Friday: What's New Pussycat?

Woody Allen, 1979 • Allen’s homage to his hometown opens as it should—to the sounds of Gershwin’s masterpiece, Rhapsody in Blue, over a montage of images of Manhattan. The film stars Allen as an unfulfilled writer, alongside Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep, and Diane Keaton as his various love interests. Shot in black-and-white Panavision in an attempt to recreate the old photographs and films that recall the City of Allen’s childhood, Manhattan is decadent on the big screen. Come out to Doc and enjoy one of the finest American films ever made, the way it was meant to be seen. 35mm

Woody Allen, 1977 • “I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final, you know. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me. When I was thrown out, my mother, who was an emotionally high-strung woman, locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose of Mah-Jongg tiles. I was depressed at that time. I was in analysis. I was suicidal as a matter of fact and would have killed myself; but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian, and if you kill yourself, they make you pay for the sessions you miss.” 35mm

Woody Allen, 1971 • Fielding Mellish (Woody Allen), a neurotic blue collar New Yorker, tries to impress social activist Nancy (Louise Lasser) by visiting the fictional South American country of San Marcos. Mellish quickly becomes embroiled in the country’s political revolution, eventually becoming president of San Marcos. Bananas may be one of Allen’s most underrated works: a courtroom scene in which Mellish both defends and prosecutes, along with Howard Cosell’s “play by play” commentary of Mellish and Nancy’s marriage consummation, surely rank among Allen’s zaniest concoctions. 35mm

Woody Allen, 1973 • Allen takes a nostalgic look at the future in this story about a Greenwich Village health food store owner who is cryogenically frozen in 1973 and defrosted 200 years later in an inept police state. This science fiction odyssey parodies many of the cornerstones of the genre, from H.G. Wells’s The Sleeper Awakes to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (and also features Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL from 2001, as an evil computer). Sleeper was Allen’s first collaboration with screenwriter Marshall Brickman, who would go on to co-pen Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Manhattan Murder Mystery. 35mm

Woody Allen, 1984 • Danny Rose (Woody Allen), a hapless New York talent manager, is trying to revive the career of a washed up lounge singer (Nick Apollo Forte) when he is accidentally dragged into a dangerous love triangle involving the singer, his mistress (Mia Farrow), and a jealous gangster. 35mm

Woody Allen, 1983 • Allen’s Zelig is a curious character with the capacity to transform himself to resemble anyone he is near. Shot in the style of 1920s newsreels, Zelig weaves together stock footage from the era with cleverly filmed re-enactments of historical events and present day (1983) color interviews. Herbert Hoover, Al Capone, Clara Bow, Charles Lindbergh, Adolf Hitler, and Pope Pius XI all make posthumous cameos in the film, while Allen inserts himself and Mia Farrow into old footage using blue-screen technology. Zelig works as a social history, a love story, a satire, a parody, and as an exercise in film narrative structure. 35mm

Woody Allen, 1985 • Set in Great Depression-era New Jersey, clumsy waitress Cecilia (Mia Farrow) goes to the movies to escape her dull and loveless life, where she sees a fictional RKO Radio Pictures film of the same title. Cecilia sits through the film several times, and eventually, an archaeologist in the film, Tom (Jeff Daniels), breaks the fourth wall, emerging from the screen and into the real world. The two quickly fall in love. Allen ups the ante by incorporating an unusual love triangle between the actor who played Tom, and the producer of the film, who is distraught that his characters are suddenly walking out of his movie. 35mm

Woody Allen, 1989 • Allen weaves together two stories—one deadly serious, the other pretty funny—in one of his most successful combinations of comedy and drama. Dr. Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau) is an opthalmologist trying to break things off with his mistress (Anjelica Huston). When she threatens to expose his infidelity, the doctor has his brother Jack “make the problem go away.” Elsewhere, Cliff Stern (Allen) is a documentary filmmaker who finds himself falling in love with a PBS producer (Mia Farrow). Allen evokes Crime and Punishment—can a person continue with everyday life after committing murder? 35mm