Woody Allen reaches 90 with the strength of an indispensable artist

Woody Allen doesn’t stop. The American filmmaker who turns 90 this Sunday, 30indicated that he would retire after releasing his 50th film, the good romantic comedy Lucky Strike in Paris (2024), but fortunately this will not be the case. Used to making films in Europe, he obtained financial support from the Madrid Government (around R$9 million) to record his next feature film in mid-2026.

But its prestige in the United States began to decline in the last ten years. The artist was the target of criticism due to the moral judgment involving his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his ex-partner Mia Farrow. When the case came to light, Farrow – protagonist of some of Allen’s greatest classics, such as The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) – tried to prove in court that the director had abused Dylan, the couple’s daughter. However, two independent investigations concluded that there was no evidence of abuse. In the wake of this, a biased HBO documentary, Allen contra Farrow (2021), tried to transform him into a monstrous sexual predator.

Even though he was acquitted, Allen was judged by cancel culture and lost work space in America, a fact that did not interfere in any way with his creative process. “I never really took it seriously because I never had to go to court. I just kept working and didn’t think about it. In practice, it never affected me in any way,” said the director in an interview with Estadão in 2024.

The complexity of relationships

The conversation with Allen, in fact, was an opportunity to address fundamental aspects of his work. The screenwriter explored the complexity of romantic relationships like no one else, especially through insecure characters. In the essentials Neurotic Groom, Nervous Bride (1977), Manhattan (1979) e Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), for example, the viewer is faced with the emotional contradictions between desire and fear, intimacy and freedom, in plots full of humor and melancholy.

In many of his films, fiction and reality mix. The New York master projected his novels onto screens with Diane Keaton (1946-2025) and Mia Farrow, casting them to reflect their respective personalities. While Keaton gave life to intelligent, ironic and independent women, Farrow was the image of more introspective and vulnerable figures. Another imperative fact to reinforce the director’s authorial identity was that he acted in many of his projects, representing men aligned with his neurotic, anxious and intellectual persona.

Appreciation for literature and jazz

Before becoming a reference in the seventh art, Allen stood out as a comedian, telling jokes in bars in Greenwich Village and writing sketches for TV shows. Some of his texts were published by the magazine The New Yorker and then collected into three volumes: Molten Cuca (1971), Without Feathers (1975) e How Crazy! (1980).

The appreciation for literature was resumed decades later. His tasty autobiography, About Nothing (2020), presents a modest look at an unparalleled trajectory in Hollywood. Self-labeled a “very lucky” man, he does not place himself, for example, in the same league as filmmakers like Kurosawa, Bergman or Fellini – names that influenced him much more than any American director.

An admirer of Machado de Assis, he recorded amusing prose in the book of stories Zero gravity (2023) and has just released his first novel, What’s With Baum? (not yet published in Brazil), which narrates the misadventures of a middle-aged Jewish writer in New York.

As if so much talent wasn’t enough, the star is an amateur clarinetist and plays regularly with jazz bands, having recorded the album Wild Man Blues (1998). Not surprisingly, he used music from this genre to create the intimate and comfortable atmosphere of his narratives.

For these and other reasons, as long as Allen, with the breath of an incancellable man, continues to produce what he knows best, we will continue to seek support in his work when life seems to be, in fact, “divided between the horrible and the miserable”.