Peter J. Bailey
Auteur de The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen
A propos de l'auteur
Peter J. Bailey, professor of English at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York
Œuvres de Peter J. Bailey
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
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Membres
Critiques
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 6
- Membres
- 41
- Popularité
- #363,652
- Évaluation
- 3.5
- Critiques
- 1
- ISBN
- 21
Being nearly 20 years old, the book omits a lot of Allen films and focuses mainly on those he made in the 1990s, yet most of what Bailey says still holds up.
A bigger problem is that being published by a university press (University of Kentucky), the book aims for a cerebral audience. A couple of times Bailey delights in reliving the scene in “Annie Hall” where Marshall McLuhan steps out from behind a movie poster in a theater line to put in place a pompous professor talking about his work. Unfortunately, Bailey too often sounds like the pompous professor.
So many Allen characters, Bailey points out, struggle between the lures of creating lasting art and living a life filled with love, laughs, good food and other common pleasures, as if they were mutually exclusive. The latter is often portrayed as an illusion, or as magic. (Watch “Magic in the Moonlight,” an Allen film made after this book was published.) As Danny Rose says in “Broadway Danny Rose,” "It's important to have some laughs, no question about it, but you got to suffer a little, too. Because otherwise, you miss the whole point of life." Yet another Allen character finds the meaning of life by watching Marx Brothers films.
While Allen is making up his mind, we movie fans can find art and Bergman-style suffering in Allen's films, but also laughs, love and endless magic.… (plus d'informations)