Woody Allen: Six Films - 1979-1985

A must for Woody Allen fans. Simply superb - the highlights for me are Manhattan and Broadway Danny Rose. The transfers are a major improvement over the DVD releases, and the supplied hardback book is a nice touch.

A great box. Fun to go through these films.

You either are, or are not, a Woody Allen fan. I am. I know and respect many people who are not. And many more who are. If you don't know Woody Allen films then this collection is a good introductory way to get started on what for me has been virtually a lifetime's love affair with his work.Before I get going, I should say that there really is such a thing as a Woody Allen film - aside from the fact that Woody Allen himself is in many of them and that he had long-running collaborative relationships with many of the key creative contributors (Mia Farrow, Diane Keaton, Susan E. Morse, Gordon Willis etc), all of his films have a certain feeling of warm cynicism and healthy scepticism about the nobility of the human condition. They are also, almost always, very funny comedies.This collection of his films, from the end of the seventies through the first half of the eighties, includes one of his two masterpieces. 'Manhattan' was made shortly after his other great film, 'Annie Hall', and is a skillful coalescence of his script, his performance, the music of George Gershwin and the cinematography of Gordon Willis ('The Godfather').'Stardust Memories' was the first of several films he made about show business and was loosely based on Fellini's '8 and a half' and of which it is a parody. The other two show biz movies in this collection are 'The Broadway Danny Rose' where he plays a New York showbiz agent and 'The Purple Rose of Cairo'.Both 'Zelig' and 'The Purple Rose of Cairo' are technically interesting films combining the polished craft skills from his earlier films together with the sophisticated post-production techniques that were emerging in the eighties.In many ways the films in this collection represent a kind of a golden age in Woody Allen's immensely long film-making career. Unlike most film collections, where there are often a couple of duds included to make up the numbers, all six of these films are fine standalone motion pictures.Either side of the millennium, Allen's career went into a bit of a relative decline, only to re-emerge in the last half dozen years or so with a string of great films. Here I'm thinking in particular of 'Midnight in Paris' (Owen Wilson) and 'Blue Jasmine' (Cate Blanchett), both of which won Academy awards.So if you find yourself enjoying the films in this collection, you are certain to find many others elsewhere in his filmography (he made way over 50 films) that you'll also appreciate. 5 stars.