Barbara Kopple’s 1998 documentary on filmmaker Woody Allen’s 1996 tour of Europe with his New Orleans Jazz Band (reputedly 18 concerts, and seven countries, in 23 days), Wild Man Blues, is one of the most pointless, dull, and utterly inert documentaries I’ve ever seen. I’ve long been a fan of Allen’s films, and even his worst films (see The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion) are a cut or three above their typical Hollywood counterparts. And Kopple is a noted documentarian of quality (see Harlan County, USA). But, this film is nothing but a manifest ploy to rehabilitate the man’s image after his 1991 scandal of splitting up with actress Mia Farrow and shacking up with her daughter.
Documentaries are supposed to enlighten and give insight into their subject matter. This film does not, even at a bloated hour and 45 minutes in length. This could have been cut to an hour, with ease, had most of the execrable jazz been cut. It’s not that the music is so bad as the fact that Allen and his compatriots are so utterly meager. Without Allen, the rest of the musicians could never have gotten a gig at a bar mitzvah.
The truth is that the music was just a diversion for Allen to get his side of the scandal out into the public. We see, of course, Soon-Yi Previn (who later married Allen), and she is portrayed as not quite there (and sometimes seems autistic), emotionally nor intellectually. This great difference in intellect, age, and attitudes (she’s not a fan of Allen’s earlier films, and - at least, then - has not seen Annie Hall) lends credence to many of the anti-Allen crowd, and this might not be so glaring if Previn were a babe — say, a Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman. Instead, she looks sort of like an Oriental Christina Ricci, replete with bulging fetal forehead. We also get snippets of Allen’s sister, Letty Aronson, and parents, Nettie and Martin Konigsberg (then in their 90s), but the parents come only at the film’s end, when the tour is done, and the whole segment of Nettie kvetching about Soon-Yi not being a good Jewish girl feels staged.
Article comments
1 - John
What a pathetic review. The focus was on his tour, not his professional career. It was not about rehabilitating anything - it simply showed him as he was during the tour. The band plays "crude" jazz they way it was played in New Orleans. The musicians are great and do play elsewhere. It's a shame that your review suggests the documentary was made for any purpose other than to give some background on the tour.
2 - Dan Schneider
'Documentaries are supposed to enlighten and give insight into their subject matter'
Assume your point is correct: 'to give some background on the tour.'
There was none, and where were the in depth interviews w other band members?
If this had been the Joe Schlabotnick Dixieland Revue, Kopple would not have been there.
So, your claim is invalid.