Monday, October 20, 2014

Connections: Ernest Hemingway to Woody Allen

Connections are  entries tracing the connections being various books, films, and music I have been exploring. Any given allusion in these entries is worth experiencing but I find the connections between the experiences to be even more interesting to explore...

Last week, I finished reading the Ernest Hemingway memoir A Moveable Feast. It is about Hemingway's time as a expatriate in Paris in the 1920's. The book appeals somewhat to an intellectual fantasy of mine, living in a world where days are spent discussing profound and revolutionary ideas with some of the greatest artistic minds of the decade and features several famous authors including F. Scott FitzgeraldFord Madox FordJames JoyceWyndham Lewis, and Gertrude Stein. It appears that many of these artists had intelligent and sensitive minds, which can make dealing with the day-to-day tedium of existence difficult; perhaps they make better friends through their writing than they would have made face-to-face.

If you have seen the Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris, a lot of the film was inspired by A Moveable Feast and also The Sun Also Rises, which was Hemingway's first novel and well worth reading as wellIf you are interested in watching some other Woody Allen films, here is a list of ten popular films, selected from various point of his career, that will give you a good starting point:
  1. Sleeper
  2. Annie Hall
  3. Manhattan
  4. The Purple Rose of Cairo
  5. Hannah and Her Sisters
  6. Crimes and Misdemeanors
  7. Bullets Over Broadway
  8. Deconstructing Harry
  9. Match Point
  10. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Note that I don't like the last few films in that list as much as the earlier films so, to even things out, here are a few more Woody Allen films that I personally liked much more than the critics:
  1. Stardust Memories
  2. Radio Days
  3. Manhattan Murder Mystery

Stardust Memories is particularly interesting because it was so heavily influenced by Federico Fellini, which will be the topic of the next Connections entry...

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