Woody Allen was born in 1935 in New York City and was raised in Midwood, Brooklyn. As a teenager he began writing jokes for the agent David O Alber who sold them to newspaper columnists. He was discovered by the stand up comic Milt Kamen, who got him his first writing job with Sid Caesar. After high school, he went to New York University where he studied film and communication but he was far from committed and was eventually expelled. He managed to land a job as a full-time writer for Herb Shriner, by the time he was nineteen he started writing scripts for the Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show and Caesar’s Hour. In 1961, he started a new career as a stand-up comedian, debuting in a club called Duplex in Greenwich Village becoming popular enough to appear on the cover of Life magazine in 1969. He also became a successful playwright on Broadway with the plays Don’t Drink the Water and Play it Again, Sam. During his first movie productions, Allen learnt that he needed to be in full control of production if he wanted to realise his artistic ambitions. All of Allen’s early films were screwball comedies that relied heavily on slapstick and non-stop one-liners. Annie Hall (1976) marked a major turning point in his career, it marked the beginning of a more mature and sophisticated brand of comedy. The film won four Academy Awards including Best Picture. In total, his films have earned him fourteen Academy nominations and three Oscars personally and his cast and crew have won six Academy awards. He regularly employs the same key crew - cinematographers Sven Nyquist, Gordon Willis and Carlo DiPalma; producer Jean Doumanian; and cast members -Diane Keaton, Alan Alda, Mia Farrow and Scarlett Johansson.

His movies are ridden with existential angst which is constantly undermined by absurdist humour. An overriding theme of Allen’s work is the gaining and losing of love and the bizarre merry-go-round that is the romance and the dating game. Many critics have drawn parallels with his work and the work of Sartre with regard to the impossibility of authentic romantic commitment. Woody throws piercing questions at us in the midst of our laughter and delight at capturing his quasi-intellectual entendres; he needles us about the absurd paradoxes of desire and morality, freedom and commitment, just doing it and nagging guilt. The real killer is after achieving the much sought after prize which satisfies our realist fantasies, the protagonist is not satisfied, our hopes are dashed, our erotic illusions shattered but perhaps this keeps the morals of the audience intact. Does this make us happy? Wistfully so, I would imagine. Woody always leaves us hopeful, characters in the main don’t take themselves very seriously to the core, though their dramatic outbursts attempt to tell us they do. Yes, they take love seriously and it means a lot at a specific time but if they lose it, they can always get it somewhere else again, the chase commences and the fantasy resumes. Lately, though Allen is losing his mirth, his latest films are not so bittersweet, we leave the cinema not so warm. Take Cassandra’s Dream - leaves you with a feeling akin to having watched the hellish Eastenders Sunday omnibus. Can the jokes no longer ebb the misanthropic beast that has always lingered within? I suppose it is always easy to be self-deprecatory about oneself when deep down you believe that in the end things will be work out fine, that in the end you will have learnt from your mistakes and therefore all the pain, angst and deflation was worth it, as it was leading to a final revelation and ultimately happiness. But perhaps after a continuous stream of broken dreams and failed relationships, the writer is now worn down, a creeping sense that this may never happen, most likely will not happen and therefore the jokes have shored up.