Woody Allen on Interiors

[@anitaitisanita8549]

As an ex New Yorker from my college years, I saw "Interiors" for the first time tonight on Amazon. What a shock to discover. I'm a lifelong fan of Woody Allen's films, why did I miss/avoid this 46 years ago? Date is everything. My father died a few months before its release of August '78. I can guess at the time I would have run a mile after the reviews of this morose subject. Ah today, what an accomplishment it is. Serious Woody Allen, it's a rare marvel of acting and staging.

[@joeyhernandez5382]

Woody Allen's best. It would truly take a genius to make a move both so melancholy and elegant at the same time. This truly is my favorite film - ever. I strongly feel that this was Geraldine Page's best performance, most deeply emotional, and even out shined her acting in the movie "The Trip to Bountiful", which was also excellent. I don't care how many people said that this movie was "depressing". It's just the best, anyway. I don't get tired of this one.

[@joeyhernandez5382]

+joey hernandez Pardon me, "movie".

[@madamzajj980]

+joey hernandez E.G. Marshall is outstanding, too. But I agree with you.

[@joeyhernandez5382]

+Madam Zajj Yes, he certainly is! They all were so excellent. Movie magic i just don't see anymore.

[@marcio_LG]

"Interiors", as "The Other" and "September", is Woody Allen paying homage to the great Bergman. And these 3 movies are really really good! I like the majority of Allen's movies and "Interiors" for me is the best of all!

[@garyb3397]

I don't agree it's Allen's "best", but it's pretty damn near close. What I can't get past is how dissatisfied HE is with it! He has really only expressed negative comments about it, but I find it unique, brilliantly realized, and astonishingly acted. Tremendous details to these characters. And there's no "fat" per se; it's a lean script, and one can glean something new every viewing. And there's hope in the ending.

[@spb7883]

I’ve been on the outside looking into this film, so to speak. I grew up aspiring to associate with people like the daughters and their family: intellectual, aesthetic, valuing art, music, literature, and culture. But growing up working class, when I finally met people like the daughters and their family, *I occupied* the position of the Stapleton character. This sort of class conflict is something rare in film. Allen - with his lower class Brooklyn origins but upper class Manhattan aspirations - is one of the few filmmakers who can address it.

[@TIPTON340]

Criterion Collection should produce a box set of Woody's three dramas: Interiors, September, and Another Woman.

[@xtradelite903]

I love the thematic angle in that it doesn’t deal with depression head-on, but rather with its affects on the family. A familiarity and clarity that perhaps an audience can relate to.

[@tfcoleman]

My very favorite Woody Allen film. I have watched this several times and takeaway something different with each viewing.

[@zenpaganwarrior]

I think it is his most powerful and moving film, and perhaps his most "European". Always looks and reads true. Too true for some?

[@purecharm459]

I haven't seen this film in at least twenty years, but it had a strong impact on me. Eve was so cold. Maureen stapleton in that red dress, coming into that frozen family, like blood returning to a dead body.

[@melmingin8445]

Great movie and terrific performances from everyone!

[@zaodizao]

Such a brilliant Woody Allen movie

[@jenniferrobin2988]

This film speaks to me, it's familiar, and I can relate to these characters' emotions. Thanks for posting this. I wish someone would post the entire movie.

[@bluecollarlit]

It's on Amazon prime, 1.20.2020

[@meganspark5900]

It's so powerful to see Pearl coming out to witness and rescue on the beach, that red robe blowing in the wind. I can imagine the girls either floundering themselves, or starting anew. The father would make it because he was accepting what Pearl offered with open arms. Coarse as she was, hers was a hand from across the divide. Great film.

[@xtradelite903]

I love how Stapleton and Page, both power-house actresses, play totally opposite characters. They both worked well off of each other in many ways.

[@DavidAndersen84]

A lot of people struggle with the quiet in this film. Gene Sickle himself complained about the one note time of the first two acts of Interiors. I grew up in a quiet home, where everything was controlled. I understand it. I know it.

[@redgravemirren]

Who's Gene Sicle? Google couldn't find anyone by that name.

[@snowpea10]

@@redgravemirren Siskel

[@jim5746]

Very good point, you are 100 percent correct.

[@jim5746]

​@@redgravemirrenMovie critic.

[@castelodeossos3947]

Straight out of school when I first saw this film and was mesmerised. What came across most powerfully to me was the utter emptiness of their beautiful lives, reflected in those barren interiors and empty vases -- the mother and all her daughters. Sign of a true master that the Mr Allen allows the effect of the full-blooded woman on the daughters to remain unknown, instead of giving us the answer.

[@giggie]

the scene with pearl dancing is the best !!!! the edits are amazing !!!! too funny ...

