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Book SynopsisFrom What''s Up, Tiger Lily? to Match Point, Woody Allen''s work has generated substantial interest among scholars and professionals who have written extensively about the director. In The Films of Woody Allen: Critical Essays, Charles L.P. Silet brings together two-dozen scholarly articles that address the core of Allen''s work from a variety of cultural and theoretical perspectives. With a special emphasis on his films of the 1980s, this collection includes both general essays that examine various themes and issues encompassed in Allen''s repertoire, as well as discussions that focus on one or two specific films. General essays explore Allen''s Jewish background as a religious and cultural facet, his apparent love affair with New York City, and his relation to various strains of humor_particularly American film humor, but also Allen''s broad use of such traditional comic tropes as irony and parody. The essays on individual films include examinations of some of Allen''s most signifi
Trade Review...these essays are exhilarating because of sharp and loving insights...laugh-out-loud cheerful...The book simply cannot lose....Highly recommended. * CHOICE, Vol. 44, No. 6 (February 2007) *
Twenty-four contributions from film scholars critically examine the cinema of Woody Allen. Some essays are general in scope, examining larger themes and issues in Allen's films, while others focus on one or two of his more significant works. The emphasis is on films of the 1980s. The essays were previously published in various journals. Editor Silet is emeritus professor of English at Iowa State University. * Reference and Research Book News, November 2006 *
Table of ContentsPart 1 Acknowledgments Part 2 Introduction Part 3 Chronology Part 4 Part 1: General Essays Chapter 5 1. Woody Allen's Lovable Anxious Schlemiels Chapter 6 2. Woody Allen's New York Chapter 7 3. The Narrator and the Narrative: The Evolution of Woody Allen's Film Comedies Chapter 8 4. Woody Allen's Theological Imagination Chapter 9 5. Woody Allen's Comic Irony Chapter 10 6. Self-Deprecation and the Jewish Humor of Woody Allen Chapter 11 7. Beyond Parody: Woody Allen in the 1980s Part 12 Part 2: Individual Films Chapter 13 8. Woody Allen and Fantasy: Play It Again, Sam Chapter 14 9. Love and Death and Food: Woody Allen's Comic Use of Gastronomy Chapter 15 10. Powerful Man Gets Pretty Woman: Style Switching in Annie Hall Chapter 16 11. Annie Hall and the Issue of Modernism Chapter 17 12. Autumn Interiors, or the Ladies Eve: Woody Allen's Bergman Complex Chapter 18 13. Woody Allen's Manhattan and the Ethicity of Narrative Chapter 19 14. Ciao, Woody: Stardust Memories Chapter 20 15. Painful Laughter: The Collapse of Humor in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories Chapter 21 16. Mysterious Illnesses of Human Commodities in Woody Allen and Franz Kafka: Zelig Chapter 22 17. Zelig and Contemporary Theory: Meditation on the Chameleon Text Chapter 23 18. Woody's Mild Irish Rose: Broadway Danny Rose Chapter 24 19. Stardust Memories, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and the Tradition of Metafiction Chapter 25 20. Woody Allen's Interiors: The Dark Side of Hannah and Her Sisters Chapter 26 21. The Religion of Radio Days Chapter 27 22. Hlenka Regained: Irony and Ambiguity in the Narrator of Woody Allen's Another Woman Chapter 28 23. Justice and the Withdrawal of God in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors Chapter 29 24. Between Time and Eternity: Theological Notes on Shadows and Fog Part 30 Filmography Part 31 Index Part 32 About the Contributors Part 33 About the Editor
