WILD MAN BLUES
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Fine Line Features Director: Barbara Kopple Writer: Barbara Kopple Cast: Woody Allen, Soon-Yi Previn, et al
A few days ago Dame Judi Dench insisted that she would not allow any more interviews. The distinguished British actress, perhaps grouchy about being passed over for the Oscar for her role as Queen Victoria in "Mrs Brown," contends that things were better when the audience did not know so much about performers. She might change her mind after seeing the delightful biopic, "Wild Man Blues," which does for the film industry what "Artemisia" does for painting. Each of these movies takes us into the head and soul of one of the most creative persons of a generation, one about an unlikely celebrity since she was a woman at a time that women were not acceptable as artists, the other about an equally unlikely personality who made it big despite his nerdishness.
"Wild Man Blues" is a documentary for people who don't like documentaries. It comes across like a partially scripted, partially improvised comedy. Filmed over a period of 24 days during Woody Allen's European tour in the spring of 1996, the movie is essentially two features in one. The part that will appeal to jazz fans and to quite a few who didn't know they were jazz fans until they saw it features Woody playing New Orleans Dixieland with a band directed by a charming banjo player, Eddy Davis, who also hired a few others to round out the company. The segment that will entice diehard fans of the great writer-actor-director shows Woody Allen in private moments in his hotel rooms with his soon-to-be wife, Soon-Yi Previn, and presents the comic genius as he meets his substantial, cheering public in cities like Paris, London, Milan, Bologna, Turin, Rome and Madrid. Wherever he walks he is followed by inspired devotees and paparazzi. When he is in his private quarters, he appears like any other tourist. We must appreciate that not anyone could have filmed the man letting down his hair, so to speak, and forgetting that the ubiquitous movie camera even exists. That awesome feat is accomplished by director Barbara Kopple, known to select American audiences for her filming of "Harlan County USA" in 1977, a gripping documentary and Academy Award winner about the strike of Kentucky mine workers against the Eastover Mining Company. Kopple also plied her talent in filming "American Dream" a decade ago, yet another Oscar winner about the hows, whats and whys of a labor strike at the Hormel meat plant in Austin, Minnesota, a Michael-Moore- like story of a profitable company attempting to reduce wages and break a union just for the sake of doing so.
What is particularly sound about "Wild Man Blues" is that it is not a puff piece but rather presents the man as both flawed human being and as a man who despite his chief psychological hangup--by Mr. Allen's admission his alleged inability to experience pleasure--is nonetheless able to lose himself when blowing into his clarinet. Each time he gets past the fans, the paparazzi, the dignitaries looking for photo- ops. and begins to join the band in such "primitive" works as "Ja Da," "The Old Rugged Cross," "You Rascal You" and the title song, "Wild Man Blues," he is transported. Eyes closed, exhaling into his instrument as though he were charming all the snakes of Benares, he gives you the feeling that he would rather be doing this than performing in "Annie Hall"--and certainly prefers this musical activity to acting as regisseur of such flops as "Interiors" and "Stardust Memories." While Mr. Allen considers his music merely a hobby and not something that he does for money, he insists that he finds time to practice his clarinet daily and, judging by audiences in major European cities who probably showed up to see him and only secondarily to hear his music, he won them over by his talent with the horn as well.
The major pleasure of the film is watching the unseen Barbara Kopple at work, focusing her camera on him for so many hours each day that he seems to have forgotten she is there. Proving that he is a funny funny man not just in his movies but in his daily life, he knocks off some lines that you'd swear were rehearsed, but given his wit and intelligence, they presumably came off the top of his head. Facing a lovely Weimaraner in his private plane, a pooch owned by the movie's producer Jean Doumanian, he effects a look that will win him no votes among dog owners and remarks, "I'd rather the dog bit me than licked me." Not even a companion's insistence that a dog's mouth is cleaner than a person's dissuades him from his distaste for canines.
While Mr. Allen and Soon-Yi stayed at the best hotels in Europe including one in Milan which had a private swimming pool right in his room, he nonetheless frets, "When am I gonna do my underwear?" Though he loves the City of Lights because"Paris has great, gray weather...I don't like the sun," he compares that beautiful town unfavorably to New York where "I know I can get a bowl of duck wonton soup at 4:30 a.m. I don't do it, because who needs it at that hour?" And in one large Italian city he worries, "This being Milan, I hope the laundry doesn't come back breaded." Of Bologna: "I know with a couple of valium I could really learn to love this city." In London, especially, he hopes to "put on a good show...here they can hate me in my own language." The principal thing he likes about Europe is that his U.S.-failed films "Interiors" and "Stardust Memories" did well abroad: "Europeans like films that drone on."
Mr. Allen must really like (or dislike) his parents: he apparently allowed some rather embarrassing statements to pass the final cut. After returning to his Manhattan apartment where his nonagenarian folks awaited him, he heard his mom whine, "I would have preferred he fell in love with a nice Jewish girl." And this in front of Soon-Yi Previn! For his part, dad would have preferred that Woody become a pharmacist and has apparently not seen a single one of his son's movies.
"Wild Man Blues" portrays its hero winning a lifetime achievement award, one which might conceivably be presented as well to Barbara Kopple for a smashing job with the three principal documentaries she directed. If Woody Allen is unable to experience pleasure, he can rest assured that he continues to give it to his devoted followers. Rated PG. Running time: 104 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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