September
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Movie Reviews of September
Movie Review: Like a Play
Summary: 4 Stars
Never mind what the others think. This is a great little movie, with the usual fantastic jazz soundtrack. The mother is the best character because she seems to have had a life and still has a personality. The others are a bit wishy-washy, especially Mia Farrow. You can see why Woody had his fill of her. Beautiful interiors of a perfect Vermont country house. You'll laugh when the mother throws some house-hunters out. There are laughs in this picture.Movie Review: first approach to woody allen
Summary: 4 Stars
i like this movie! it was my first allen movie, i was fascinated by mendelsons music,by the pictures of the nature. sometimes I'm dreaming of having a weekend like this in such a wonderful nature.Movie Review: from Lives Of The Over-Cultured
Summary: 3 Stars
Time has been kind to Woody Allen's September, a non-comedic film which met with pronounced critical and popular apathy upon its initial release in 1987. At the time, Allen was riding a resurgence of popularity following Hannah & Her Sisters (1986) and Radio Days (1987), two optimistic comedies that regained the director a portion of the audience he had lost after a series of idiosyncratic Eighties projects, including the brilliant Stardust Memories (1980), the underrated A Midsummer's Night Sex Comedy (1982), Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), and The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985).
Upon release, September seemed remarkably crimped, reductive, and sterile in a manner in which his earlier dramatic effort, Interiors (1978), had not; and for the first time, Allen's self-cannibalization of earlier themes, plots, and jokes was blatantly apparent. Personal betrayal, a longstanding Allen theme, and one which was soon to dominate his own private and public life, was a dominant story element, as were frustrated WASPS belatedly angling after careers in the arts and anxious characters obsessed with the amoral nature of the universe.
If September was the weakest film Allen had then created, the decades since have seen the director create many more of a far weaker caliber. The Nineties would see his projects become so unpopular that few were given national release, a trend which continues into the present, despite Allen's millennial alliance with Dreamworks. While lacking the cohesive strength of a later-era Allen classic like Bullets Over Broadway (1994), today September views much more powerfully than the fragmented, mediocre Crimes And Misdemeanors (1989), which, like September, was dissembled and rebuilt from the ground up after initially being found unsatisfactory.
In many ways, September, which takes place in an off-camera Vermont, is a dark mirror reflection of A Midsummer's Night Sex Comedy, the earlier Allen project also set in a bucolic landscape. Like that film, September also revolves around six characters, most of whom are suffering the vicissitudes of unrequited love, though the median age here has shifted towards the geriatric. Like the earlier film, one character playfully believes that the spirit world is accessible and attempts contact with the dead (in fact, what appears to be the copper "spirit ball" from the 1982 film is clearly visible on a bookshelf in September's closing shots). As in A Midsummer's Night Sex Comedy, past violations of morality motivate the behavior of the characters in the present, and the threat of suicide hovers in the air. While the earlier film is appropriately set at "midsummer," September takes place not in September, but in "late summer"--the last week of August.
One of the film's obvious weaknesses is its frequently trite and cumbersome dialogue, and it is to the cast's credit that all of the actors, especially Dianne Wiest, who receives the lion's share of unutterable lines, deliver even the film's most stilted dialogue with an absolute minimum of self consciousness.
Upon release, most of the received critical attention focused negatively on the script's reliance on a scandalous tragedy from the classic era of Hollywood history for its denouement; today, however, it is easy to appreciate how well this episode is integrated into September and how little the film as a whole relies upon it as a device. In fact, Allen's script does a remarkable job of extrapolating the complex nuances of actual guilt and passive aggressive accusation in the pivotal scene.
Elaine Stritch gives an incredible and apparently effortless performance throughout September, but her work in the climactic scene may be one of the most perfect, if brief, examples of understated film acting ever recorded. As the blowsy, extroverted, and tactless Diane, Stritch beautifully combines the two mothers of Allen's Interiors-the first destructive, idealistic, and imperious, and the second vital but "common"--into one highly believable, multifaceted character who projects a shadow across the screen. In the comparatively thankless but nonetheless substantial role of Lane, the emotionally destitute daughter, Mia Farrow gives what may be her best performance in any Allen film.
