Review by Choice Review
Most of these 24 essays, each by a different critic and republished from hard-to-find sources including journals not associated with film studies, are first rate. Seven offer general treatments, relating Woody Allen to schlemiels, Manhattan, comedies, theology, etc. In this category, a rigidly unsmiling analysis of Allen's self-deprecation as a Jew is brilliant and keeps company with Sander Gilman's Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews (CH, Sep'86). The remaining 17 essays look at individual films. Half of these essays are exhilarating because of sharp and loving insights; the others, because of generous quoting or detailed reminders of movie scenes, are laugh-out-loud cheerful or solemnly academic or theological. The book simply cannot lose. It joins the myriad books of Allen criticism, most notably Sam Girgus's The Films of Woody Allen (CH, Sep'93, 31-0206). ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. P. H. Stacy emeritus, University of Hartford
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
