What makes woody allen an auteur

Choosing a movie's title is a major step in the distribution process. As a first contact between films and their prospective audiences, titles induce a certain vision of a movie and its author.

Woody Allen, a most demanding director concerning the translation of his films for export, proves especially punctilious on the matter of titles. His success relies much more on foreign markets than on the domestic circuit and French-speaking audiences are more often than not the key to his box office performance.

His American and French titles are compared here, as well as the linguistic and iconographic changes operated on his films' posters, to illustrate the way chosen to export the director's persona as an original brand in the French-speaking area. His distributors play on the image built by Allen over the years, for he is seen as a true auteur in France. As a result, his French titles are kept the closest possible to the American ones, and his presence, whether as an actor or a director, is always reminded on the promotional material.

These strategies have helped install each of his movies as part of a whole series, so that Allen's work has almost become a genre by itself. This involves a great deal of attention focused on strategies that facilitate positive reception of his films by foreign audiences, among them the French, and choosing his titles for export has become a major step in the process.

The export market has indeed become his main source of profit. It can also explain which assumptions regarding French-speaking audiences may condition these strategies. Translation issues bring to light the diverging reception capacities of American and French audiences.

For they imply, both at home and abroad, different Ideal Spectators—a notion patterned on reception theorist Hans Robert Jauss's Ideal Reader. The Ideal Spectator, as an expectation, is first built up by the author himself and Allen is known to be rather demanding concerning the distribution of his films. This means that altering them in translation becomes a risky process.

Indeed, these titles serve a descriptive function and their translation is constrained by linguistic, cultural, and marketing choices. A French adapter may propose a name but the final word rests with the distributor with Allen's approval , as the title of the French version will condition the first visual and audible perception of the movie by its receiver. For a title fulfills three main functions: identification, 3 content indication and audience appeal, 4 all of which rely upon a mutual cultural understanding between author and addressee.

Kill Bill , Alien , or Twilight are such examples. It also allows for the standardization of marketing campaigns 5 and facilitates the exploitation of by-products on international markets, as can be seen with the Cars and the Toy Story series. And out of the 44 films Allen has written to-date, only 10 titles can be qualified as long ones:. Film Titles: Number of Words. When they do not consist in one or several proper nouns, 10 his titles very often include some compound ones.

Keeping the eponymous title was not a problem, as the first name even conformed to the French spelling. It was not, however, maintained worldwide. In Germany the film is known as Der Stadtneurotiker , The Urban Neurotic , an adaptation which resulted in Allen requiring a personal control over his foreign titles.

The full title thus proved no more self-sufficient and the commentary nearly read like a subtitle. This was done using the same pattern as the nine Jerry Lewis comedies that became a whole series of Jerrys for French spectators, beginning with It's only Money , translated as L'increvable Jerry in The process played on the Hollywood connotation. The black and white image centered on DiCaprio, framed there with a red felt pen, like a paparazzi photograph selected from a contact sheet.

The iconographic choices rested upon the same connotations, usually found in people-focused magazines. As a result, the localization of the poster was very relative. However, it proves an exotic choice once more. The plot takes place in England, so the poster deliberately exploits cultural connotations.

The non-translation of the title fits into a deliberate strategy. The film is funny, involving, and finely-performed, but there's also something inherently disturbing at its core, an unshakable ugliness to the central, age-inappropriate romance between Phoenix and Stone, as the former's worshipful pupil turned obsessive companion turned passionate paramour.

Irrational Man 's most provocative narrative twists and its startlingly conclusive message all revolve around the harmful and downright menacing influence that powerful men exert over impressionable young women, which feels like an unpleasant coincidence that might not have even pronounced itself so explicitly were it not for former stepdaughter Dylan Farrow and the troubling sexual abuse allegations that resurfaced in the form of her harrowing open letter , which The New York Times published in February during the time of Blue Jasmine 's awards-run.

Personally, I stand with Dylan Farrow. But this isn't a piece about trying Allen, who continues to vehemently deny these allegations, even though Farrow's aren't the only claims of questionable behavior. I don't think Allen's sudden string of straight talk is an attempt to detract from what may be, at best, disagreeable, and, at worst, triggering in Irrational Man 's gradually degenerating romantic conceit. Nor does the film feel like a knowing response to the harshest critics of Allen's professional and alleged personal lives, although surely even Allen might have noticed the unusual timing of this specific endeavor, even if the strangely uncanny self-portraiture was initially an unwitting coincidence.

