Take a whiff: A small list

Woody Allen's been a favorite in my household since my family's student ghetto years in Blacksburg,VA.  I've seen most of his films and some (Play it Again Sam, Take the Money and Run, Love and Death, Radio Days, Annie Hall, Bananas) upwards of 10 times each. Yet I'll never understand to this day how a Coke-spittingly awful line--and so unlike Woody--will survive revisions and creep into one of his scripts. (Which effectively ruins the movie for me.) His wacky Sleeper alter-ego is one who feels a need to portray white, upwardly mobile socialites with acrimonious emotional burdens and gravely serious sensibilities about art. Here's a quick list of Woody's pratfalls, which I think have entertainment value in their own right. What you are about to read was not intended for laughs. 

4. Music teacher: l can see a person's soul by their intonation on an instrument -- keyboard, horn or strings. l can. lt's a gift.

Student: You saw my soul? Melinda and Melinda (2004)

3. "l saw you listening to the Mahler and crying. You should have seen her. She was listening to Mahler with tears streaming down her face. She looked so beautiful. l wanted to hug her." Melinda and Melinda (2004)

2. Holly: We saw, um, Pavarotti at Ernani at the Met, and I cried...

David: I cry at the opera. I bring my little bottle of wine, I sit there and I watch and I cry.  Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

1. Diane Wiest's character: My husband was a radiologist but I never did let him x-ray me.  I didn't want him to look at what my heart said. (September 1987)

Comments

[Tim Munro]

I go to the opera to cry, and I have hugged a woman in tears during a Mahler symphony. Does that make me a prat?....Hm.

[Bryant Manning]

Tim,
Even worse, a tear fell from my eye during Robert Chen's final solo in "Ein Heldenleben." And that's considered a freaking showpiece! Crying's natural, but the way Woody depicts it isn't.

I think what makes Woody's lines so bad are that he's attempting to give depth to vacuous characters by writing them noble, albeit saccharine, confessions. It's cheating, I think, and the result is laughable.

NOW, for balance, he sometimes handles this kind of confession extraordinarily well, as in this popular quote from "Manhattan":

"Why is life worth living? It's a very good question. Um... Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. uh... Like what... okay... um... For me, uh... ooh... I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... uh... um... and Wilie Mays... and um... the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony... and um... Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues... um... Swedish movies, naturally... Sentimental Education by Flaubert... uh... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... um... those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne... uh... the crabs at Sam Wo's... uh... Tracy's face... "