Year: 1971
Director: Woody Allen
Country: US
Language: English
The first Woody Allen Picture I viewed was Annie Hall in high school. There was something about the man's comedy melodrama that left me in awe and inspired me to keep watching the rest of his filmography. Since then I have viewed the vast majority of his work, but somehow missed much of his pre Annie Hall works. This year I corrected that mistake, most recently viewing the outlandish Bananas.
When a bumbling New Yorker (Woody Allen) is dumped by his activist girlfriend, he travels to a tiny Latin American nation and becomes involved in its latest rebellion.
Released in 1971 Bananas is Woody Allen's second movie as writer, director, star. One of his earliest films, it is infused with his trademark wit and his absurd film-making style. Bananas demonstrates what an inventive and nimble physical comic he is and is funny enough to overcome the fact that every character except Allen's and Lasser's is completely one dimensional.
Some scenes feel like they would be straight out of a silent comedy & one scene is directly a parody of the USSR picture Battleship Potemkin (1925). Granted, in addition to physical comedy, Allen's writing is suberb as his lines are quite memorable. "I object, your honor! This trial is a travesty. It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham." It mocks the politics of the time, but gets away with it due to being so charming.
Many television shows, most notably American Dad, have paid homage to this wonderful Woody Allen picture. Though it's less sophisticated and far more crude than his later endeavors (Annie Hall is miles better than Bananas) I like this film and would certainly re-visit it in the future.
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