of the dance, but he overdoes it as his partner seems to fly in the air too artificially. The kiss they exchange is a reminder of lost happiness (especially for Joe) and does not announce a love relationship, departing from the romantic trajectory of Donen’s film. Paris remains a romantic or touristy backdrop like Venice. However, Allen stages a delightfully parodic film and the seduction of the film for the French public relies not so much on the way Paris is represented (though the magnifying of the city may increase the appeal) but rather on the way in which it takes up the main features of the classic musical while subverting some of its formal codes and injecting other generic conventions (romantic comedy, film noir) and a touch of social and political satire. Few other French places are mentioned in Allen’s oeuvre. We may remember the allusion to an “eating tour” in France in Manhattan Murder Mystery, evoked by Ted and Carol again in a nostalgic tone. This time, France is being associated with sexual desire and the temptation of illicit relationships.

The same approach applies to most of the references to France or French culture. Allen’s characters quote well-known artists, both in literature (Balzac, Flaubert) and fine arts (Cézanne, Lautrec), either to be celebrated or contested. In Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Balzac is considered as “vastly overrated” by arrogant professor Leopold (Jose Ferrer) and his colleagues. In Annie Hall, the French writer is again the pretext for a joke as Alvy, proud of his sexual performance with Annie, exclaims: “As Balzac said, there goes another novel!” In Manhattan, Cézanne’s apples and pears are celebrated as part of Ike’s list of things worth living for. One of Rodin’s famous sculptures, The Thinker, appears in Hannah and Her Sisters as Allen’s character wanders past it. French musicians are also mentioned as part of high (or popular) culture for New Yorkers. In Manhattan, Mary Wilkes hands over to Yale, her lover, tickets for Jean-Pierre Rampal’s concert because they’ve just broken up. In Sweet and Lowdown, the real “French gypsy” Django Reinhardt is a fantasized rival of fictional guitarist Emmet Ray. He eventually “appears,” causing Ray’s swooning, but stimulating his creative power.

Some emblematic French historical characters are also invoked. In Sleeper, Miles Monroe comments on a photograph of Charles de Gaulle, shown him by scientists of the future: “Famous French chef. Had his own television show. Showed you how to make soufflés and omelettes.” Even politics are derisively associated with food. In You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Helena (Gemma Jones) thinks she might have been Joan of Arc in a previous life. Napoleon plays a part in Love and Death in which Boris is executed for attempting to kill him (he only wounds his double).

Food and wine are another topic related to France. In Stardust Memories, Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling), wishing to stay alone with her lover for a tête à tête dinner, tempts him with a French recipe spoken in perfect French by the actress: “Filet de bœuf périgourdine with potatoes and rhum cassolette.” Literature and perfume (another French forte) are linked in Allen’s witty line as Sandy answers Dorrie’s praise of his nice smell in Stardust Memories: “I wear Proustian rush by Chanel.” Here, the woman praises the man . . . French wine is frequently mentioned as the utmost of refinement. Judah Rosenthal is praised for his knowledge of it, as is the pedantic Paul of Midnight in Paris. Characters in Melinda and Melinda drink Haut Brion in a French restaurant in Greenwich Village. In Match Point, the British bourgeois characters are very knowledgeable about French wine, as is the murderous aristocrat in Scoop. In Manhattan Murder Mystery, Carol (Diane Keaton) attends a winetasting party and drinks Mouton ’45 with her friend Ted, who also recalls urging Carol to drink Château Margaux, as a way of seducing her.

All these references testify to the appeal of French culture and French cuisine. For the American sophisticated middle class or bourgeoisie, these allusions partake of a living standard and are also an index of the snobbishness of some characters. Other verbal winks are made to French taste, fashion, or social and sexual mores, as in this short dialogue between Harry Block and his sister: “Your whole life is nihilism, cynicism, sarcasm, and orgasm.” “You know, in France I could run on this slogan, and I’d win.” Allen’s success does not rely so much on the way France is represented in his films, rather on what makes his cinema appealing to the French – his comic genius, sense of satire, and philosophical bent.

Building Up the Persona

It is impossible to give an account of all the ideas that have circulated about Allen in the French media. Apart from academic research, there have been many articles in newspapers (Le Monde, Libération) and magazines (L’Express, Le Point, Le Nouvel Observateur, Les Inrockuptibles, etc.). Special issues of Telerama and Le Figaro have been devoted to his life and work. Recently (2010), Stuart Hample’s comic strip, which partakes of Allen’s mythical aura, was translated into French.

The INA television archives provide insights into Allen’s popularity in France. From 1966 onwards, 712 audiovisual documents have been partly or fully devoted to Allen, including extracts from his films, comments, and interviews. One of the earliest was recorded at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas in 1966 while Allen was known as a successful stand-up comedian. In 1972, Monsieur Cinema introduces him as the youngest of international comic artists and shows a clip of Take the Money and Run, while his play, Don’t Drink the Water, is performed on a Parisian stage. In Allons au cinema (1977), French director Michel Audiard notes his constant improving and the use of biographical material in his films and praises his “New York Jewish humour.” In Bon Dimanche (1977), Allen is associated with Groucho Marx. A clip from Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex illustrates his taste for parody and pastiche (Hamlet) and his knowledge of contemporary theatre (through an allusion to Tom Stoppard’s play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead). In Cinepremière (TF1, 1979), comic actor Jacques Villeret notes that though Allen’s name is “equated with laughter,” there are also in his films tough violent scenes which convey a sense of unease and anxiety. In Hollywood USA (1979), Allen asserts his love of big cities, insisting that only Paris is comparable to New York in terms of pace, rhythm, and excitement, while rejecting Los Angeles as being “too dependent on the automobile,” and affirming his dislike of sunshine and his predilection for grey skies and rain. He mentions his obsessions and phobias, including the fear that the universe will come to an end (which he shares with young Alvy Singer).

