Woody's masterpiece?

Rating: Null/10 (8 October 2009)

The problem about the really prolific artist is that compulsive creativity can so often generate work that is inferior to that artist's highest standards. When it comes to outstanding directors with a large oeuvre there is generally agreement about their finest and least good films. I would imagine that few would make out a case for Bergman's "Now About These Women" when compared with "Cries and Whispers", or Hitchcock's "Jamaica Inn" vis a vis "Vertigo". But what to make of Woody Allen's substantial output? Here opinions tend to be more sharply divided. Most of his admirers plump for "Annie Hall", "Manhattan" and "Hannah and her Sisters" as among the finest. But wait...here is one viewer who derives much less pleasure from these than some of the others such as "Radio Days", "Everyone Says I Love You" and "Manhattan Murder Mystery". When I intimated to my eldest son - a great Woody fan - that I thought "Small Time Crooks" the maestro's funniest film in years, I was sharply berated for my admiration of "such a pile of cack". So, even among fans and the most closely knit families there can be the sharpest of divisions about the relative merits of these sometimes splendid but often dire entertainments. Of only one thing can one be generally certain. Woody's fans, in my experience, tend to be men. In the circle where I move, the women seem to share a universal detestation bordering on the pathological. Which is by way of leading up to the admission that I have recently discovered a film that I feel could be his masterpiece. I whisper this as there could be many out there ready to shout me down. I find "Match Point", the first of his London films, extraordinary in a variety of ways. First it is unlike any of the others, not an iota of humour, apart from a slight smile at the two cops toward the end and not a Woody sound/look/feel-alike in sight. It is the darkest of psychological thrillers dealing with adultery, ambition and murder. "Thriller" is certainly an apt term as it generates a quite breathtaking tension as to what will happen next, and this for characters who, like those in Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm", are not particularly nice and worthy of our concern. As far as tension goes there are echos here of Truffaut's great adultery piece "Le Peau Douce" combined with elements of "An American Tragedy" and Joseph Losey's perceptive examinations of British class malaise, a rich concoction that Woody succeeds in mixing in a way that gives so many clichés an entirely new flavour. The only Woody touch as far as I can see is his richly affectionate snapshot depiction of a great city, substituting his beloved New York for London. But perhaps the film's most satisfying feature is the brilliant use made of the tennis analogy when a ball substitute fails to make its intended destination - a moment of pure genius. It was my intention not to issue a "spoiler" for a film where the element of surprise is crucial. I hope I have gone one degree further by not mentioning anything about the plot in such a way that will stimulate curiosity,