James Baquet Like many highly placed individuals in the entertainment industry, Woody Allen started in fairly humble jobs, as “just” a comedy writer for television in the 1950s, and as a stand-up comedian in the 60s. Unlike many in that profession, he did not merely “tell jokes.” Instead, he crafted humorous monologues, presenting himself as a woebegone, neurotic intellectual. By the middle of the 1960s he had begun the profession for which he is best-known today: that of filmmaker. His earliest films were largely slapstick, with plenty of old-fashioned corny humor (example: “We fell in love. Well, I fell in love... she just stood there.”) One seldom hears much about these early films, like “Take the Money and Run” and “Bananas”; they’re mainly of interest to film buffs. It is the slightly-later of his over 40 films that most of us still talk about: “Manhattan” (1979); “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986); and perhaps above all, “Annie Hall” (1977). “Manhattan” is a romantic “comedy-drama” about a middle-aged man dating a 17-year-old girl (an idea not too far divorced from Allen’s own life). The actress who plays the girl, incidentally, is the granddaughter of the late American author Ernest Hemingway. As one would expect, the New York borough of Manhattan is in many ways itself a character in the film, showcased to the sound of George Gershwin’s symphonic “Rhapsody in Blue.” In “Hannah and Her Sisters,” the story is bookended by Thanksgiving dinners two years apart. In between, the three titular sisters live and love, with lots of romantic complications. Allen’s character is involved with two of the three sisters, and learns that life is hard to understand, so it should just be enjoyed. Finally, “Annie Hall” is the only one of Allen’s films to win a Best Picture Academy Award. It involves Allen’s character looking back at his relationship with the flamboyant Annie and trying to figure out what went wrong. Allen made many more films, but, though some were successful, none seems to have attained the popular and critical acclaim of these three. Vocabulary Which word above means: 1. speeches delivered by a single speaker 2. a physical kind of comedy in which the actors behave in a silly way 3. started and finished 4. fairly similar 5. praise by professionals 6. people who love movies 7. featured, shown off 8. made carefully 9. sad, and sad-looking 10. one of five divisions of New York City | 