In Question de temps (Dec. 3, 1979), France Roche provides a documented and sensitive portrait. Her interview takes place while Allen, having been awarded four Oscars for Annie Hall, makes the cover of Time magazine and is labelled “A Comic American Genius.” Roche finds various formulas to describe his films. Bananas “confronts an apolitical dwarf with ideological giants,” Sleeper expresses Allen’s fear of a mechanized world, while Manhattan is seen as “aggressive love song and tender hatred.” The stress is laid on Allen’s characters’ anhedonia, a form of melancholy that prevents them from enjoying life and which is at odds with his comedian persona. A dual image emerges. Allen expresses, like his fictional characters, a pessimistic vision of modern urban America: “the terrible ugliness overcoming the big cities, a culture that is going down the drain, has no spiritual center, no sense of purpose.” He asserts that he makes films in order to “escape confrontation with the unpleasant realities of the world.” The broadcast presents an interview with Marie-Christine Barrault, who plays a part in Stardust Memories, the provisional title of which remained Women in Autumn (alluding to Bergman’s Autumn Sonata). Barrault sees Allen as someone who sculpts the image and comments on his filmic methods, including lots of rehearsals, few takes and many retakes. She also reveals that Allen invented her character’s “revolutionary” presence on the Paris barricades of May 1968 inspired by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the famous French activist and politician.

This documentary shows that Allen’s image is well established in 1979 and it reveals a number of facets of his personality: his interest in women characters (“always wonderful and interesting”), his lack of faith in politicians, whom he regards as mere civil servants unable to provide true answers, his obsession with death, which he perceived as “black emptiness,” his phobia about physical sickness (loss of hearing, nausea), and the revelation that he would like to be reincarnated as Frank Sinatra or Marlon Brando. In December 1983, in Le Grand Echiquier, he appears in a silent sketch in Central Park with French painter and illustrator Jean-Michel Folon. In Cinéma/cinémas (Oct. 1984), he reveals that he did not wear glasses before the age of 17 (collapsing a fragment of the myth) and also that, in his job as director, he prefers the writing phase (before compromise starts and disillusionment ensues). His play, God Shakespeare and Me, is staged in Paris (1985) with two prominent French comedians, Pierre Richard and Rufus, who praise his comic genius and his sense of the absurd. He is described not only as a true inheritor of the Marx Brothers but as the “American Sacha Guitry” (a French director famous for his wit and dry humour). Another comedian, Michel Blanc, compares him favorably with Mel Brooks, who is reduced (unfairly) to mere slapstick comedy, while Allen is deemed “more profound and existential.” In Bain de minuit (Dec. 1987), a very fashionable program hosted by provocative Thierry Ardisson, Allen refers to television as a “mere transmitter which creates nothing.” In 1988, in Cinéma/cinémas, a German journalist tries to understand why September, despite his “impeccable direction,” has had a bad reception in the United States. Allen’s answers are reduced (with his complicity) to a minimum or were cut in the editing process. This iconoclastic interview suggests that Allen is now an icon. In 1989, when Crimes and Misdemeanors has just been released in Paris, Martin Landau suggests on TF1 that Allen should be classified as a “historical monument”!

More seriously, the best cultural program in these years, Bouillon de culture, hosted by Bernard Pivot, an iconic figure of French television, pays tribute to Allen. In 1992, Umberto Eco offers the French audience a semiotic analysis of the hold-up sequence in Take the Money and Run, praising Allen’s wit and subtlety. This recognition by a prominent intellectual is confirmed three years later when Pivot devotes the whole of his show to Allen. The main guests are Roger Dadoun, a famous psychoanalyst who speaks of the emphasis on sex in Allen’s cinema, and Charlotte Rampling, who evokes her collaboration with Allen on Stardust Memories. After having praised her “erotic voice,” “Woody” comments on his last film, Bullets Over Broadway, and explains how he works with his actors, allowing them to change his dialogue, which is not “sacred.” Allen also admits that the existence or nonexistence of God is the “central question of life.” Among his answers to Pivot’s “questionnaire,” he confesses that he might like to be reincarnated as a sponge.

The peak of Allen’s media recognition is reached in 1998 when he is again the guest of honor while Deconstructing Harry is praised by critics. He is confronted with mediatized intellectuals – a writer, François Weyergans; Philippe Sollers, founder of Tel Quel, a thinker and novelist, and Julia Kristeva, a theoretician of literature and psychonanalyst. Kristeva considers Allen “living publicity” for psychoanalysis, though she regrets that self-knowledge is in decline. Sollers notes that Allen invents truths while he gives the impression of stealing them and Weyergans evokes the interaction between the writer’s private life and his protagonists, citing in particular Harry Block of Deconstructing Harry.

Since that landmark broadcast, Allen has regularly appeared on French television. A special issue on Allen of The South Bank Show (1978), a famous British program,³ was broadcast in Cinéma de poche. An interview with his editor Susan Morse was shown in 1996 (Arte Channel). Allen has been part of the French cultural landscape for over 40 years; he is a familiar figure, admired by French filmmakers like Patrice Leconte. In 2002, Allen was a guest of honour at the Cannes film festival, where he was awarded the Palm of Palms for his career, an award only given previously to Ingmar Bergman. Among his latest films, Match Point was favorably received in Cannes, together with Allen’s new muse, Scarlett Johansson; both of them walked on the celebrated red carpet. In 2008, French minister of culture Christine Albanel welcomed Allen, encouraging him to shoot a film in France. After a trilogy set in London and one film shot in Spain, Allen has finally made his film set in France, before moving on to Rome for his next production.

This overview shows the extent of Allen’s popularity in France, but his close relation to French cinema is also noticeable in his films.

