Woody and Central Park: A Love Story
ALICE:
In modern New York, when a bored housewife needs alternative therapy for her back pain, she knows that she must go to Chinatown. Doctor Yang's magical herbs (for those interested, her office is at 18 Doyers Street) not only do they solve her pain; they also make him invisible, make him totally rethink her life and step beyond her romantic daydreams** (set in the bizarre setting of the Central Park Zoo's penguin area)**. When fantasy becomes reality, she parades her adulterous dalliance through Times Square or to Barbetta's Italian restaurant, where she'll give her lover a taste of the herbs. Both will make the most of their invisibility by spying on their perfidious friends in the Ralph Lauren store at 867 Madison Avenue. Mother Teresa would not approve.
HUSBANDS AND WIVES:
As devastating as it is funny, the camera of this volcanic work moves nervously through spaces in which reality and fiction were dangerously confusing. There are few exteriors, but Prince Strett's Dean and Deluca stands out, in which Judy Davis and Mia Farrow remain to discuss their respective marriages or Columbia University where Juliette Lewis attends in another lolitesque role in her career.
MURDER MYSTERY IN MANHATTAN
“Whenever I listen to Wagner I feel like invading Poland” , one of those phrases that the director has left for history, is pronounced in this film when the protagonists leave a concert at Lincoln Center. The wonderfully decorated apartment of the protagonists (and their homicidal –or not- neighbor) is **at 200 78th Street (pure Upper East Side)**, and it is in that wealthy world where the protagonists move: the obsessive idea that her neighbor has been murdered accompanies Diane Keaton to a hockey game at Madison Square Garden, to the National Arts Club (from where she sees the presumed deceased on board a bus) or to the 21 club, where she and her husband Larry take their son out to dinner and end up running into a bubbly Anjelica Huston. The fictional Hotel Waldron is actually Hotel 17, in whose elevator another key scene takes place that also left its usual Allenian phrase: "Claustrophobia and a corpse, the height of a neurotic!"
Murder mystery in Manhattan
BULLETS OVER BROADWAY
to roll this story set in the 1920s about how talent is in the most unexpected places, the director shot art deco locations such as the Edison Hotel, the Belasco theater or the New Yorker Hotel; the scenic setting by the railroad tracks was the now-defunct Commodore in Williamsburg. For all of them – and obviously for a Broadway full of illuminated signs - Showgirls with shrill voices, mobsters and oversized theater divas parade around releasing lapidary one-liners.
bullets over broadway
MIGHTY APHRODITE
How can we not love a comedy that, after ending with the appearance of a literal Deux ex machina, brings together the protagonists in a toy store in its epilogue? The store could not be other than the FAO Schwarz (archifamous for housing Big's piano), and the protagonists are Mia Farrow -playing a prostitute with a whistle voice and a heart of gold- and Woody Allen -playing Woody Allen once plus-. Previously we have seen them at the Belmont Park horse races or walking through Central Park . And even if it's not in New York or even on the same continent, you can't talk about this film without mentioning the Greek theater of Taormina, where a classical choir has much to say about the dangers of tempting fate.
Everything else
EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU
Here Allen decided to give himself the whim of shooting a musical with his favorite songs and locating it in favorite places in the world –Paris, Venice and obviously NYC-. On the New York side, it's a delight to behold Central Park through the four seasons and see its very posh Park Avenue characters fall in love to the rhythm of musical numbers that include one with glasses and a Groucho Marx mustache. A celebration of life whose optimism extends to Goldie Hawn collaborating with the Met, Edward Norton buying an engagement ring at Harry Winston, teen Natalie Portman flirting at E.A.T and even a musical number in a funeral parlor at the 1076 Madison Avenue where the dead invite us to enjoy the time we have left.
