85th anniversary of the creator of the genre of "intellectual comedy"
On December 1, 1935, in New York, in a Jewish family of descendants of Lithuanian and Austrian immigrants Martin Konigsberg, a jeweler and waiter, and his wife Nettie, an accountant in the family cookery, a son was born, who was named Allan Stewart at birth. At 17, Allan Stewart Konigsberg changed his name to Haywood Allen. And to his friends he was Woody. Under the name Woody Allen, he became famous throughout the world.
While still in school, at the age of 15, Woody Allen began earning money, and often his earnings exceeded the total income of his parents. The way to make money was writing anecdotes and publishing them through an agent in local newspapers. After graduating from high school in 1953, he entered New York University, where he began to study communications and filmmaking. But Allen soon dropped out of university. In 1954, he began to study the art of cinema at the City College of New York, but even here he could not hold out for more than one semester. Woody Allen realized that studying in the classroom was not for him, and began to take private lessons in drama from the famous dramatic theorist Lajos Egri.
The experience of writing anecdotes acquired from an early age, combined with the knowledge gained in the field of drama, led to the achievement of great success for the young Woody Allen in creating scripts for comedy shows for television, humorous stories and programs for popular comedians. Often Woody Allen himself successfully acted as a stand-up comedian. In 1965, Woody Allen made his film debut, so far only as a screenwriter and actor: he wrote the script and played one of the roles in the movie "What's New Pussycat?" directed by Clive Donner. One of the main roles in this film was played by Romy Schneider.
A year later, in 1966, Woody Allen's first and very specific directorial experience took place. He took the Japanese film "Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi no kagi (International Secret Police: Key of Keys)" as a basis, completely rewrote the script and re-dubbed this film with the help of American actors. The video sequence has remained practically unchanged, but the content has changed significantly. Thus, the film "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" Finally, in 1969, Woody Allen directed his first, completely independent, full-length feature film, "Take the Money and Run".
For his 85th birthday, Woody Allen has directed 48 feature films on his own. In the overwhelming majority of them, he acted not only as a director, but also as a screenwriter and as an actor. And most of these films are attributed by film critics to the genre, of which Woody Allen is considered the founder - intellectual comedy.
Woody Allen's multifaceted cinematic career has earned him a total of 144 film awards and 226 nominations, among which the most honorable are the following: 3 Academy Awards, 3 Golden Globes, 8 BAFTA awards, Silver Bear of the Berlin Film Festival, 5 Danish Bodil awards, Palme d'Or Cannes Film Festival, 2 French Cesars, 5 Italian David di Donatello awards, Spanish Goya award, 2 San Sebastian Film Festival awards, Golden Lion and the Pasinetti Prize of Venice Film Festival.
7 films from the total number of films shot by Woody Allen entered the Golden Thousand. Thanks to this indicator, Woody Allen is included in the list of the 100 greatest directors in world cinema, compiled by FilmGourmand.
As usual, in honor of the birthday of the great Master of Cinema, we would like to remind fans of his work with shots from his best films included in the Golden Thousand.
