As the director unveils his 37th (!) feature, 'Cassandra's Dream,' film critics/die-hard Allen fans Kim Morgan and David Fear wrestle over the Woodman's legacy

Kim Morgan: To use a trite phrase: Woody Allen, I can't quit you. I want to take a breather, get a little space, find another existential crisis to attach myself to. But ... I'm a sucker. The man is, after all, a legend. Heaped with accolades like the 2002 Cannes Film Festival's lifetime achievement award, Allen's career has spanned five decades, peppered with pictures of varied (and of late, incredibly varied) quality. An American original, Allen is one of the most important figures of 20th century cinema, with more than a few genuine masterpieces in his canon.

So what has he been doing the last 10, 11 years? As I recently stumbled out of "Cassandra's Dream" (and I do mean stumble) I was exasperated. Not only because the movie was so underwhelming, but because I felt like he'd tricked me again. (Maybe this one will be good. It's got Ewan McGregor and Tom Wilkinson in it, after all. Maybe he'll be inspired by working-class English life like, you know, Ken Loach or someone ... and ... oh God, what am I saying?) And then I realized I was possibly delusional. "Cassandra's Dream" was DOA, inert, soulless. Allen is merely going through the motions. Why, I wondered? Why?

Is it really, as he has recently said, because he simply knows he can get anyone to appear in his movies? Is he too secure and happy now that ex-muse/source of passive-aggressive inspiration Mia Farrow's been out of the picture? Recoil all you want from the borderline incestuous Soon Yi scenario; for me, the worst aspect to those shenanigans was Allen's creative decline. Yes, I know, a couple of good pictures have sneaked in (I defend the bitterly inspired "Deconstructing Harry" and find "Small Time Crooks" sweetly amusing, particularly his on-screen rapport with the great Elaine May). But "Cassandra's Dream," soaked in all its obvious Dostoyevskian, Raskolnikovian guilt was boringly similar to "Match Point" -- a movie that did have its moments but wasn't even in the same area code as Allen's brilliant "Crimes and Misdemeanors." (By the way, has Woody offed someone in his life? Now that would be interesting.) Anyway, I'm suspicious he's making movies to merely keep moving, to stave off death, something (or to simply get close enough to Scarlett Johansson's significant assets -- which I don't blame him for. Still, hasn't he learned enough about what he calls "kamikaze women?"). And I realize this is an odd start for the person in the pro-Woody camp, but this relationship, well ... it's become very dysfunctional.

Like Farrah in "The Burning Bed," I'm always giving him another chance. Sure you slapped me with "Hollywood Ending," you blackened my eye with "Curse of the Jade Scorpion," but dammit! I said I'd stick with you for better or for worse, and, obviously, suffering through "Scoop," I meant it. During the honeymoon period, when he was slapstick funny, intellectually mordant, revelatory and bitingly hilarious concerning the absurd complexities of human relationships; back when he deftly combined the wit of Groucho Marx with the intellectualism of Philip Roth; back when he made "Take the Money and Run" and "Sleeper," and "Annie Hall" and "Broadway Danny Rose" and "The Purple Rose of Cairo" and "Zelig" and "Husbands and Wives"; and, my god, "Manhattan" -- a movie with an opening Gershwin tuned sequence that would make the entire cast of "Baywatch" pine for New York -- I can't let him go. He's impossible to dismiss, even if I'm frequently cringing at his tired tropes (do I need to hear another joke about masturbation and polymorphous perversion? And wasn't his Bergman fetish enough back when his tortured beige movie "Interiors" made me want to smash every clay pot Geraldine Paige desperately presents?).

But, again, I cannot leave the man. In an odd parallel, I have a similar relationship with another one of my heroes, Rainer Fassbinder. He was mad prolific, so a few stinkers seeped into the brew. But, like Allen, I've got a connection to his vision, his love of movies, his force of nature personality and, of course, his tumultuous personal life. I also think the same of the late, great Robert Altman, whose career weathered a few horrors. Say what you want about Woody, but he never made a movie as execrable as "O.C. and Stiggs." OK, maybe "Celebrity," but you catch my drift. Altman, who had a near 10 years on Allen, managed to return with some bona fide classics, and I'm hoping that Allen does as well. Unlike those critics tired of his recycled jokes, his lusty crushes on young actresses, and his rather lackluster cinematic happenings, I'm like Tammy Wynette. I'm standing by my (Wood)man.

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