Review of Interiors (1978) by Kenneth L — 27 Nov 2010

This movie definitely has some strong points, but I think overall it's one of Woody Allen's least successful movies. It came immediately after the major success of Annie Hall, and was Allen's attempt to prove that he could create a serious film and not just comedy.

I think he manages it ok, but I'm definitely glad that he's mostly stuck to comedy in the years since. The biggest problem with this movie is that it's a bit too obvious and the dialogue a bit too unrealistic.

The movie is often compared to the work of Ingmar Bergman or Anton Chekov, but it's missing a big part of what makes Chekov work so well: in Chekov, major emotional dramas are indeed going on, but they're buried underneath layer of banalities in the dialogue.

Chekov has a gift for making us see what's going on without having to tell us outright. In this film, Woody's characters more often than not just say what they're feeling outright in a way that is both less realistic and less effective than Chekov's technique.

For example, in Chekov, characters will talk about, say, a toy, and it will become clear that they're really talking about jealousy, or something. Here, the characters just say things like, "You never could stand our mother!" or "Oh, I'm feeling so guilty.

" It just isn't as elegant as what Chekov does. That's not to say that the movie's a total failure, as some critics of Allen have claimed. I do think he got some of the characterizations better than others.

Geraldine Page is heartbreaking as the disturbed mother at the center of the story. She definitely deserved the Oscar nomination she got for the movie. Perhaps not coincidentally, her lines all have much more of the subtlety of Chekov than do those of most of the other characters.

Maureen Stapleton, who also got an Oscar nomination, also does a great job as the similarly well-written woman who replaces Page's character in marriage. For the rest of the cast, they all do the best they can (Mary Beth Hurt in particular is really good), but they're limited by their too-expository dialogue.

For everything Allen missed in the writing, though, I do think he managed to hit the right tone and look for the film. There are lots of very long, unbroken shots that contribute to a realistic feel. The set design, also Oscar-nominated, is very different from what he usually works with.

In Annie Hall or Manhattan, the characters live in apartments filled with tons of interesting books and records and knick-knacks, which indicates how cultured and clever they are. Here, all of the characters' homes are sparsely-decorated, painted mostly white with a few very pale colors.

Their homes are cold, antiseptic, and hollow, just like their lives, get it? It's maybe a little obvious, but it makes its point. I am a huge fan of Woody Allen (I'm writing one of my seminar papers exclusively about his work, another seminar paper is 1/3 about his work, and another is 1/4 about it), but I think this particular movie, to the extent that it works, does so largely in spite of Allen and not because of him.