Allen and French Cinema

In the various interviews given for French or US newspapers or magazines, Allen regularly cites, along with famous European directors like Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni, and Bunuel, French directors whose films he liked to watch as a young film buff. Among these, Jean Renoir is regularly quoted as well as Truffaut, Resnais, and Godard.

Renoir’s films are sometimes alluded to in Allen’s films. In Annie Hall, one guest at the party in Beverly Hills claims that Renoir’s Grand Illusion is “great when you are high.” In Manhattan, Ike quotes the film as a great movie that he sees “every time it’s on television.” Later, Tracy will leave a message for him to watch the film, but he never returns her call. Apart from these half-serious, half-playful references, there is a clear link between Renoir and Allen that was first explored by Nancy Pogel (1987), who wrote a perceptive analysis of Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, pointing out links with Renoir. Allen’s film also shares similarities with Picnic on the Grass (1959). Etienne Alexis (Paul Meurisse) is a great biologist and potential president of United Europe, about to be married to a German countess who leads the Intereuropean Movement of Women’s Scouts. He strongly advocates scientific progress and is in favour of artificial insemination. The setting up of a ritualized public picnic is jeopardized by the intervention of a strange shepherd, a satyr-like or Pan-like figure who, thanks to his flute, triggers a tempestuous wind which blows away people, but also generates sexual desire and leads to a quasi-orgiastic unleashing of instincts. While Alexis and his fiancée are separated, the professor is attracted by a young peasant woman, Nénette (Catherine Rouvel), an incarnation of natural and sensual femininity who could have figured in Auguste Renoir’s paintings. After overcoming many obstacles (the collusion between politicians and pharmaceutic trusts), Alexis discards the military-oriented countess, chooses Nénette, who carries his child, repudiates parthenogenesis, and confesses that: “Happiness may be submission to the natural order.” The film is famous for its celebration of nature and sexual love. A montage sequence accompanied by the lyrical score of Kosma shows, as a prelude to the seduction scene, a series of beautifully lit shots on flowing water, aquatic plants floating like women’s hair, close shots of flowers and insects (a close-up of a bee as symbol of vital energy and spirituality).

The discourses of the works are quite different. Renoir’s film is more ambitious, far-reaching, and polemical. Totally anchored in the sociopolitical and scientific context of its moment of production, the late 1950s, it evokes European politics, nuclear fear, and medical progress and uses the new television medium, adopting at times a pseudo-documentary approach. Allen’s film is a period piece set at the turn of the century, less concerned with actual political and scientific issues, more comedy-oriented even if there are some dramatic elements. It also favours illusion and magic, two of Allen’s favourite topics. However, the links are unmistakable. Alexis may be compared with Leopold, also presented as a prominent intellectual (philosopher, art critic, political theorist, outspoken pacifist) and a rationalist who claims: “Ghosts, little spirits or pixies, I don’t believe in them.” Leopold, as pompous and self-infatuated as Alexis, undergoes a similar evolution. He discards his fiancée, Ariel (Farrow), and falls for Dulcy, a more sensual nurse. Moreover, he regresses to a more primitive, barbaric stage and dreams of being a “Neanderthal hunting his enemies with primitive weapons.” Having wounded Maxwell, his rival, with an arrow, he exclaims: “I have drawn blood, who am I?” and rushes on Dulcy, tearing off her clothes and having “savage” sex with her. The outcome is different in Midsummer, however.

Leopold dies and turns into one of those spirits hovering in the forest, “having passed away at the height of lovemaking.” In Allen’s film, Andrew is a crackpot inventor who has devised a spirit box, another kind of magic trick, but, like the Renoir character, he plays the flute. Allen tries (with the help of Mendelssohn) to be as lyrical and poetic as Renoir. He offers as well a montage sequence of natural scenes (an unusual choice for him): shots of trees, grass and various plants, swans on a pond, flowing water, various flowers and animals (a rabbit, a duck, a tortoise, a deer), expressing with a touch of irony an idealized view of nature. More convincing is the impressionistic treatment of light and colour, another link with Renoir, with echoes of Manet’s Déjeûner sur l’herbe and Monet. Both films exploit the voyeur motif. Alexis tries to turn away from the vision of Nénette’s naked body, but he can’t help peeping, while Allen’s characters constantly watch each other, using at times a spyglass, but also looking at the images projected by the spirit box. The spyglass motif establishes also a link with Renoir’s Rules of the Game, in which Christine de La Chesnaye, watching the landscape with binoculars, catches her husband the Marquis kissing Geneviève, his mistress. In Allen’s film, Leopold watches Andrew kiss Ariel. Both films play with the suicide motif. Jurieu tries to kill himself by crashing his car, while Maxwell shoots himself, and Andrew is tempted to use a gun against himself and is saved by Adrian’s arrival. Pogel compares Jurieu to Andrew, both being associated with flying. Finally, the jealousy and revenge motif is present in both films. Leopold pursues Andrew but wounds Maxwell by mistake while, in Renoir’s movie, because of a complex game of appearances and confused identities, the jealous Schumacher shoots Jurieu, mistaking him for Octave (he wears his coat) whom he thinks has an affair with his wife Lisette (actually, Christine wearing Lisette’s cape). The end of Renoir’s film is tragic (anticipating the war) while Allen’s is lighthearted and comedic, Leopold’s death notwithstanding. Pogel traces the link with a third Renoir film, A Day in the Country, highlighting “the problem of missed opportunities and time’s passing” (1987: 160) and quoting from André Bazin, who stresses the conflict between the Appolonian and the Dionysian worlds which are at the center of Renoir’s film (and Allen’s).

Thus, though it has its own charms and merits, Allen’s film is clearly influenced by Renoir (it is also indebted to Bergman and Shakespeare). As Pogel states:

A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy alludes to the style and themes of Renoir’s films mimicking not only impressionnistic techniques and compositions generally, but imitating specific Renoir scenes . . . both Allen and Renoir explore aesthetic conflicts that concerned the impressionist painters” (1987: 160–161).