September, which is scripted like a four-act play and was originally scheduled to be filmed in Farrow's Connecticut home, was shot completely on a studio set; though rain, thunder, croaking frogs, and crickets are heard intermittently, the Vermont landscape is never glimpsed, another factor which initially seemed to detract from the film. But today, especially when considering Allen's banal use of autumn foliage in his next project, Another Women (1988), the decision seems admirable.
Like A Midsummer's Night Sex Comedy, September is a small masterpiece worthy of serious reevaluation by critics and the public alike.
Movie Review: Oh, it's a long, long, while, from May to September
Summary: 3 Stars
Woody Allen made September after Radio Days, with its huge ensemble cast. After orchestrating that circus, he wanted to do a piece of chamber music. It is a serious drama with hardly any jokes. No jokes whatsoever. It is similar to Interiors, kind of a Chekhov play, or else maybe like something Ingmar Bergman would do. Interestingly, Woody shot the whole film with one cast, didn't like it, and did the whole thing over again with a mostly different cast. So, even though it was a much cheaper film to make with fewer characters and all of the action taking place in one location, a house in Vermont, it cost twice as much as it should have.
It must have meant a lot to Woody Allen to make this film, but the results are flat. Dianne Wiest, Jack Warden, Elaine Strich, Denholm Elliott, and the rest give good performances, but we are left with a depressing movie where nothing much happens. The score, plenty of jazz standards like Slow Boat to China played on piano, some even featuring Ben Webster on tenor sax and Art Tatum on piano, are nice, but you'd be better off just playing their records.
The background information about the characters is doled out sparingly, with a few bombshells dropped here and there. There is an amusing scene where Mia is trying to sell her house, and a Real Estate Agent brings some prospective buyers through. Jack Warden's character is a physicist who has some interesting things to say about the randomness of sub atomic particles, but his insights, like September, go nowhere.
Films and Roles of Denholm Elliott
A Room With a View (1985) .... Mr. Emerson, an English tourist
Alfie (1966) .... The Abortionist
Films and Roles of Dianne Wiest
Edward Scissorhands (1990) .... Peg
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) .... Holly
Films and Roles of Elaine Stritch
Autumn in New York (2000) .... Dolly
Monster-in-Law (New Line Platinum Series) (2005) .... Gertrude
Films and Roles of Mia Farrow
Rosemary's Baby (1968) .... Rosemary Woodhouse
The Great Gatsby (1974) .... Daisy Buchanan
Films and Roles of Sam Waterston
Interiors (1978) .... Mike
The Great Gatsby (1974) .... Nick Carraway
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) .... Ben
Films and Roles of Jack Warden
From Here to Eternity (1953) .... Cpl. Buckley
Shampoo (1975) .... Lester Carp
Movie Review: "The main emotion of the adult American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment."
Summary: 3 Stars
Made by Woody Allen in his serious mode, the drama "September" is not as impressive and fine as "Another Woman" but it is still an interesting movie. Chekhov said once about the characters in his plays, "People sit at the table, drink tea, talk politics, and at the same time their hearts get broken". In this regard, Allen's "September' is a very Chekhovian movie ("Uncle Vanya" comes to mind first). The film takes place inside a country house in Vermont where several characters, friends and relatives of Lane (Mia Farrow), a fragile and troubled young woman recovering from a nervous breakdown, get together for a rainy weekend in the end of the Summer. The weekend will be filled with the drinks, conversations, tender and delicate music. Six characters will fell in and out of love; the friendships will be betrayed, the hearts will be broken, a hidden family secret will come out. Along with the characters, we will reflect on love, mother-daughter complicated relationship, family secrets, aging, loneliness, longing, emotional crises, and self doubt as six cultured and intelligent individuals will try to find the meaning and the purpose in their lives. The film brings to mind John Cheever's observation: "The main emotion of the adult American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment." There are a lot of disappointments, regrets and unhappiness in the characters of "September" but the weekend will be over, the rain will stop. There will be the possibility of hope in the future. The sun always comes after the rain.
3.5/5 (or 7/10)