WOODY ALLEN said Tuesday in Italy that he has “always had a warm and affectionate following in Europe.” He was greeted with applause at a news conference ahead of the weekend premiere at La Scala of Puccini’s comic one-act opera “Gianni Schicchi” with the prolific filmmaker as director. Unlike in Hollywood, the 83-year-old Allen’s acceptance in Europe appears largely untouched by allegations of sexual misconduct that have been revisited in the wake of the MeToo movement. In the United States, Amazon Studios terminated an agreement to distribute his latest film, “A Rainy Day in New York.” The film will be released in the fall across Europe. Two of the film’s stars have said they would donate their salaries to charities fighting sexual abuse. Alongside the La Scala production, a cinema museum in Milan is showing a retrospective of 28 Allen films. After Saturday’s “Gianni Schicchi” premiere, Allen said he plans to travel to San Sebastian, Spain, to work on his next film. The cast includes Christoph Waltz. Allen said that his work “resonates with Europeans in a way that they relate to.” “I know when I started making movies 50 years ago, for whatever reason I always had a very warm and affectionate following in Europe,” he said. “And even when films of mine were not as well received in the United States, always in Europe, they received my films well.” He continued: “Maybe when I grew up, I was an addict for European films, I watched them all the time. Maybe through some process of osmosis my films resonate with Europeans.” Allen’s “Gianni Schicchi,” which he first staged in Los Angeles in 2015, is being performed alongside Salieri’s “First the Music, Then the Words” directed by Grischa Asagaroff. Most of the performers are students from La Scala’s academy. Allen said he staged “Gianni Schicchi” in the neorealist style of 1950s directors like Vittorio de Sica and Federico Fellini — after ideas to make Schicchi a rat among mice or a cigarette among organic produce were rejected. He said he would have preferred a different ending for the opera, based on an incident in Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” which sees the title character condemned to hell for profiting from a ruse.(SD-Agencies) |