TV review: Imagine - Woody Allen: A Documentary Part One

In recent years the 77-year-old actor, writer and director's films have mainly been in a more serious vein, but the two-hour programme (BBC1) made by Robert Weide and presented as part of the Imagine series offered a wealth of the early Allen material including archive clips of his television comedy work before he made the move into movies.

A host of famous names including fellow director Martin Scorsese, co-star and former lover Diane Keaton, old friend and actor Tony Roberts, family members and film insiders helped tell the story of how Brooklyn-born Allan Konigsberg became bespectacled comedian, playwright, author and clarinet player Woody Allen.

The documentary maker succeeded in getting the sometimes publicity shy auteur to open up about his early life and what led him to pursue a career in entertainment rather than become the pharmacist his parents wanted him to be.

His love of his home city of New York, which plays a leading role in many of his best films, shone through and Allen was funny and frank about growing up there with his extended Jewish family and about how his love of writing developed.

He claimed much of what had been written about him over the years was 'mythological, exaggerated and downright untrue.'

It was at a classic movie theatre near the house where he was born that his love of cinema was rooted in him as he watched an 'astonishing' number of films in his youth.

His love of jazz music and the clarinet which he took up at 15 was also clearly established, with Allen shown playing with his musician friends in the cafe Carlyle in New York where he performs on Monday nights and prefers to attending the Academy Awards.

Allen also began writing jokes while still at school and sending them to the newspapers which printed them leading to him adopting his professional name and writing for radio and top comics.

He revealed that he still uses a battered German portable typewriter he bought at 16 for $40 to write all his scripts,

His career progressed rapidly from writing and directing sketches at American country clubs to becoming part of comic genius Sid Caesar's team of writers and then forging his own stand-up act in New York clubs and going on to become a US TV favourite.

He finally got his break into movies in 1965 by writing the script for What's New Pussycat? and including a role for himself, but the mangling of his witty script left him determined never to work in films again unless he could direct

Finally in 1969 with Take The Money and Run he had the chance to do just that and a series of hit comedies followed in the early seventies including Bananas, Sleeper and Love and Death.

It was Annie Hall in 1977, co-starring Diane Keaton who he first met in his stage play Play It Again Sam, which moved him on to another level.

"Until Annie Hall I was interested only in making the audience laugh. I sacrificed some of the laughs for a story about human beings," he explained.

It struck a chord with moviegoers and ended up winning four Oscars including best film, screenplay and director.

His first serious film Interiors was a lot less popular, but the black and white Manhattan – a love letter to New York packed with the music of Cole Porter and George Gershwin – was a return to top form. Strangely Allen didn't like the film when he had finished it and didn't want it released at first.

1980's Stardust Memories was less successful and saw Allen, who played a filmmaker having a nervous breakdown and constantly urged to go back to making funny films, accused of hostility to his audience as it received terrible reviews.

* Part two of Woody Allen: A Documentary is shown tonight on BBC1 at 10.35.

By John Corser