Woody Allen has made five perfect films. Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Purple Rose of Cairo and Deconstructing Harry. That’s a bold statement, I know. You either think I am overpraising Woody (I’m not) or I’m leaving out a few (where’s Love and Death and Broadway Danny Rose???) Here’s another one: of these five, Deconstructing Harry is tied with Annie Hall as the flat out funniest. In that there are more laughs per capita packed in. But, like all the films mentioned here, they have rich undercurrents of sadness. In fact, with the exception of Hannah and Her Sisters, I would categorize the remaining four films as depressing. Anyway, Deconstructing Harry came “after the fall” for Woody — after his Soon Yi scandal — and a lot of people were way turned off at seeing him skirt-chase in this film. The internet tells me that Woody tried to get Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Hopper and Albert Brooks to play the lead role. Brooks finally told him it would be insane not to play it himself. And I could see why Woody didn’t want to. In real life Woody is always telling the press that the characters he plays in his films aren’t the way he really acts. In Deconstructing Harry, Woody plays Harry, a man who always is telling people that his art isn’t based on his life. . .and then finally admits that it is. Deconstructing Harry is kinda cribbed from Bergman’s Wild Strawberries — but, as a free association by a fiction writer, it is also an excuse to throw in many of the dopey, sketch-like ideas Woody used to put in his New Yorker short stories.
In this regard, there are many similarities to Stardust Memories. And while I love Stardust Memories, I think this is the superior film. At the time of Stardust Memories Woody was still working with the great Gordon Willis — and I now wonder if the gorgeous framing and black and white may be too artistic for this type of work. The master shots, jump cutting and warm colors of Deconstructing Harry are more the “Woody Allen look” that people will remember when his total oevre is discussed. I think Stardust Memories’ desire to ape Fellini may have been a mistake — maybe Woody just didn’t trust making such personal material in his own style.
Anyway, this movie is a fucking scream. Judy Davis, as always, is so funny when she gets angry. And the story of the old Jewish ladies discovering “Max’s dark secret” — the punchline there is one of the most deranged and hilarious things in any of Woody’s movies. But the real scene stealer is Kirstie Alley. Never being much of a Cheers fan, I never thought of her that much. I saw Deconstructing Harry in the theaters three times and each time she brought the house down during her break-up scene. Twice the scene ended with a round of applause. One of those times I happened to be sitting directly across the aisle from Buck Henry (alone) who actually fell out of his seat he was laughing so hard (he was kinda sitting in a weird position.) This might also have been the film where I really fell in love with Bob Balaban. And Eric Bogosian has a killer cameo, too, even if he only gets a few lines. And the opening between Richard Benjamin and Elaine Bennis! God, there are SO MANY hysterical scenes in this deeply depressing, meaningful, important film about artists and their need to create disorder.