[@TheFadingMan]

One of my favorite movies of all times.

[@starsareangels]

This to me is Woody Allen's magnum opus but it goes unrecognized because it's so understated and came right after Annie Hall. It's a fantastic take on familial dysfunctionality.

[@rui-tj5pd]

Interiors is my favorite film of woody allen's , then annie hall.

[@benfine3191]

great to hear woody's thoughts on his own movies. Far superior to what some critic has to say... He really operates on a level that some critics either don't get or don't want to discuss. I'll need to watch this one again some day. I'd really love to be a fly on the wall during Woody's childhood... How could he be so perceptive about things unless he lived through them? He would have made a great shrink - if he wasn't so preoccupied with himself.

[@superfuzzymomma]

My favorite Woody Allen film

[@jimmyl324]

one of allen's best films!!!!!!!!!!

[@ryanjavierortega8513]

God, I love this film.

[@sspirits8]

I agree-this is one of my favorite Woody Allen films.

[@ElspethChagallBelamiBella]

This film was brilliant and one of my favorite Woody Allen's films. I love his comedies but when he does dramas, he does in such a cerebral way it's wonderful. It really wasn't stealing from Bergman so much as he was slightly burrowing his esthetic but this film is totally Allen's. Completely his.

[@nityaa1603]

Genius. Loved this movie. Mirrored my life.

[@BuckWinthrop]

an epic film.

[@MTVMANN]

This film reminds me so much of Chekov's "Three Sisters".

[@SusanSingsSongs]

I would love to see this movie and just cant find it...Hoping someone will post it on YT.

[@xtradelite903]

Oh, and one more thing. Twice Mr. Allen goes to the setting of the ocean. Very powerful and very revealing.

[@javaddoozandeh4157]

During watching this movie I was thinking about Yasujiro Ozu all the time especially at the first and the last scenes

[@johnayalachef]

Love this film. I was an acting student at the time and it informed me of the beauty of writing. It was about the in-between moments, glances and pauses. A breath, it also opened my eyes to the blocking of actors in a scene and photography. Now as an adult, with my mother having passed. I see another thread. Menopause and how a woman deals with it, they response of the spouse and children, especially female children. My mother had severe depression from menopause so I wonder if this was built into the movie but not spoken on because it's a man dramatizing a woman’s health and being trivialised.

[@Autostade67]

Okay, now I am officially in love with you!!! You totally HAD me - and that is RARE, RARE, RARE! I hope somebody is lucky enough for you to making their life a total joy! Why in hell don't they make more of you?

[@user-xs3og8us3d]

Hierarquia.

[@JamesBRecycle]

Wish the audio and video on this matched up better. The movie itself is fantastic.

[@federicaeletti4594]

impressive. Really a good one

[@CIOWhitepapers]

The family's profound sense of suffocation. From once being in awe of a discerning, talented mother to her becoming the warden in a prison of sensory/intellectual depravation.

[@Prokifiev]

@susuemikado "Interiors" is released by MGM Home Entertainment. I bought my copy from HMV online

[@brutonano9521]

A great movie, human dialouge at it's best.

[@briankooker2627]

Should have won an Academy Award for Outstanding Use of Duct Tape.

[@SusanSingsSongs]

@aishikura thank you :)

[@purveyoroffinefoodslaszlo9955]

Yeah, think it's his best as well, I'd put Crimes and Misdemeanors up there as well, particularly for its writing. But this film is perfection. Generational affliction has never been captured so brilliantly, or painfully.

[@Autostade67]

Oh, puh-leez...and you can hate me for this: this movie is über-camp! It's such fun you can't get through it without laughing. When Renata has her neurotic moment where she feels her mortality closing in...Joey and her "I feel such rage 'tord you!!! The affected way everyone has of talking ("I'm not far from the age when mother first showed signs of strain." ) And the lack of ambiguity...Eve really does off herself: I initially though it was Joey's fantasy. P.S. I love this movie; really!

[@SomethingReal1119]

Many ppl hated this movie...either they didnt get it or they criticized Allen's character development and thought he was stealing from Bergman. I loved it. It made me so sad; and I thought it was a pretty decent study in mental illness and how it affects the family dynamic. For the time period in which it was made, movies heavy in psychological themes were really in their infancy.

[@SusanSingsSongs]

@Prokifiev thanks much

[@AubsArts]

Is anybody aware as to where this is originally sourced from?

[@christopherkolasa]

+Aubrey Simpson This is from Woody Allen A life in Film (2002). Theres also another great doc he discussed his films in called American Masters A Documentary (2011)

[@AubsArts]

Christopher Kolasa Thank you Sir!