If Allen admires Renoir’s work and pays him tribute, he probably has more affinities with French filmmakers of his own generation, those of the Nouvelle Vague.

Truffaut, Godard, and Others

Truffaut is often quoted by Allen as one of his favourite French directors. In Play It Again, Sam, Allan Felix invites Linda to see the new Truffaut film (Two English Girls), but this is only a passing reference with no quotation from the film (in the play, they watch a Godard film). In a documentary on Truffaut by Anne Andreu (Truffaut, une autobiographie, Arte France and INA prod 2005), Allen recalls meeting him at a dinner party, stating: “He was one of the luminaries of the cinema and one of the inspirations for my generation. Antonioni, Kurosawa, Bunuel – among these great giants was Truffaut, a fresh, original and personal filmmaker.” Allen enjoyed Four Hundred Blows and Day for Night, of which we can find echoes in Stardust Memories and more generally in Allen’s self-reflexive approach to filmmaking. When Truffaut says: “Films are more harmonious than life, there are no traffic jams in films, no time lost, films move forward like trains in the night” (Andreu), the reader might be reminded of Allen or his character, Harry Block, who functions better in art than in life, or of Alvy Singer, who transforms the failure of his affair with Annie into a happy ending in the play that is adapted from his experience. Both artists are interested in love relationships (and the difficulties inherent to them). There is a kinship in certain situations – for example, in the love triangle in Jules et Jim and Two English Girls can be found in Manhattan and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Both Truffaut and Allen are obsessed with death and both filmically project a positive view of prostitutes. Like Truffaut, Allen explores childhood and memory, deals with family-related issues; both are film buffs, constantly quoting from other works. In Stolen Kisses and Love on the Run, Truffaut exploits the motif of the writer borrowing from the life of others. Antoine Doinel (J.P. Léaud) bases his first novel, Les salades de l’amour, on his own childhood and his affairs with various women, including his present wife Christine (Claude Jade) who, however, refuses to read the book, claiming: “I don’t like this idea of relating one’s youth, criticizing one’s parents, soiling them. A work of art can’t be a settling of accounts.” This recalls, in Manhattan, Ike’s complaint about his former wife Jill (Meryl Streep) exploiting their failed love life in a novel which cries revenge, and also Harry Block, who is accused by his former mistress of being a “fucking black magician” turning “everyone’s suffering into gold, literary gold.” Deconstructing Harry, though mostly a rewriting of Wild Strawberries, also pays tribute to Truffaut, featuring Harvey Stern, a fictional counterpart of young Harry, as a shoe salesman obsessed with women and a Japanese prostitute who reminds the viewer of Kyoko, Doinel’s lover in Bed and Board. As in Truffaut’s films, life is vampirized by art.

As regards filmic form, Allen uses similar devices to Truffaut’s: narrative voiceover, film within the film, address to the camera (the end of Four Hundred Blows, the beginning of Annie Hall and Whatever Works).

These devices are also used by Godard, whose relation with Allen is more complex and ambivalent. Their relationship started in 1986, when Godard was preparing his version of King Lear and wished Allen to play a part. Allen accepted under the condition that Godard would come to New York in order to discuss the project. Godard took advantage of his visit (April 1986) to shoot a half-hour documentary entitled Meetin’ WA, coproduced by Cannes festival.

Allen finally accepted Godard’s proposal, but his part in King Lear is small. He appears towards the end (after the title “the end”), impersonating a modernized Shakespearean fool, a “professor” called, ironically, Mr Alien, who wears a Picasso T-shirt. While two characters are literally buried in rolls of film, Woody appears in the editing room, as a kind of parodic master editor. He works on some clips, trying to sew (“edit”) them with a thread and a needle. We actually don’t see his face but only his hands in close shot manipulating the film while Godard comments on his gestures in a rather sententious tone, expressing some of his views on the editing process which he links with time: “In editing, one holds in one’s hands physically the past, the present and the future. It is the only place . . . One knows the beginning and the end.” Then, Mr Alien, filmed in profile, recites the beginning of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets (no. 60) while Godard speaks Lear’s famous lines (“so young and so untender”) but also Cordelia’s (“so young my lord, and true”). This scene is rather poignant and the film holds many beautiful moments and is not so iconoclastic and absurd as it first seems. Allen commented on this uncanny experience: “He reminded me of Groucho Marx playing Rufus T. Firefly, the great genius no one dares contradict. I did a lot of the things he asked me to do that couldn’t look anything but foolish on the screen. But . . . then, he’s Godard” (McCann 1990: 196).

Meetin’ WA was screened at Cannes festival in 1986 together with Hannah and Her Sisters. It is revealing of the ambivalent relationship that exists between Godard and Allen. The film opens with Rhapsody in Blue and a question by Godard in voiceover: “What was his [Allen’s] song?” Godard structures the film using the titles devised in Hannah. He asks him about his use of titles, which he sees as a cinematic device while Allen thinks it is literary. Godard uses puns: “Hannah Karenine,” “Staline Loves Ski” (Stanislavski is the name of Holly’s catering company), the title “Flash Gordon” (a comic strip hero) introduces jokingly Allen’s comparison between Gordon Willis, who prefers simple cuts and Carlo Di Palma, who favors camera movements. Meanwhile, Godard widens or narrows the frame on Allen, as a kind of illustration. Then the exchange revolves around the influence of TV. Allen confesses that watching films on TV is a petty experience which badly hurts films. Godard relates movie theatres with freedom, a way to escape from the family, while television is keeping you within the home: “Cinema is linked with the forbidden while TV is allowed and domestic.”

