The biggest new release on DVD today is the boxed set Preston Sturges: The Filmmakers Collection, an awkwardly titled collection of some of the best comedies ever made, including Sullivan's Travels and Hail the Conquering Hero. It unfortunately doesn't include The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek or Unfaithfully Yours, and regrettably does include The Great Moment, an unwise excursion into earnest biopic country, but all in all, essential stuff.
Film historians prattle on about the tragedy of Sturges' career, from hotshot screenwriter in the thirties to acclaimed director in the forties, but his career was surprisingly brief. Did the well of inspiration simply dry up, was he destroyed by the studio system, or did critics not appreciate his savage wit? Probably a combination of all three, but when modern-day critics decry the treatment of Sturges, I think of the treatment contemporary critics gave Woody Allen's Scoop, which is also out today on DVD.
True, this is a minor effort from Allen, and he's largely just doing a riff on themes from his previous picture, Match Point. But when this came out, there was an amazingly level of hostility in many of the reviews, most of it directed at Allen's screen persona, basically angry that he's still doing the nebbishy neurotic Jew routine, or more accurately, angry at the persona itself, as if he should be something other than what he is. Get off the stage, old man, your act is tired.
To me, Scoop felt like the work of an old vaudevillian trying to show the kids how it's done. There's a lot in it that's genuinely funny. But even if there wasn't, hasn't Allen earned the right to do what he wants? Let me put it this way: Take The Money And Run, Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, The Purple Rose Of Cairo, Hannah And Her Sisters, Bullets Over Broadway--an astonishingly long run of some of the finest comedies commited to film. Sure, there are a lot of clunkers along the way--my least favorite would be Alice--but even when Allen makes a movie that doesn't quite work, like Everyone Says I Love You, it's marked by a level of intelligence and craftsmanship that's simply not present in even the best contemporary comedies.
So even though I wouldn't put Scoop up there with Zelig or Broadway Danny Rose, it's a perfectly enjoyable movie. Perhaps film historians of the future will observe the way the critical tide turned against Woody Allen, and it will seem every bit as inexplicable as the treatment Preston Sturges received in his lifetime.
