Director: Woody Allen
Woody Allen has written and directed a film every year since 1981. It's an absolutely amazing output; I can't think of anyone with a body of work even close to as all-encompassing as Allen's. Yet his career disappoints me. His films are like jazz performances of the same song - sure, all the notes and beats won't be the same on each performance, but they won't be all that different either. The underlying themes remain the same.
Husbands and Wives should be a tour de force, a career-defining film. Allen is at his most inventive with camera work - the camera swirls around people's New York City apartments, sometimes focusing on the person who's not talking. Allen experiments with jump cutting as well, using that to great effect. There's extended monologues where the camera stays focused on the person speaking for the entire time. It's really great stuff, and would be greater if I hadn't seen most of Allen's 'best work'.
I'm currently reading the book Truffaut/Hitchcock which is merely an interview of Alfred Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut. It's fascinating stuff. Hitchcock says that too many directors rely on dialogue to get their point across. Film is an inherently visual medium, he says, and too often directors forget that. Allen has made so many almost great films, but he lards them up with narration or other fourth-wall breaking devices that allow him to get all his points across. In Husbands and Wives, for instance, there's several scenes where it appears that the characters are either in therapy or being interviewed for a television show. Maybe there just isn't a good visual way to bring across the way that people convince themselves to either accept their lot in life or seek something different; maybe these people have to talk into the camera to really get a sense of how fleeting their feelings are. I don't know. Part of me just wishes that Allen had only made 15 films over the last 29 years - I think his output would be far stronger.
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