Allen began his career writing for others. He invented gags for stand-up comedians and was a screenwriter on NBC television. He also wrote short stories and plays. It took him a long time to establish himself as a film director.
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His debut was the comedy Take the Money and Disappear in 1969. The 1970s were the golden age of Woody Allen, who perfected his style of disturbing, black and often absurd Jewish humor, which is often about sex, illness, death, existential depression or even art and hype around it. Some images from that time bordered on genius. Who doesn’t know Manhattan, Annie Hall or Love and Death. But he also managed to surprise with a completely different film Interiors, which was not a comedy at all, but a New York tribute to Ingmar Bergman.
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He also offered a lot of great films in the following years – for example Han and her sisters, Zelig, Watch out for Harry or recently the fantastic Jasmine Tears with Cate Blanchett.
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Woody Allen before MeToo with laughing actresses Blake Lively and Kristen Stewart
Photo: Profimedia.cz
It’s no secret that after eighty, Woody Allen became tired. Films such as Café Society or The Wheel of Miracles certainly do not take a crucial position in his filmography, sometimes it is repeated too slowly, but fans still enjoyed the fact that “new Allenovka” comes every year.
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This was true until 2018, when the hysterical attacks of the MeToo movement came. With the vigor of the Bolshevik tribunals, MeToo began to try and punish without evidence. Woody Allen could repeat a hundred times that he had not abused the ex-partner’s adoptive daughter, and the police had long ago investigated and postponed everything. It wasn’t valid, the MeToo evidence didn’t care – over time, they did manage to ruin Allen’s career in the United States.
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Woody Allen with wife Soon-Yi (left) and daughter Bechet
Photo: Profimedia.cz
After the campaign, the actors began returning fees for his films and, with an apologetic smile, explained that they had not known how bad he was before. Theatrical adaptations of his works were canceled, and the film Rainy Day in New York could not have its American premiere. Amazon signed a contract with Allen for 5 films, but withdrew from it after MeToo.
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Allen then moved to Europe. He shot the Mr. Rifkin Festival, which goes to Czech cinemas in January 2021. In the spring, however, his memoirs will be published in Czech under the name By the way.
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Translator Michael Žantovský said of them: “It is an honest, entertaining, well-presented and rich biography of a complex artist. We find forums on every page, the memories are full of his Kafkaesque absurd humor, which is very close to us. But for all the joke, his memories are actually quite sad. Woody Allen has a very bad opinion of himself and the world and, unlike other people, he does not hide it. The second reason why this is actually a sad reading is that he is very concerned with the case of the alleged abuse of Soon Yi. Although the story took place twenty-five years ago, Woody Allen was investigated and acquitted of all allegations of abuse, and eventually married his adopted daughter, Mia Farrow, to this day.
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