Content area
Full Text
The Films of Woody Allen: Critical Essays Charles L. P. Silet, Ed. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2006. xviii + 339 pp. $45/$80
The Films of Woody Allen: Critical Essays is a collection of previously-published essays, mostly written by academics, particularly those in Films Studies, Humanities, and English. The essays were published mainly in the 1980s and early 1990s (the latest is from 2003), and the editor, Charles L. P. Silet, tells us in the introduction that they largely examine Allen's films from the 1980s, "the period many feel is the most significant of Allen's career" (xi), something of an odd statement, given that two of Allen's masterpieces, Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979), were produced in the 1970s, and given the artificiality of breaking down the periods of Allen's work into decades. Silet quickly goes on to note that some of the essays focus on films from the 70s-Love and Death (1975), Annie Hall, Interiors (1978), and Manhattan-and one concerns 1992's Shadows and Fog. Thus, while the volume does examine Allen's most important films prior to the 1990s, and while it does cover many of the most important reoccurring themes in Allen's work, there's no treatment at all of some of the later, better films, such as Bullets Over Broadway (1994), Deconstructing Harry (1997), or Sweet and Lowdown (1999).
The essays range in quality of the writing, coherence...