For Godard, the distinction is essential, as it’s well known that, like Fellini, he hates television. Allen admits that it is a mere appliance rather than an art form and he does satirize television mores in his films. Godard then asks Allen, “Have you got the feeling that it [television] affects your creation?” and uses the metaphor of radioactivity (“cultural rems”) while his cigar smoke invades the room. Showing the montage sequence of New York buildings in Hannah, Godard slyly suggests that Allen shot the scene in the fast way television has to cover an event, a house or a war (a still of a war film is inserted), obviously being provocative. Taken aback, Allen admits it may be so, but does not explain further. Later, as he confesses liking the editing room “because it’s warm,” Godard replies soberly: “That’s already something!” Knowing his passion for editing (“the moment when it’s not over and you still have a chance” as he states in the film), Godard may have been disappointed by Allen’s remark. The last title, “Lucky I Ran into You” is accompanied by another pun, “Lucky Jean-Luc,” a reference to a famous western comic strip, Lucky Luke, featuring a solitary cowboy hero. While Allen’s voice expresses his views on creation, the image of his face is frozen. Godard gathers his tapes, his books and documents, and states: “the meeting is over.” The noise of the books set on the table is amplified so as to sound like an explosion.

Godard adopts a slightly ironical approach, through the subversion of Allen’s titles, the constant puns, the insertion of stills, and the manipulation of the frame (fade to black, slow motion, freeze, etc.). This flippant attitude can be contrasted with the more serious and respectful approach of André Delvaux, the Belgian director, in To Woody Allen: From Europe with Love (1980). Delvaux offers not only a very enlightening approach to Allen’s filmic methods on the set of Stardust Memories and in the editing room, but he shows real understanding and a kind of complicity in the sensitive portrait he draws of Allen, who appears as passionate about his work (contrary to later interviews), looking behind the camera, discussing framing, lighting, and acting technique, praising his collaborators and speaking highly of his actresses in general, especially Diane Keaton.

Godard was interested in meeting Allen, but he seems more eager to assert his difference, associating himself with nature, woods, and (Swiss) lakes while Allen is linked with the big city, streets, and cars.

Beyond these collaborations, and despite Godard’s stance, there are clear affinities between the cinema of Godard and that of Allen, even if their universes as well as their approaches to cinema are quite different. Godard was definitely an influence on Allen’s cinema, but the reverse is not true. They both admire the cinema of Ingmar Bergman, a towering figure. While Allen tries at times to imitate Bergman and quotes him explicitly, Godard wavers between jealousy and fascination.

Like Godard, Allen has a taste for fragmented, self-reflexive narration and the unveiling of the cinematic process. Annie Hall displays many “dysnarrative” devices such as a blurring of space–time continuity (in the schoolroom scene), the coexistence in the same frame of two temporalities, a rather inventive use of split screen (the visit to Annie’s family), the use of subtitles in dialogue to express mental processes, superimposition (the doubling of Annie), the use of cartoons, etc. We should also point out the common use of a voiceover to narrate film events. Voiceover in Allen’s films is not used as in film noir (a confession, such as in Wilder’s Double Indemnity) but is similar to what Godard does in Band of Outsiders where he introduces the protagonists and intermittently comments upon the action. Husbands and Wives uses handheld camera and adopts a documentary style (based on interviews) of the type found in Godard’s films of the 1960s such as Masculin/féminin. In Annie Hall, Allen uses Godardian devices when Alvy Singer asks passersby questions about their love lives. This device is also used by Godard in Band of Outsiders, but is justified by Léaud’s job as interviewer on societal matters. As Eithne O’Neill states: “Regarding broken narrative, the use of the first person, on-screen appearances, out-of-frame antiphrasis and intellectualization, Godard is a sister-soul to Allen.”⁴

Allen also shares with Godard a love of books and literary references. In a number of Godard’s movies, books are shown on screen and characters read passages from them. In Breathless, Patricia (Jean Seberg) reads a passage from Faulkner’s Wild Palms, but other writers (Rilke, Maurice Sachs) are quoted, book titles being often associated with the characters’ fates. Pierrot le Fou starts with a long sequence with Ferdinand buying books and reading aloud extracts from a study on Velasquez. In Allen’s movies, books are also part of the setting. Alvy Singer comments on books on death in Annie Hall and he divides them with Annie when they split up. In Hannah, Elliott shares with Lee a love of E.E. Cummings’ poetry. Both Godard and Allen also quote films verbally and/or visually or refer to them by means of posters, photographs, billboards, etc. In Breathless Godard alludes to Hollywood film noir and in particular to films featuring Humphrey Bogart – The Maltese Falcon, The Harder they Fall, etc. Michel Poiccard (Belmondo), an admirer of Bogart, imitates his hero, passing his finger over his lips, adopting his casual attitude with women. In a similar way, in Play it Again, Sam, Allan Felix twists his lips and shows his teeth in a caricature of Bogart’s acting style. He later mimics his voice and tries to model his attitude on him. While Bogart remains a mere icon in Godard’s film, he features as a ghostly presence and gives advice to Allan, helping him to seduce Diane Keaton. At the end, Felix has no longer need of his mentor while Godard’s hero imitates Bogart, passing his finger on his lips as he dies.

Like Godard, Allen has recourse to jump cuts. In Stardust Memories, he uses a staccato rhythm to suggest the mental illness of Dorrie (Rampling) by means of a series of erratic close-ups of her distraught face looking at the camera. He will again use this device in Deconstructing Harry to contrast the fluidity of fiction as opposed to the chaotic reality of Harry’s life, illustrated in the opening scene by the repetition of Judy Davis’s arrival at his house. The look at the camera is used in an even more transgressive way in The Purple Rose of Cairo when Tom Baxter addresses Cecilia. Belmondo’s famous apostrophe to the spectator in Breathless (“If you don’t like the seaside, if you don’t like the mountains, if you don’t like the city, go fuck yourself!”) turns into a dialogue between a “real” and a fictional character.

