The Flaneur’s Anxiety Over Modernity

Woody Allen(1935-)is one of the most original film auteurs in film history.Twenty-five out of forty-four of his films are stories about the urbanites’ daily life set in Manhattan,New York.Yet current Woody Allen studies is still limited to his comic features,his views on religion and philosophy,and his identity of being a Jewish middle class intellectual;little attention has been paid to his urban concerns and his critical views on modernity.This thesis attempts to study the metropolitan spatial experiences.in three Woody Allen’s films,namely Annie Hall(1977),Manhattan(1979),and Hannah and Her Sisters(1986),and probe into his anxiety over urban modernity as expressed by his recurring cinematic image of the flaneur.Originated from the 16th century France,the archetype of flaneur was famously interpreted by Charles Baudelaire in the 19th century.In the first half of the 20th century,Walter Benjamin’s study of Baudelaire’s works remarkably made flaneur an important topic of urban studies.This thesis argues that Woody Allen recurrently represents metropolitan spaces and metropolitan lives in his films to express his anxiety over modernity.By creating a flaneur figure and representing the metropolitan spatial experiences from the flaneur perspective,Woody Allen reflects on problems of modernity such as psychological crisis and moral deterioration.As a film auteur,he shows a unique style both verbally,through dialogues and voice-over,and cinematically through devices including setting,cinematography and music score to convey his anxiety over modernity.This thesis first analyzes the itinerary of the flaneur from interior to exterior in Manhattan and points out that the motivation for the flaneur to start the flaneurie is his psychological crisis generated from his lonely interior living experience.Then,the thesis depicts the flaneur’s metropolitan experiences outside Manhattan in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.Through showing the flaneur’s different experiences in different spaces,the thesis points out Allen’s anxiety over speed,machinery,and moral degeneration.Finally,critical attention shifts from content to form.By analyzing the verbal and cinematic language in the three films,the thesis points out that Allen as a film auteur adopt a unique style to convey his anxiety over urban modernity.