The film, while lifting Allen, however briefly, out of his self-led artistic rut, remains uncomfortable meta-cinema for anyone who has the younger Farrow on the brain, but there's another, comparably stark story at the forefront of the film, this one about a man of once irrefutable glory who decides that the only way to reclaim his vitality and reverse his fate is by taking quick and decisive action, no matter the risks or moral consequences.

Indeed, numerous montages in Irrational Man show us Phoenix's collegiate sad sack looking downright rejuvenated and ready to embrace life by the mere possibility of taking a new course of admittedly lethal action.

We see Phoenix gorging on greasy diner meals, engaging excitedly in his teachings, and shtupping Parker Posey's willing and desirous colleague, all while crafting a cold-blooded murder with a clear head and creativity. For a long while, any and everything seem possible. Allen is a storyteller inextricably linked to his male protagonists and the innermost thoughts, guilts, and insecurities that fuel their onscreen actions.

This bond between character and creator goes a long way in explaining why I can't help but see a certain slice of Phoenix's disillusioned, self-aware academic in this suddenly more venturesome Allen, who is currently embracing a medium he hasn't dabbled in for decades even if he already regrets the decision , getting in front of the camera for both his own projects and others', and speaking publicly and truthfully about his own self-perceived shortcomings as a filmmaker during a period in which many of our oldest masters would start putting together their valedictory efforts and receding from the spotlight, save for the occasional and inevitable AFI or Cecil B.

DeMille Lifetime Achievement Awards. The narcissistic Sally has no problem, when leaving new lover Michael to return to Jack, in getting Judy to do the dirty work. Jack, once his self-delusion about his new partner Sam ends, treats her obnoxiously.

He tells Rain that because it would end badly they should forget it. The situation is a wearier recapitulation of the Sartrean view of the impossibility of romantic relationships. The wretched unhappiness of the characters is striking, even when it is represented with twisted humour. The infrequency with which the word is deployed in the mainstream cinema makes its connotations of anger and venom more distinct.

This position of relativism, of recognition of the plurality of meaning renders the formulation of an ethical stance futile Instead of seeking change his characters are content to stay put or cannot see far enough to effect the right sort of changes.

The fact that we continue to make the same mistakes and fail to learn has ceased to be so harmlessly amusing to Allen. In his film work as well he seems to have backed away from serious inquiry into human nature and is content to take still comical potshots at our foibles — the nouveau-riche Small Time Crooks , , the film industry Hollywood Ending , and of course, the inevitable doom of romantic love.

Love and Death Annie Hall Harry M. Stephen J. Mighty Aphrodite Review by James Berardinelli. Film Directors — Articles on the Internet Several online articles can be found here.

Woody Allen At Yahoo Movies. Similar information to the sites mentioned above but lists some awards — Venice, Berlin film festivals and Academy, Golden Globe and Film Critics Circle awards. Home Great Directors. Issue Endnotes See for example the links to essays at www. See Sam B. Girgus, The Films of Woody Allen , p. Infamous events of the last 15 years include a lawsuit by Allen against his former friend and producer Jean Doumanian, which was eventually settled out of court; his affair with and then marriage to Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his long-term partner Mia Farrow, and allegations by Farrow of sexual abuse of their biological child Dylan.

Time does not permit a more thorough discussion of the particular attributes and merits of these films here but certainly much has been written on them; I am not meaning to gloss them over.

H anding out the Oscar for best director three weeks ago, Emma Stone prefaced the award by suggesting the power and influence of that figure in the film-making process. But these are more than usually troubled times in the film industry, and the assumption that the director is present in every frame becomes problematic once that same director turns out to be a liability. It is one thing separating the art from the artist: reprehensible people frequently make great films, and vice versa.

But how do we square that with the cult of the auteur? If the value of a movie can be attributed to a single film-maker, it becomes that much harder to argue that extracurricular misjudgments — and even crimes — can be expunged from what is on screen. The most notorious cases have been rehearsed too widely to need replaying here in any detail — Roman Polanski raping a year-old girl — after he allegedly gave her quaaludes , then fleeing the US to escape sentencing; Tippi Hedren claiming that Alfred Hitchcock bullied, intimidated and sexually assaulted her during the making of The Birds and Marnie.

The instance of Woody Allen is slightly different: although never charged with molesting his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, the accusations — which he denies — will dog him as long as Farrow herself still insists on his guilt.