Both Godard and Allen like to show the projecting apparatus (films within the film). In My Life to Live, Nana (Anna Karina), the young prostitute, is moved to tears when viewing the sequence of Joan of Arc’s death in Carl Dreyer’s film. Images of her face alternate with close-ups of the actress, Maria Falconetti, impersonating the French heroine and martyr. In a similar way, although the emotional impact is different, Allen’s characters (Alvy Singer, Cliff Stern, Cecilia) are immersed affectively in the films they watch. Both Godard and Allen make their fiction interact with the film within the film. In Masculin/féminin, the three young people go to the movies and watch a Swedish erotic film. They are both excited and repelled by the crude and violent sex on screen, and Godard comments on their feelings in voiceover. However, the film is not a genuine Swedish film, but a pastiche made up by Godard with one of Bergman’s actors and a Swedish model. In a similar way, Allen likes to use pastiche, as is illustrated in Zelig with the extracts of The Changing Man, a fictional Hollywood romanticized version of Zelig’s story, and, of course, in The Purple Rose of Cairo with the eponymous black and white film watched compulsively by Cecilia at the Jewel.

Allen has also at times a Godardian way of composing the frame. In Manhattan, the sequence announcing the breaking up of the relationship between Ike and Mary recalls a similar scene in Breathless, the moment when Michel and Patricia find it difficult to communicate. Godard films the scene mostly as a sequence shot. The characters are separated, each in his own space, part of the wall serving as an obstacle. Their discourses, akin to monologues, set them apart. The camera is constantly moving, mostly following Patricia’s movements through the room while Michel remains offscreen except at the end of the scene, when he occupies the frame. This scene mostly stresses separation and a sense of growing estrangement. In Manhattan, a comparable mood is created. The frame is divided and composition enhances its edges, emptying the centre. Ike and Mary work in separate spaces and they communicate verbally through open doors, never looking at each other. The shots are static and show, in shot reverse shot, the two characters. In the left part of the frame, Ike is seen through a half-opened door, a portion of space separating him from Mary typing on the right part, close to the edge. The grey mass of the wall centre frame arrests the spectator’s look but has also a symbolic function. Mary is enclosed in her own sphere, her body inscribed in a perfect square (a frame within the frame), a geometric space akin to a prison cell. The sound of the typewriter covers Ike’s voice, reinforcing the idea of separation and lack of communication.

This analysis suggests that Godard has probably been an influence on Allen, and/or that they have certain affinities. However, the parallel should not be pushed too far. They have developed their art in different directions, as their careers demonstrate. Godard has had several phases, including a militant one, away from the commercial production system. He has gone back to that system (with Every Man for Himself), but most of the time with rather experimental and demanding films. Allen has kept to the same kind of system, with some variations. He has also gradually come back to a more Hollywoodian, less experimental form of cinema, playing upon generic conventions (film noir, musical, remarriage comedy) in inventive ways.

Allen has fewer affinities with Resnais, though his Shadows and Fog is a tribute to Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955), whose coding Allen also takes up in Zelig, where color signifies present time while the “historical compilation in past tense is marked by black-and-white cinematography on grainy, aged film stock” (Pogel 1987: 178). Allen never quotes Resnais, but, in Annie Hall, he twice quotes The Sorrow and the Pity by Marcel Ophüls, a French documentary filmmaker he admires a lot. He first shows (just after the McLuhan episode) the opening credit with the voiceover stating: “the German army occupies Paris.” After the film, Alvy and Annie comment. Alvy jokes about the courageous “résistants” who have to listen to Maurice Chevalier (a French icon with a Hollywood career), while Annie confesses that the film makes her feel guilty. The second clip takes place after Annie’s cabaret success while Alvy is trying to avoid going to a party with Tony Lacey (Paul Simon) and “mellow” people. It shows images of the exodus of French people with a propagandist comment in a German voiceover: “The Jewish warmongers and Parisian plutocrats try to flee with their gold.” There is at the end a third verbal and visual reference when Alvy’s voiceover tells us that Annie “dragged” her new boyfriend to Night and Fog while we see a shot of the movie theatre. This insistent reference is a way for Allen to evoke anti-Semitism and more generally the enslaving of thought, but it is also used to humorous ends. Ophüls in The Trouble We′ve Seen (1994) pays tribute to Allen, showing the opening of Annie Hall as he comments on his own film: “I shall try to start my film, as years ago, my good friend Woody Allen started Annie Hall, you see, with a close up like that” (qtd. in Lowy 2008: 158, my translation). Later, Ophüls shows himself on a Venetian Grand canal background as he improvises a commentary like Allen in Manhattan (while the setting evokes Sontag’s interview in Zelig as she is filmed in Venice).

Aspects of Allen’s Critical Reception in France

Several books on Allen have been published in France, some of them offering in-depth analysis of his work, others being collections of interviews or essays on various topics. Most of these adopt a diachronic or thematic approach and few are concerned with the formal, stylistic aspects of his cinema. The main concerns are his comic art, his relations with women (sexual and otherwise), his “philosophy,” his relation to psychoanalysis, etc. There have been quite a number of articles published in academic journals, usually more concerned with the form of the films. Rather than discussing those books and articles, I shall give a brief outline of the critical reception through the articles and interviews published in two prominent film magazines, Les cahiers du cinéma and Positif. Almost from the outset, the latter has been the staunchest advocate of Allen’s cinema, publishing 12 interviews. The publication (2005) in book form of most of the essays about and interviews of Allen is revealing of his enduring reputation with the magazine, which has put him on its cover seven times. However, it took some years for Allen to establish his reputation at Cahiers. The early (short) articles are rather negative, although acknowledging some strong points. They denounce the “confusing and pretentious” mise en scene of Bananas (143, Oct. 1972), the solipsistic attitude of Allen as actor in Play It Again, Sam (148, Mar. 1973), the shortcomings of Allen as director and his dependence on television style in Sleeper (161, Sept. 1974).

