'80s Roulette: SEPTEMBER

Woody Allen working in a (very) minor key

I have (almost) every single movie released in theaters in the ‘80s in the United States on a hard drive, and once a week, I’m going to hit shuffle and review whatever film comes up first.

Welcome to ‘80s Roulette!

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DECEMBER 18, 1987

September
Denholm Elliott, Dianne Wiest, Mia Farrow, Elaine Stritch, Sam Waterston, Jack Warden, Ira Wheeler, Jane Cecil, Rosemary Murphy
cinematography by Carlo Di Palma
music by Susan E. Morse
screenplay by Woody Allen
produced by Robert Greenhut
directed by Woody Allen
Rated PG
1 hr 23 mins

A woman spends the summer in the country after a failed attempt at suicide and finds herself drawn into a complicated tangle of frustrated desire.

One of the things that gave Woody Allen room to be so prolific was the way he kept his budgets low and his schedules relatively brief. Because his movies weren’t expensive and he had a proven audience that would show up to pretty much everything, he got to make a film a year. Sometimes more than one. I know for me, I got used to the idea in the ‘80s and ‘90s that there was always something new by Allen, and while you had a general idea of what his films were like, you never knew exactly which Woody would show up. Sometimes the films were sillier, sometimes they were more serious. Sometimes they felt like he had a very particular idea, and sometimes it felt like he was just noodling around, trying to find a reason to make a movie. No filmmaker in the ‘80s was more prolific or more uneven. His highs were as high as anyone’s in the decade, with films like Hannah and Her Sisters or Crimes and Misdemeanors. But he was also perfectly capable of making a September.