Smiley and Hollywood Endings

This week's Friday film choices were the final two parts of the television adaptation of Smiley's People and the one Woody Allen film we had never seen: Hollywood Ending.














Image by cdrummbks via FlickrI should perhaps warn of potential SPOILERS ahead for anyone who hasn't seen these works despite their age.

We are sorry to say goodbye to George Smiley, played by Alec Guinness. This was a real TV classic and one which could probably not be made today as its pace is slow, it doesn't have a lot of violent action and the plot is fairly convoluted. The cast is excellent, from Guinness to Hepton, and gives us a silent Patrick Stewart, before the knighthood, as the series' overall villain: Karla. With Karla finally coming over we bid farewell to "The Circus" and Moscow Central and wonder what we will find to take its place.

Image via Wikipedia

A recent interview with Woody Allen reminded us that there was one of the canon that had never had a proper theatrical release here and that consequently we had never seen. I tracked down a cheap copy on-line and we made it the main feature of this week's notreallyfilmnight. Bizarrely this copy was in a double bill with Jeepers Creepers. I'm not sure what that says about the target audience (it was a Swedish copy) but I could not, for the life of me, come up with a logical reason for this combination.
Image via Wikipedia





Hollywood Ending turns out to be typical old school Woody, with himself cast in the lead and getting the girl, something that even he has finally had to acknowledge is no longer popular with his audience.

The premise here is that he, a film director fallen from favour, has a chance to redeem himself and save himself from financial disaster by directing a New York film: On the face of it right up his street.

The problem is that the producers are his ex-partner and the man she left him for. Nevertheless Woody gets the gig but on the first day is struck blind albeit with psychosomatic blindness.



Most of the rest of the film is taken up with his trying to continue to make the film despite the handicap and without letting anybody know so that he isn't removed from the job. In the process he re-bonds with his ex and gets involved in a number of slapstick set-pieces. There are some nice lines and a few good gags despite the unlikeliness of the premise. There are some interesting autobiographical references from our "auteur", rather a slap in the face for his devoted French fans included. Despite the best efforts of his foreign cameraman (in real life Woody has sometimes used his idol Ingmar Bergmann's cameraman Sven Nyquist) unsurprisingly a film made by a blind director is a mess. Nevertheless his French audience hail it a masterpiece of art and salvage his career. Making fun of his French audience, who in real life really do seem to appreciate his work rather more than domestic ones, struck me as a bit risky and it just occurs to me, probably completely fancifully, that there could be an element of apology in his recent homage to Paris.

Hollywood Ending perhaps harks back a little to Deconstructing Harry. We were of the opinion that it was typical old school Woody. Not of the first rank but far from the level of his worst work. We enjoyed it in fact.