BEFORE: Woody Allen carries over (I'll get tired of saying that at some point...) and we get into his first real comedies. We are here to discuss the man's work, and if you want to discuss his personal life further, I will cup my hands over my ears and shout, "LA LA LA I'm not listening!"
THE PLOT: The life and times of Virgil Starkwell, inept bank robber.
AFTER: I think the drawback to Woody's appearance in "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" is that he seemed really suave, something of a ladies man, and this just came off as a little too slick and slightly creepy. This film represents the return to self-deprecation, I'm assuming he was much more successful after casting himself as a down-trodded nebbish. We feel for the guy, because he's so inept, and he represents anyone who's ever failed at anything.
Of course, Woody himself was anything but a failure - he was a successful writer for 1950's television shows, and published several books of short humorous essays, then did stand-up in the early 1960's. This is where the insecure, intellectual nebbish character he often played developed - perhaps in the previous film we were afforded a rare glimpse behind the curtain.
What you might expect to develop from writing gags for TV shows is this sort of spoof mentality - think of a very common situation, like a housewife making dinner, or a man interviewing another man on the street, and then find ways to turn that situation on its ear. In this film the main character is a thief, a bank robber - how do you turn that upside-down? Instead of making him successful, make him a complete failure. So any evil associated with theft is softened by his ineptness.
The character Virgil wins us over with his many failures, which start with his terrible cello playing (I won't ruin the gags) and then being bullied by other kids, leading up to his first terrible attempts at robbing gumball machines. The whole thing also turns the documentary format on its ear - I'm not sure if this was the first real "mockumentary", but it could be. Again, take a very serious, simple thing, something people have seen over and over, like a documentary, and turn it upside-down.
If it's funny enough, the audience won't even question why a documentary crew would be following this big loser around, and always managing to be in the right place at the right time. And still no one acknowledges that they're being filmed, or acts as if they know they are. There's a sort of downbeat monotone to the whole narration, another thing which gets subverted time and again as each gag lands.
This is the first time that Allen wrote, directed AND starred in a film - it almost feels like he was looking for a magic formula, and this film was the first time that he felt he was coming close to it. Reportedly he originally went for an even more downbeat ending, where his character would die in a hail of bullets, but the editor of the film convinced him to lose that idea, and then basically re-structure the whole film to accommodate a slightly more upbeat ending.
This is still February, the month of romance, so I'm glad to see that there is some romance in this film. Virgil falls in love with a girl while attempting to steal her purse, and they hit it off. Eventually he has to admit to her that he's a thief and not a cellist - this eventually leads to greater comedy as they argue over what shirt he should wear to a bank robbery.
This is a great improvement over the last two films - I'm expecting bigger and better things from Mr. Allen in the days to come.
Also starring Janet Margolin, Jacquelyn Hyde, Marcel Hillaire, with a cameo from Louise Lasser (Woody's girlfriend at the time, I believe).
RATING: 5 out of 10 Most Wanted criminals
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