DISMANTLING HARRY
In this fiction-within-a-fiction story, the scene in which Robin Williams discovers that he is an unfocused actor takes place during a shoot at the Central Park's Bethseda Terrace (yes, Central Park again) .
if the thing works
CELEBRITY
Allen laughs at himself talking about “those directorial snobs who make black-and-white movies full of flashbacks” in this cynical reflection on the absurdity of fame and luck. Between flashbacks and real time, we see Elaine's Restaurant (now defunct), the Ziegfield Cinema, the Stanhope Hotel (scene for Leonardo di Caprio's high), the Franklin Street subway exit (where Winona Ryder proposes a date) and Charlize Theron smoking before the Queensboro Bridge or wearing a wig when leaving the Cherokee Apartments. In one of the most remembered scenes, Kenneth Branagh runs to the pier in the southernmost part of the city but he is late: the boat has already left and his ex-girlfriend throws the only manuscript of his novel into the waters of the Hudson.
MIDDLE HAIR ROGUES
The leading couple goes from living in a New Jersey hovel to settling in an apartment on Park Avenue decorated like Juan Antonio Roca's house thanks to a successful cookie shop located in Upper Manhattan, on 145th Street. The refinement that Tracey Ullman undertakes with Hugh Grant goes through **learning about art at the Metropolitan (what better place to do it)** or reviewing your literary knowledge in Washington Square. Woody Allen's character continues to be thrown more streets where he can do his shenanigans, such as Chinatown's Doyers, which had already shown off shop windows years ago in “Alice”.
middling scoundrels
A MADE IN HOLLYWOOD FINISH
It is very meta that the director played by Woody Allen discusses with his film crew the suitability of the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park when the real Allen has used it so many times in his films. More games between reality and fiction occur when the director proposes shooting the film in **black and white, because that's how the city should be filmed (Manhattan, wink-wink)** in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. The famous Balthazar restaurant also shines and repeats the Café Carlyle, already inseparable from the figure of the director, with or without blindness.
EVERYTHING ELSE
Central Park hosts the teacher-student talks between Woody Allen and Jason Biggs , usually about Amanda, the character played by Christina Ricci who has been driving the young man crazy since he had a crush on her when leaving Les Pierres Antiques (on the corner of Bleecker Street and Charles Street). Throughout their tumultuous romance they attend a Diana Krall concert at the Vanguard, go to the movies at the Quad, eat at Sant Ambroeus, or go on clandestine dates with catastrophic endings at The Warwick Hotel. All in all, the date with the worst ending is the one Jason Biggs has with Danny de Vito at Isabella's. An example of how to take a dismissal badly.
MELINDA AND MELINDA
For this cyclothymic experiment on the same story in comedy and drama versions, the director unfolds an entire arsenal of modern New York classics: it is after a meal at Pastis that the anecdote that gives rise to the story is told; Melinda and her childhood friends chat across the Bow Bridge in Central Park ; repeat appearance of the Belmont horse races; famous cafes like the Boulud or the Gitane appear; drama characters go to the movies at Town Hall, while comedy characters prefer the more informal Cinema Village. Hurry to see another one of its locations up and running: Archangel Antiques, where Will Ferrell's character finds a magic lamp, will close in 2014.
IF IT WORKS
So far the latest (we hope nature is benign and there are many more) Woody Allen's foray into his beloved city, this old man + young girl romance story has a wonderful combination of trendy places with classics that never fail, as if the director I would like to make up for the years without filming in the city. Larry David meets up with his friends to rant about the world at Café Vivaldi before he bursts into his life Evan Rachel Wood, to whom he will discover the charms of Yonah Schimmel's Jewish food and with whom he will finish getting married at City Hall . When she receives a visit from her mother, they do a bit of mainstream tourism aboard a tour bus, offering us shots of the wax museum, the UN building or Times Square. Cafe Mogador, street markets and Uniqlo are good places for the young woman to flirt with Henry Cavill behind Larry David's back. **But do not fear: the happy ending is just around the corner. ***
BLUE JASMINE
We do not have the pleasure of finding ourselves again before a Woody Allen film set in New York, but although here the main setting is San Francisco, we see parts of the city through flashbacks of the protagonist's previous life. And we know what that means: Upper East Side and exclusive shops.
*** You may also be interested in...**
- New York according to Woody Allen (part I)