Not So Strange
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Directed by Woody Allen
Runtime: 98 min.
Theres not a spiritual bone in his body. How could he write books! an exasperated woman says of her loutish son-in-law in Woody Allens You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. The same could be said of Allen, who has yet to show any sign of spiritual sensitivity, only that peculiar New York narcissism that takes pride in claiming its neuroses. Now, in his 30th-odd film, Allen presents another quasi-comic look at contemporary turpitude. Its the story of a London familys disintegration: As Sally (Naomi Watts) copes with her parents (Gemma Jones and Anthony Hopkins) recent divorce, her own marriage collapses. Allen compounds trouble by paralleling the parents middle-aged sexual insecurities with Sally and her American husband Roys (Josh Brolin) career anxieties, which lead to more infidelity, distrust and betrayal.
This interpersonal disaster is not an ingenious farce mechanism; its what the British call a cockup. Allen has transplanted his secularist cynicism, yet, once again, fails to capture a sense of place (the great Vilmos Zsigmond photographs England as if he were no longer the great Vilmos Zsigmond). Allens simply spread his virus. Some people laugh at itnervously or out of habitmistaking Allens comic reputation for a genial intent. But for others, Allens misplaced, soured sense of humor has become an unfunny, unending routine.
Happily, the perfect contrast to this faux-European phase of Allens interminable career is Criterions new box set Presenting Sacha Guitryan almost official re-introduction of a once beloved filmmaking personalityshowcasing four classics recently out of distribution. Writer-director-actor Guitry turned out a number of distinctly personal comic entertainments throughout the mid-20th century (he died in 1958) that not only teased the idea of European sophistication but also exemplified it.
In Guitrys world, characters are motivated by an itch which not only complicates their immediate lives but may also determine historyas in his epic The Pearls of the Crown (1939), which burlesques English, French and Italian history, even a bit of Africas legacy. Through ingeniously connected episodic fables, Guitry illustrates how the Queen of Englands crown got some of its jewels. In essence, Guitry satirized the imperialist ideology that heand his bon vivant audienceunapologetically enjoyed.
Even his minor masterpiece Quadrille (1938), featuring the flirtatious interplay of a Parisian newspaper editor (Guitry), his actress paramour (Gaby Morlay), their mutual friend (Jacqueline Delubac) and an American movie star (Georges Grey), provides some of the same social observation that informed Jean Renoirs profound The Rules of the Game the following year. Guitry glossed profundity; his talent was insouciance itselfthe cinematic immortalization of his eras theatrical postures, diction and morality: updating Molieres moral ferment and turning it to contemporary fizz.
Quadrille is a condensed roundelay like You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, but Guitrys excellence evokes the swanky world of Hollywood screwball comedies like My Man Godfrey and Twentieth Centuryfroth that was also culturally, spiritually authentic. Much of its pleasure derives from Guitrys bulky, strutting persona, his infectious egotism and élan. Guitry was French showbizs equivalent to Orson Welles and Noel Coward in the mid-century. Later, only Mel Brooks similarly multitasked (his History of the World, Part I was a vaudevillian version of Pearls of the Crown), yet Brooks never matched Guitrys grand example of a formally-audacious sophisticate. Rewatching Guitrys boulevard comedies confirms that Woody Allens films arent just spiritually deficientthey lack true sophistication.
The real point of Allens title You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is to jab at faith as a form of superstition: Sallys mother visits a fortune teller and clings to the suspicious, paid-for advice. Her pathetic search for guidance is a postdivorce response to insecurity and fear, just like her husbands dalliance with prostitute/actress Charmaine (Lucy Punch). Each character switches partners and allegiance (aspiring novelist Roy even plagiarizes his best friend), but it all happens in Allens degraded appreciation of social climbing. Compare the clownish wrap-up Allen gives his Brit twits with Quadrilles fugue-like dialogues, in which the characters amusingly articulate their world views, leading to a zesty finale that tilts into musical comedya tonal shift and spiritual distillation that was cinemas damnedest denouement until Godards 1965 Band of Outsiders.
Without a spiritual bone, so to speak, Allens films have no emotional spine. His depiction/validation of inhumane behavior doesnt get beyond his fascination with cruelty: Naomi Watts signs off with an ugly castigation against her silly mother that leaves everyone desolate. When Allen rewards the storys most clownish characters with happiness, its an unfelt gimmick that plays the audience cheap. This is the opposite of Quadrilles dance, the opposite of sophistication. Allens preoccupied with how people abuse and deceive each other (as his most recent films have been obsessed with murder).
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger continues the selfishness and lack of faith that in Manhattan once seemed to observe moral decay, and Hannah and Her Sisters became a symptom of. Theres been no real progress sincenot with such drab, inert filmmaking. Allens made a career out of obtuseness. His narrator says, Life is sound and fury and means nothing misquoted Shakespeare and serious misunderstanding.