September
Director: Woody Allen. Cast: Mia Farrow, Elaine Stritch, Dianne Wiest, Sam Waterston, Jack Warden, Denholm
Elliott. Screenplay: Woody Allen.
The least fashionable thing you can possibly say about Woody Allen's films, even to fellow fans of his
work, is that you enjoyed or appreciated his film September. Few of Allen's films have taken such a
unilateral drubbing from critics and audiences alike, possibly because critics were essentially the only
audience this film ever had. Plenty of other details seem to corroborate the arguments that
September was a troubled production and a subpar effort. Mia Farrow, whose excellent memoir What
Falls Away makes no effort to impugn Allen's artistic talents, reports nonetheless that Allen filmed
two or three revisions of almost every scene in September—then, when he took all his "revised"
footage to the editing room, he decided he hated all of it, rewrote the entire script, fired and recast
almost every major part, and started from scratch, doubling his expected costs and coming in way behind
schedule. Moreover, it rarely bodes well when this one-per-year filmmaker suddenly comes up with two
films in the same twelve-month period; look what happened when he tried to squeeze Shadows and Fog in early '92 before he jumped full throttle into Husbands
and Wives. Yikes.
I have to say, though, that while it does rank among his more emotionally pallid pictures, and certain
speeches and passages are rather inert, September is hardly an embarrassment. Even more than that,
September would almost surely have received its fair share of praise and attention had another
director produced it. I have no idea why Allen gets bushwhacked by even his fan-base every time he tries
to make a non-comedy. He is constantly accused of aping Bergman, as if no dimension of American existence
or moviemaking could possibly allow a mutuality of themes between two of the world's most accomplished,
and angst-ridden, directors. As in Allen's pioneering dramatic film, Interiors, the Bergman film most quickly brought to mind by
September, with its multiple shots of characters in doorways and its periodic fades to black, is
Cries and Whispers. If Allen's film does not approach anything like the emotional tsunami of
Bergman's film, it's because he holds back into quieter situations between less demonstrative and
guilt-ridden characters. Sure, it is also the case that Allen is not always making a compelling or even a
coherent point with all of September's dialogue, but if you've ever watched Cries and
Whispers with attention only to the dialogue, you'd realize that verbal articulation was not exactly
the linchpin of Bergman's dramas either.
Despite this much-commented-upon ancestry, September springs in equal parts from two other
strikingly disparate sources: the rueful, bucolic dramas of Chekhov and the seamy private life of Lana
Turner. The most prominent of September's six characters is Mia Farrow's Lane, an ugly duckling
piner-away in the Chekhovian tradition of mousy, unrequited lovers like Varya in The Cherry Orchard
or Sonya in Uncle Vanya. Attempting to recover from a suicide attempt that occurred before the film
begins, we now find Lane sequestered away for a period of rest in her Vermont cabin. She has invited her
best friend Stephanie (Dianne Wiest) to stay with her, but she also has the company of a neighbor, Howard
(A Room With a View's Denholm Elliott) and a tenant, Peter (Sam Waterston) to draw her out. Her
relationships with these two men, however, could scarcely be more different; Howard loves her without any
hope of reciprocation, while she feels a similarly dead-end attraction to the would-be writer Peter.
The Lana Turner connection—specifically from the incident when Lana's teenage daughter shot her mother's
gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanto—appears in the guise of a similar, enigmatic incident that occurred
among the Farrow and Stritch characters and a lover that Stritch had earlier in life. When this particular
old wound is clawed at by mother and daughter, Allen writes as though we should be more interested in
their history than we are. I didn't think the memory of violence added anything to September,
especially given how much the movie had going for it in terms of atmosphere, acting, and an honorable
accommodation for the sound of silence. All of Allen's dramas are derided for being "talky," when in fact
their characters are infinitely more reticent than the protagonists of his joyously word-happy "comedies".
September sustains that pattern, though a welcome innovation are its occasional moments of sharp
humor, as when Stritch criticizes Farrow for always dressing "like a Polish refugee."
Like the month that provides its title, September has an autumnal, academic patina that some
viewers will find forbidding, while others will be pleased at the invitation to live patiently with these
characters and to think about what they say, and how they say it. No one in the cast contributes anything
like a career performance, but you are unlikely to gather performers like Elaine Stritch, Jack Warden, and
Dianne Wiest together and not generate any sparks. I wish people were more tolerant of dramas like
September, which overreaches itself with some labored speeches on mortality and guilt but much more
often rewards the attention and sensitivity of those viewers who willingly extend them. Some films sound
to me like instruments, and September is a memorable cello solo—you are bound to hear better if you
visit the movies with any regularity, but even more certainly you'll also encounter a lot worse. Woody
Allen is nothing if not adventurous and willing to make mistakes. How nice for him that what often go down
as his "mistakes" are as winsomely touching and polished as September. Grade: B–