Queensboro Bridge, flagship of Woody Allen's New York
It is not the absolute truth, neither more nor less authentic than the works that show us a dark, dangerous or cold city, but if we had to stay live in a new york movie incarnation , we would immediately move to one that starts with white credits on a black background and in which only jazz or classical music sounds. How easy it is to make decisions sometimes.
ANNIE HALL
The first film of the new Woody Allen that came to stay 1977 (so different from "the first movies, the fun ones," as the audience persistently reminds him in "Memories") is also a turning point in his relationship with New York and the first time that the city becomes in that much vaunted of " one more character ”. The protagonist, Alvy Singer , is neurotic and proudly New Yorker, and will deeply miss the city in his experience in the hedonistic, sunny and cocainistic California.
The director began here to lay the foundations for that new york woodyllenian that inhabits the collective unconscious, but many of the places that helped create that environment mostly no longer exist -basically because the film is from 1977 and that in New York is an eternity-. The South Street Seaport in which the protagonists kiss (a kiss that will have an echo with the same actors in Manhattan) has changed a lot: the incredible views of the brooklyn bridge but the rest of the area, with the Pier 17 converted into a place of leisure rather than a docking place for boats, it is another world.
Anni Hall Sequence
closed the Wall Street Racquet Club in which after playing tennis they met annie Y Alvy; the roller coaster Coney's Thunderball Island that gave rise to the nervous personality of the protagonist was demolished and, alas, many of the theaters of this film in which the characters constantly go to the cinema have disappeared . They remain despite the ailments paris theater, next to Hotel Plaza , and survives greatly transformed Thalia , where at the end of the film Alvy meets Annie and her new boyfriend, but he closed the Beekman (where the protagonist is pestered by a fan) and closed, above all, the New York Theater , in whose lobby one of the most remembered scenes of the film was shot.
While queuing for tickets, Alvy Singer gets into an argument with a college professor about the meaning of the play. Marshall McLuhan (a paper that, by the way, had been written with Buñuel in mind), a discussion that ends with a stroke of the pen because he pulls the author himself out of his sleeve to agree with him and tell his opponent that he is completely wrong. Who has not dreamed of doing it at some time?
Annie Hall Sequence
MANHATTAN
We already said it here. The entire movie is elegy to the city and practically every one of its frames in glorious black and white allude to the spirit and corners of it. Even so, it is impossible not to highlight what is already one of the icons of New York: the queensboro bridge seen from Sutton Square with the silhouette of Woody Allen Y Diane Keaton silhouetted against the sunrise.
The work also helped cement the fame of those places where even today, thirty years later, people continue to enter because of the memory of the film, such as ** Zabar's , John's Pizzeria ** (one of those “the best pizza in the city” tasted by Isaac and Tracy, his teenage girlfriend -Allen always showing her weaknesses- played by Mariel Hemingway ), the overwhelming Russian Tea Room or the bookstore rizzoli (though not at your current location) .
Central Park, one of the director's favorite locations, it also sticks its head out for the protagonists to take a boat ride on its lake. Also, the highly intellectual character played by Diane Keaton She is a regular at museums like the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan or the Whitney , although it will be in the ** Hayden Planetarium of the Museum of Natural History ** where she and Isaac take refuge from the rain to whisper words in the dark.
Manhattan sequences
BROADWAY DANNY ROSE
The art deco opulence of the Brilliant Building (in Broadway ) and the deluxe interiors of the Waldorf-Astoria By contrast, they make the appearance of the leading artist's agent more slovenly. But he is the Carnegie's Deli , the place where the story of Danny Rose , who today offers the best possible tribute to the director who made his name famous: a sandwich with kilos of pastrami.
HANNAH AND HER SISTERS
"No one, not even the rain, has such small hands." how much you owe E.E. Cumming's to this film we will never know. In this family mess from one Thanksgiving to the next we find many of the touchstones of Allen's cinema. Their his characters are regulars to go to bookstores as well as going to the movies, and of course, these have also been disappearing, like the Pageant Books , that of the false fortuitous meeting between Michael Cain Y Barbara Hershey in which they buy the famous book of poems. From this meeting they soon move on to clandestine dates (adultery, another Allenian theme where they exist) in the st regis hotel .
Café Carlyle, protagonist in Hannah and her sisters
The hypochondria , another of those words already associated with the director's remains, makes an appearance after a review in the Mount Sinai Hospital , which will provoke the umpteenth existential crisis of the Woodyallenian character from which he will only come out after seeing "Goose Soup" in the cinema Meter . Also featured in the film is the famous carlyle cafe that the director made doubly legendary by playing the clarinet weekly in it, and he even allowed himself the luxury of filming some of his favorite buildings in Manhattan, giving an architectural tour that includes a walk through the Pomanders Walk , a street that looks like a small English village in the heart of the Upper Westside. And this work includes another of those gestures of rupture between person and character that have occurred so much in his career and that sometimes make one grim: the Hannah's house (Langham, 135 Central Park West), the character from mia farrow playing a very approximate version of herself, it was the true home of the actress.
RADIO DAYS
This sentimental film is another tribute to New York, yes, but to one that no longer existed even at the time it was shot: the 1940s seen through the eyes of a child from the suburbs. Daily life, real life, takes place in rock away , in the coastal area of queens (The house of the protagonist and his grotesque family of fish eaters is at 180 Beach 115th Street). From the nearby dock you can see a Nazi submarine, but through the radio you can access an equally amazing spectacle: the Manhattan of the terribly glamorous clubs that no longer exist , As the Morocco.
Woody Allen in Radio Days
Yes remains the very refined King Cole Dining Room from the St Regis Hotel , the setting in which Roger and Irene live an eccentric adventure with the cigarette girl played by mia farrow . In this work Woody Allen manages to spread his capacity for fascination: he shows us the incredible entrance of the Radio City Music Hall and he makes us gasp as if he's still a kid out on a city tour with his lovely aunt.
OTHER WOMAN
In this film about psychoanalysis and poor acoustic insulation we follow Gena Rowlands walking the streets of Village in pursuit of the pregnant and very tormented mia farrow . Through the red brick buildings of the streets Bedford Y barrow she arrives at the ** Cherry Lane Theater on Commerce Street **, still in operation, where she will face one of those memory / fantasy / pot idea that can change a life.
Cherry Lane Theatre, starring in Another Woman
CRIMES AND MISFOUNDATIONS
The moral dilemma around the drama of an ophthalmologist is also one of the most hilarious and round movies of Allen. And yes, it includes a visit to a cinema that has already closed, the Bleecker Street Cinema this time. The oft-shot ** Central Park's Tavern on the Green** is the setting for Woody Allen's run-in with Alan Alda, and the chilling, lucid ending is set at a party in Waldorf Astoria. Walks with his daughter through the Village and with Mia Farrow through Central Park complete this story about nihilism, adultery and God.
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