[@joeyhernandez5382]

This movie is totally irrevocable.

[@DeepScreenAnalysis]

+joey hernandez - will you PLEASE NOT.... BREATHE so hard?!!!

[@joeykremple]

Wait, BOB HOPE WAS IN INTERIORS?!? 5:09

[@crismerton9295]

What is this interview from?

[@jim5746]

Geraldine Page should have won the Oscar for this.

[@sterlinghayden4096]

Nice job Wood man.

[@mikek6014]

woody's ode to bergman

[@3001st]

+mike k Bergman's influence is clear here. This may be Allen's most serious movie.

[@TIPTON340]

@pandorabangles -- Interiors came out August of 1978 little more than a year since the release of Annie Hall, a HUGE hit for Allen. So I suppose it was a bit of a culture shock for audiences who were used to Allen's humor in Sleeper, Take the Money and Run or Bananas. As for Steve Martin, his career is faultering severly in my view by not giving orginial material over empty remakes of films that were better off left alone.

[@MrJeanBaguette]

I wished Allen made more movies like this (or like crimes and dismeanors). I guess he got rejected by the critics and the general audience and went back to his "funny" movies.

[@devinreese1109]

The true pronunciation of writer is "Writah."

[@joshuahomme1]

"rigidly tasteful", yet i loved it. i know, not the point but the atmospherics carried the movie for me.

[@MrBillcale]

i'm 53 i was 18 when i saw annie hall it changed my life..interiors is sh*t midnight in paris was the bomb

[@MrJeanBaguette]

i love broadway danny rose and interiors is the shit, too.

[@christinematos3674]

You are a fucking genius!!!

[@Autostade67]

I happen to agree with your personal response to the film; I in no way would try to convince you to feel otherwise. I am merely trying to point out that it is possible to elevate this film to a greater stature (because, let's face it, it is not as highly regarded as some people would like to believe) by saying that if it is approached as "camp" - and I'm talking Sontag camp, not "Desperate Housewives" camp - it becomes an astonishingly rich work. I seem to be in the minority in this, er, camp.

[@steveconn]

Woody a top grade dramatist. You think you can pin him down artistically and you just can't.

[@therealsmalk]

It irks me how he can be so dismissive of some of his obviously amazing films, like Manhattan, and then turn around and be so salient on another great film like Interiors. I suppose that just comes with being a great artist.

[@yak6ex]

Is the line "I feel such rage toward you" suppose to sound so stiff and wooden?

[@DeepScreenAnalysis]

@Autostade67 - didn't you see what I was doing?! I TOTALLY agree with you! This film is a campfest!

[@MrJeanBaguette]

Love this comment.

[@ryanjavierortega8513]

I think the entire film is set up the way Allen says, "a perfect order" - perhaps that 'perfect order' applies to emotions, as well.

[@Autostade67]

Odd, I seem to be a vulgarian with a degree in film and art history,which, agree or not with my opinions (because they are opinions, not laws) qualifies me to appraise this film as I have. I NEVER said it wasn't a fine work - indeed I feel it to be one of Allen's best. I also never said it was a comedy - far from it, but what makes it camp is the exorbitant stretch of its aesthetic and thematic reach beyond its textual and plastic execution.

[@yak6ex]

Interiors

[@clacclackerson3678]

I loved this film when I first saw it way back. I recently watched it again and have changed my mind. Comes over heavy-handed, even ham-fisted. A lot of the dialogue is embarrassing. Still looks great though.

[@robroy6072]

A pivot point in the decline of America.

[@nomiddlenamenmn427]

Love most of Allen’s films, but I cringe when he refers to a woman as a girl. Few people refer to men as boys. Some do, but mostly it is women referred to as girls. How is the second wife a vulgarian? Woody is right when he says he should have brought in Maureen Stapleton earlier in the film. New mom, but sadly stuck with same old dad. Interesting and intriguing. New mom is their only ray of hope. I wonder if the afterlife believes in Allen.

[@09nob]

pretentious seems to be the code for I don't get it and that makes me mad these days

[@MrJeanBaguette]

watch the "dramas" of nowadays and then talk about pretensious.

[@joshuataylor6087]

Did he just ruin the ending?

[@ChickenChowMein77]

it must be so sad to be so limited and dull

[@libraryofthelabyrinth]

yerejay who?

[@MrBillcale]

a complete pile of pretentious doggie doo

[@libraryofthelabyrinth]

William Sands nope

[@MrBillcale]

@jerryhello100 an awful movie.. but see midnight in paris..possibly the best movie i have ever seen... ah paris..

[@MrBillcale]

again interiors was horid people threw things at the screen