Here’s a recently unearthed interview with the late William Friedkin who had nothing but immense praise for Woody Allen’s movies, or at least, his earlier ones. Going as far as to call him “the greatest living filmmaker.”
I’m not sure when and where this interview took place, but this video was posted around 20 months ago on YouTube, it’s a 2-minute excerpt — here’s Friedkin:
To me, the greatest living filmmaker is Woody Allen. Not so much the films he’s making now, but, again, many of films fail but he keeps going. Wouldn’t you love to make 1.5 films a year? Or maybe two like he does? His early films are modern American masterpieces. I don’t know if any of you have seen films like “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” “Broadway Danny Rose,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors”! Which is fantastic. Nobody in my time made a better film than that. A more important film, for me discussed in the same sentence as Dostoyevsky.
Most of the films Friedkin namechecks are from Allen’s greatest decade as a filmmaker, the 1980s. Don’t get me wrong, “Annie Hall” is from 1977 and that’s maybe his most influential film, but the following decade would be where Allen truly hit his artistic stride.
In the ‘80s, Allen was untouchable, there weren’t many other filmmakers who could come close to the brilliant films he made that decade: “Zelig,” “Broadway Danny Rose,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” “Radio Days,” and “Crimes and Misdemeanors”
One brilliant film after another. If you’re not well-versed with Woody Allen’s filmography then I would absolutely start with his ‘80s output.
In a 2020 interview with the Daily Mail, Allen stated “I still don’t feel I’ve made a great movie like Federico Fellini or Ingmar Bergman, nothing like ‘The Seventh Seal’ or ‘The Bicycle Thief.’ I won’t stop trying because although I’ve been reasonably successful I have never satisfied myself artistically. You don’t make a movie to win an award. Mozart never composed a symphony thinking about a trophy. If I get a chance and the virus abates, maybe before I die there is always the chance I will make a great film. But I haven’t done that yet.”
Although he’s been very hit and miss these last few decades, Allen can still make strong movies, he’s proved it with “Midnight in Paris” and “Blue Jasmine.” I also find “Irrational Man,” “Cafe Society” and “Wonder Wheel” to be some of his more underrated works.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.