The first article in Cahiers by Serge Daney is an insightful piece on Annie Hall, praising the strength and cohesion of the script and the subtle way Allen makes use of Diane Keaton’s specific brand of comedy, giving her free rein. The same film is praised in Positif by Robert Benayoun (1977), who established himself as the staunchest French advocate of the director. He is the true discoverer of Allen, whom he sees as the first intellectual comedian (using his Jewish culture as raw material) and the creator of the first adult comic character (Benayoun 1985: 42). He stresses the singularity of his writing, comparing him with artists like Chaplin and Jerry Lewis and designating him as “a true heir” of the Marx Brothers. He emphasizes his pessimism, his obsession with death and suicide and his “gallows humour.” As Eithne O’Neill (1975) states:

In his article on Love and Death (Nov. 1975), described as the “first film comedy on the serious subject of our last end,” Benayoun stresses the then unique blend in cinema of Angst and fun. A unique comic thrust, the play on intimate relations and verbal virtuosity combine with the fear of failure.”

Since then there has been a steady flow of (generally favorable) articles in Positif by prominent critics (Michel Ciment, Jean-Loup Bourget, and Vincent Amiel). Most praise Allen’s qualities: the fluidity of his narratives, the ease with which he sets a mood and defines characters, his comic efficacy. These turn at times to criticism as Allen is considered as simply using his mastery and offering a familiar universe without much surprise. While Stardust Memories is stigmatized by Olivier Assayas (1981) for its “sourness” and for making fun of its spectators, while Nicolas Saada (1990) criticizes Allen for making films on cinema to justify his auteur status, Zelig is praised in both magazines for its technical achievements, its originality and the depth of the central chameleon metaphor. Crimes and Misdemeanors and Husbands and Wives are considered as major achievements. Cahiers 462 (Dec. 1992) devotes two articles (and its front cover) to Husbands and Wives, presenting it as a “film somme,” the “most important of its enduring, resilient author.” It completes its section on Allen with an interview with the director and one with Judy Davis. Meanwhile, Positif no. 444 (Feb. 1998) on the occasion of the release of Deconstructing Harry devotes 33 pages (one-third of the magazine) to Allen. The “dossier” contains two articles on Harry, a six-page interview with the director, a very insightful article by Vincent Amiel on Allen’s ghosts (reprinted in Valens 2008: 148–149), and a well-documented study of Allen and psychiatry. Allen would again make the cover of Positif no. 456 (Celebrity), no. 496 (Hollywood Ending), and most recently of no. 596 (You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger).

Cahiers is less generous, at times relegating Allen’s films to the “other films” section. It is also more critical. September is seen as seductive, but superficial and derivative (of Bergman and Ozu!), Radio Days is seen (wrongly) as a failure, the mise-en-scène of Alice is seen as “crude mechanics,” Shadows and Fog is “seductive” but “soft.” Allen is asked to “focus his creative energy, put himself into danger instead of hatching products of good artistic and cultural standard.” In 1998, Cahiers devoted for the first time two articles to an Allen film, Deconstructing Harry, both by prominent critics (Serge Toubiana and Antoine de Baecque) and both appreciative. De Baecque likes the fact that theory may find a technical incarnation on screen (the inability to “focus”). On the other hand, Celebrity and Melinda and Melinda are only allowed a short “note.” Since then, Allen’s films have been chronicled regularly, usually in the section called “Cahier critique.” Anything Else is praised for its melancholy, but also for its rage. According to Baptiste Piegay: “Filming is again linked with a real creative drive, not only routine” (583, Oct. 2003). The British trilogy is rather well received, though Scoop is considered as a minor effort. Allen “reinvents himself” in Match Point, “a tense, inexorably hard film, closer to opera than to jazz” (605, Oct. 2005). Cassandra’s Dream, focusing on chance, guilt, and destiny, is also praised for its narrative mastery and biting irony. The last three films (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Whatever Works, and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger) offer no real surprise for the magazine. Though Allen is now fully recognized in Cahiers, he has never been given the same privileged status as he is in Positif.

Among the questions often raised is that of Allen’s auteur status. While his many qualities are acknowledged, the constant references to great American comedians and to major European filmmakers (Bergman, Fellini), the taste for quotation, parody, pastiche, are sometimes seen as an erasure of his artistic personality rather than a part of it. While Positif sees boldness in the constant playing upon generic conventions, Cahiers criticizes a certain predictable character and a lack of surprise and invention. Allen is even at times denied a true sense of “cinema” because he sacrifices his characters to the necessities of the script. As Serge Daney, commenting on Crimes and Misdemeanors points out:

“cinema” never plays its game, its autonomy. There is never a shot without characters, of landscapes, of things. Just once, the camera moves from Landau to the eyes of the dead woman (empty, opening on nothing) (Daney 1993: 243–244).

This seems excessive, but it reveals a kind of “reticence” among French critics. Jean-Claude Biette in “Qu’est-ce qu’un cinéaste?” distinguishes between “réalisateur,” “metteur en scène,” “cinéaste,” and “auteur” (1996: 5). While the first label is neutral and applies to all, “metteur en scène” supposes actors and space (as in theatre). “Cinéaste” evokes some “obscure demiurgy” concerned with shots and their organic arrangement while “auteur” supposes that the artist occupies a “position of responsibility” in filmic production and suggests an individualist stance which aims at “formulating a truth or a series of personal truths.” For Biette, Allen is only an “aristocratic avatar of television functionality,” and he would deny him the status of “cinéaste” and auteur, though Allen definitely deserves that label, as his 2011 film attests.

