Heywood “Woody” Allen (1935) is an American director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. He began his career as a comedy writer in the 1950s, writing jokes and scripts for television and publishing several books of short humour pieces. In the early 1960s, he performed as a stand-up comedian, emphasising monologues rather than traditional jokes, where he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004 Comedy Central ranked Allen fourth on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians, while a UK survey ranked Allen the third-greatest comedian. By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specialising in slapstick comedies before moving into dramatic material influenced by European art cinema during the 1970s, and alternating between comedies and dramas to the present. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late 1970s. Allen often stars in his films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. Some of the best-known of his over 50 films are Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). In 2007 he said Stardust Memories (1980), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and Match Point (2005) were his best films. Critic Roger Ebert described Allen as “a treasure of the cinema”.
| 400 Blows, The | 1959 | François Truffaut |
| 8½ | 1963 | Federico Fellini |
Amarcord |
1972 | Federico Fellini |
| Bicycle Thieves, The | 1948 | Vittorio de Sica |
| Citizen Kane | 1941 | Orson Welles |
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie |
1972 | Luis Buñuel |
La Grande Illusion |
1937 | Jean Renoir |
Paths of Glory |
1957 | Stanley Kubrick |
| Rashomon | 1950 | Akira Kurosawa |
The Seventh Seal |
1957 | Ingmar Bergman |
Music From the Films of Woody Allen
The Unruly Life of Woody Allen (kindle)
Posterazzi Sleeper Japanese Diane Keaton Left Woody Allen (Top Far Right) 1973 Movie Masterprint Poster Print (11 x 17)
