Peter J. Bailey & Sam B. Girgus 
A Companion to Woody Allen 

Edited by two renowned Allen experts, A Companion to Woody
Allen presents a collection of 26 original essays on the
director’s films. Contributions offer a number of divergent
critical perspectives while expanding the contexts in which his
work is understood.

* A timely companion by the authors of two of the most important
books on Allen to date

* Illuminates the films of Woody Allen from a number of divergent
critical perspectives

* Explores the contexts in which his work should be
understood

* Assesses Allen’s remarkable filmmaking career from its
early beginnings and investigates the conflicts and contradictions
that suffuse it

* Discusses Allen’s recognition as a global cinematic
figure

Table of Content

Notes on Contributors viii

Acknowledgments xii

Introduction 1

Peter J. Bailey

Part I Biography/Autobiography/Auteurism 13

1 The Stand-up Auteur 15

Cecilia Sayad

2 Which Woody Allen? 35

Colleen Glenn

3 Woody Allen and France 53

Gilles Menegaldo

4 ‘Raging in the Dark’: Late Style in Woody
Allen’s Films 73

Christopher J. Knight

5 A Difficult Redemption: Facing the Other in Woody
Allen’s Exilic Period 95

John Douglas Macready

6 Comic Faith and Its Discontents: Death and the Late Woody
116

Robert M. Polhemus

Part II Movies about the Movies 145

7 Critical Theory and the Cinematic World of Woody Allen
147

Stephen Papson

8 Crimes and Misdemeanors: Reflections on Refl exivity 170

Gregg Bachman

9 Play it Again, Woody: Self-Reflexive Critique in Contemporary
Woody Allen Films 188

Claire Sisco King

10 Jazz Heaven: Woody Allen and the Hollywood Ending 207

Christopher Ames

Part III Allen and His Sisters: Cultural Critiques
227

11 ‘Here . . . It’s Not Their Cup of Tea’:
Woody Allen’s Melodramatic Tendencies in Interiors,
September, Another Woman, and Alice 229

Cynthia Lucia

12 ‘It’s Complicated, Really’: Women in the
Films of Woody Allen 257

Joanna E. Rapf

13 Woody Allen’s Grand Scheme: The Whitening of Manhattan,
London, and Barcelona 277

Renée R. Curry

14 Love and Citation in Midnight in Paris: Remembering
Modernism, Remembering Woody 294

Katherine Fusco

Part IV Influences/Intertextualities 319

15 Taking the Tortoise for a Walk: Woody Allen as Flâneur
321

William Brigham

16 Lurking in Shadows: Kleinman’s Trial and Defense
339

Iris Bruce

17 Woody Allen and the Literary Canon 359

William Hutchings

18 ‘Who’s He When He’s at Home?’: A
Census of Woody Allen’s Literary, Philosophical, and Artistic
Allusions 381

J. Andrew Gothard

19 The Schlemiel in Woody Allen’s Later Films 403

Menachem Feuer

20 Barcelona: City of Refuge 424

Brian Bergen-Aurand

Part V Philosophy/Religion 441

21 Woody Allen and the (False) Dichotomy of Science and Religion
443

Mark T. Conard

22 The Philosopher as Filmmaker 460

David Detmer

23 Disappearing Act: The Trick Philosophy of Woody Allen
481

Patrick Murray and Jeanne A. Schuler

24 Love, Meaning, and God in the Later Films of Woody Allen
504

Sander Lee

25 Hollywood Rabbi: The Never-Ending Questions of Woody Allen
520

Monica Osborne

26 Allen’s Random Universe in His European Cycle:
Morality, Marriage, Magic 539

Richard A. Blake

27 Afterword: The Abyss: Woody Allen on Love, Death, and God
559

Sam B. Girgus

Index 573

About the author

Peter Bailey is Frank P. Piskor Professor of English at
St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where he has taught
American Literature, creative writing and film studies for 32
years. In addition to The Reluctant Film Art of Woody
Allen (2001), he is the author of Reading Stanley Elkin
(1986) and Rabbit (Un)Redeemed: The Drama of Belief in John
Updike’s Fiction (2006). He has also published on Frank
Conroy, Robert Coover, Joan Didion, Frederick Exley, John Irving,
and Ronald Sukenick, and he is secretary of the national John
Updike Society.

Sam B. Girgus is Professor of English at Vanderbilt
University. He is a prolific author whose publications
include The Films of Woody Allen (2nd edition, 2002) and
Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption: Time, Ethics, and the
Feminine (2010). He also has edited several works, including
The American Self: Myth, Ideology, and Popular Culture
(1981). He is a recipient of a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship
and other scholarly and teaching awards, and has lectured and
taught extensively in universities throughout America and the
world.