The project of Midnight in Paris was carried out during the summer of 2010, when Allen shot the film with an international cast (Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates), featuring French stars like Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux, Gad Elmale, and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, a former top model and singer and the French president’s wife. The film starts with a montage sequence (reminiscent of the opening of Manhattan) of Paris highlights (the Eiffel Tower, Sacré-Cœur, Montmartre, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs-Elysées, the Moulin Rouge, the Café de Flore). Sydney Bechet’s warm saxophone enhances the beauty of Darius Khonji’s images. Gil Pender (Wilson) is a successful Hollywood screenwriter who is nostalgic for the 1920s and longs to live in Paris and be a genuine novelist. He is about to marry Inez, his beautiful but authoritative fiancée. One night, as he gets lost in the Latin Quarter, close to the Montagne Ste Geneviève, he is taken back to the more glamorous and exciting Paris of the 1920s by means of an old Peugeot roadster, through some kind of time warp or magic trick. Revellers invite him to a party, where he meets, his eyes dazed and mouth gaping, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, and, later in another place, Ernest Hemingway. At first incredulous, or wondering if he has gone mad, he finally accepts his predicament and makes the most of it night after night, meeting Picasso, Matisse, Bunuel, Dali, and Man Ray. He also falls in love with Adriana, a beautiful muse and lover for many artists (Picasso, Braque, Modigliani) and starts rewriting his novel, mentored by no less than Gertrude Stein. He gradually realizes that he and Inez are not meant for each other.

Allen plays very explicitly with clichés, trying to recapture the mood of this era as it is construed in our collective imagination. Most of these famous artists are rather idealized, even glamorized or at times slightly caricatured (Dali and his “rhinoceros” obsession). However, there are also details taken (or adapted) from reality. Hemingway may be different from the true writer whom Allen describes as “a bully brawling boor,” yet his lines evoke clearly some of the writer’s passions and obsessions (boxing, big game hunting, Africa, courage and fear, masculinity), and there are clear allusions both to his war experience and his works (A Farewell to Arms, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”). In the same way, Zelda’s suicidal impulses and Gertrude Stein’s status and role in this community of artists are well rendered. Allen even has Gil provide Buñuel with an idea for a film which will become The Exterminating Angel. With regard to places, we could expect Polidor or the Moulin Rouge or Maxim’s, but it’s more surprising to be offered the uncanny decor of Deyrolle, a famous taxidermist shop. This shows that Woody Allen knows Paris beyond the touristy clichés and images that he joyfully stages with a very fluid mise-en-scène, lavish sets, and warm colours.

The film contrasts different images of Paris. The glorious, almost legendary French capital of the past hosting the whole artistic avant-garde is pitted against the contemporary Paris, still beautiful and attractive (especially on a grey sky, rainy day), but whose authenticity is partly threatened by both mass and luxury tourism (represented by Inez’s conservative “Tea Party” parents). However, though the character of Paul, the pedantic professor, is constantly made fun of, it’s he who (ironically) utters from the outset the ultimate truth, denouncing Gil’s nostalgic streak as a form of regressive romanticism and a denial of reality. Rather than staying with Adriana while they are “passing through” another golden era, the belle epoque of the 1890s, where they meet Lautrec, Degas, and Gauguin (who are nostalgic for the Renaissance), Gil chooses to return to contemporary Paris. He makes the choice of living in the present (and not alternative) reality, but according to values that may have been inspired to him by the tutelary figures he has just met. Allen shows that the mythical past is ultimately inaccessible; he exposes the vanity of illusions and fantasies and suggests we should stay in the “here-and-now” without repudiating the past (and our nostalgia for it). The happy ending associates reality (Gabrielle, the seductive brocanteuse) with a genuine artistic quest. Gil stays in Paris in order to write, like Hemingway and others. The only way to revive a mythical past is to recreate it in the present.

Midnight in Paris is the acme of Allen’s celebration of French history and culture. Allen may never provide a truly documentary account of Paris and Parisian life. His interest lies elsewhere, in the creation of a magnified, romanticized, selected, and stylized image, discarding any realistic approach. His Paris is closer to the cinematic city of Stanley Donen (An American in Paris) or Vincente Minnelli (Gigi) than to daily reality. Allen has managed, thanks to his spirited and witty conjuring up of literary and artistic legendary figures, to capture better than in Everyone Says I Love You the magic spirit of the “ville lumière,” fraught with history, memories, and fantasms.

In France, Woody Allen is still considered as one of the most emblematic American “cinéastes” because of the specificity of his fictional universe and his enduring career, but he is also celebrated for his creative autonomy and independence from the Hollywood machine. This reputation, attested to by the bulk of interviews, documentaries, and critical output, is partly based on misunderstanding. Allen (and his characters) is seen as an intellectual, while he regularly denies that label, pretending it is a misidentification. There is still some confusion between his filmic persona and his biography, though it tends to be toned down because he appears less often in his films. Despite artistic recognition, some influential critics still deny him access to the pantheon of “auteurs.” Midnight in Paris is criticized in Cahiers du cinéma (668, June 2011) for its shallowness and “monstrous parade of cameos,” while Positif is rather enthusiastic. France has been essential in shaping the reputation of Allen as “cinéaste” and the most European of contemporary American filmmakers has also benefited from the heritage of French cinema. Each new Allen opus is eagerly awaited in France and expected to provide some inventive, sparkling combination of light and dark comedy with a satirical or nostalgic tinge and often a reflexion on creative processes, the Allen touch. There are many pleasurable moments from his films (lighthearted, hilarious, lyrical, poetic, even tragic) that remain imprinted in our memories and justify our lasting admiration.

1 This famous café, a French institution, was frequented by artists and writers such as Picasso, Prévert, Hemingway, Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. Its mention gives an intellectual touch to the tourist trip.

2 This restaurant is one of Allen’s regular haunts in Paris in which he often dines and also where he meets the press.

3 This show, produced by novelist Melvyn Bragg, is devoted to portraits of personalities of the international artistic world.

4 Author’s email interview with O’Neill (Feb. 1, 2011). O’Neill has long been part of the editorial board of Positif.