Mae West: Woody

Writing for Jewish Week, film historian George Robinson compares New York comedian Woody Allen with MAE WEST, the Marx Brothers, and others.
Here is an excerpt from his piece:
• • Woody Allen was and is a writer first and foremost. Whatever visual flair his films have shown over a 37-year career has come primarily from his choice of some of the world’s best cinematographers to shoot his films. As a writer he is an original and unique voice, family resemblances aside. As a director, he remains a shaky amalgam of incompatible influences, a filmmaker who has never found an entirely congenial visual style and whose best work often succeeds despite, rather than because of, his choices of camera angle, blocking and mise-en-scene.
• • So be it. Perhaps in a backwards way, that problem fits Allen’s on-camera persona perfectly. Just as Chaplin’s theatrical framing invokes his roots in musical halls and Keaton’s architectural sophistication plays brilliantly into his mechanistic view of the comic universe, Allen’s visual awkwardness fits in with his schlemiel persona.
• • On the other hand, I suspect that when the books are closed on Allen’s career, he will be placed more with the great screen clowns — W.C.Fields, the Marx Brothers, MAE WEST — than with its great directors, someone whose persona dominates his work to the great pleasure of his fans and the frequent dismay of his critics (myself included). . . .
- - this is a short excerpt from this weekly publication - -
• • The Evolution Of Allan Konigsberg
Film Forum retrospective on Woody Allen illuminates the filmmaker/ comedian’s shifting, yet essentially Jewish, career.
• • BY: George Robinson - Special To The Jewish Week
• • Printed: 22 December 2006
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: Mae West • • to come • •
NYC
Mae West.