Yesterday, we saw Woody Allen's latest film, Match Point. It had been highly recommended by friends and professional movie critics (the person we went to the theatre with was seeing it for the 2nd time). It's something completely different, we had been led to believe. It's London, not New York. A whole new Woody Allen...Well, it's not. And as someone I went to the screening with pointed out, the plot seems awfully similar to the plot of Woody Allen's earlier Crimes and Misdemeanors. Allen seems to have an obsession with getting away with murder, in addition to a love of social snobbery and hatred of America. This film is not a new Woody Allen, it's the same old Woody Allen--a dirty old man telling a dirty joke--you can almost hear him wheezing: "heh, heh, heh."
Allen thinks he's more profound than Dostoevsky, because Raskolnikov gets caught, and his tennis pro protagonist doesn't. Dostoevysky is making precisely the point that Allen misses. Which means there is no moral to Allen's story, other than Allen is a nasty old man.
The plot seems as well to be some sort of parody of Dreiser's An American Tragedy, made into the stunning Montgomery Clift-Elizabeth Taylor melodrama, A Place in the Sun. But these actors are not Montgomery Clifts or Elizabeth Taylors, either. Scarlett Johansen, who as our movie-going friend noted lookes "two steps from the trailer" is so wooden and lifeless that you don't understand why Allen's protagonist needs to knock her off. We believe she's a bad actress because, well, she is a bad actress. Cold, wooden, and nasty herself.
So, what Allen has done is put nasty people into a nasty situation with nasty results. His London looks just like his Manhattan.
Ick.
All the more icky in comparison to Billy Wilder's The Emperor Waltz which we had just seen on DVD. The contrast couldn't be more acute. Although the plot is similar--Americans in conflict with an aristocratic European environment--the perspectives are completely the opposite. Billy Wilder mocks the European obsession with pedigree and breeding, placing Bing Crosby's romance with the Countess Soltzenberg-Stolzenberg in parallel to the relationship between their pet dogs. Bing's mutt "Buttons" fancies the Countess's poodle, "Sherherazade." It's funny, moving, and wise, with a heartwarming moral about love conquering all.
When the aristocratic Baron orders the vet to "drown the puppies" resulting from the Buttons-Sherherazade love affair, becaue of their polluted bloodline, Bing Crosby rescues them. In Woody Allen's film, the protagonist kills the offspring from his illicit affair. In other words, in a similar situation, Woody Allen's protagonist drowns the puppies.
Blech.
Woody Allen might sneer at its humanity, but The Emperor Waltz is a brilliant film, manifesting the filmmaking genius of Billy Wilder--a genius based on a sense of humanity that Allen totally lacks. Wilder is warm, where Allen is cold.
Wilder made better noir thrillers, too. Not only is Match Point no Emperor Waltz, Match Point is no Double Indemnity, either.
