Abstract
Woody Allen has paid tribute to Dostoevsky throughout his career, as in his early story, “Notes from the Overfed,” with its subtitle, “After reading Dostoevski and the new ‘Weight Watchers’ magazine on the same plane trip” (Getting Even 62–67). This humorous piece bears little resemblance to Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, yet the protagonist struggles over the existence of God and the problem of theodicy, recurring concepts in Dostoevsky’s works. In Husbands and Wives (1992), Gabe (Allen) and Rain (Juliette Lewis) discuss Russian writers. Gabe describes Dostoevsky as a “full meal, with a vitamin pill and extra wheatgerm.” Allen’s indebtedness to Dostoevsky continues in his most recent collection of writings, Mere Anarchy (2007), such as the story “This Nib for Hire” that begins thusly: “It is said Dostoyevsky wrote for money to sponsor his lust for the roulette tables of St. Petersburg” (35). Allen apparently also stays abreast of Dostoevsky scholarship, as he admitted in a 1988 interview that he had been rereading The Idiot after studying George Steiner’s Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism (Lax, Conversations 85–86). In interviews, Allen reveals that he is not envious of other writers, except “like everybody else, I would have liked to have written the Russian novels” (Lax, Biography 227). He also confesses:
I don’t think that one can aim more deeply than at the so-called existential themes, the spiritual themes. That’s probably why I’d consider the Russian novelists as greater than other novelists. Even though Flaubert, for example, is a much more skilled writer than, I think, either Dostoevsky or Tolstoy-he was surely more skilled than Dostoevsky, as a technician-his work can never be as great, for me, personally, as the other two. (qtd. in Bjorkman 211)
When asked why someone with such a fondness for the Scandinavian mindset (as revealed in Ibsen, Strindberg, and Bergman), could also feel attached to Russian literature, Allen replies,
I’m true to my Germanic origins…. But I do appreciate the Russian milieu and when I shot Love and Death I found the Russians inter-esting because they were close to the subject I love. At the period in which the film was set, Russian intellectuals knew Romanticism and had an obsession with death, immortality, religion; they discussed Swedenborg the way Scandinavians do. (qtd. in Benayoun 157)
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Works cited
Allen, Woody. Getting Even. New York: Vintage, 1978.
Allen, Woody. Mere Anarchy. New York: Random House, 2007.
Benayoun, Robert. The Films of Woody Allen. Trans. Alexander Walker. New York: Harmony, 1986.
Björkman, Stig, Ed. Woody Allen on Woody Allen: In Conversation With Stig Björkman. Rev. ed. New York: Grove, 2004.
Conard, Mark T. “The Indifferent Universe: Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Movies and the Meaning of Life: Philosophers Take on Hollywood. Ed. Kimberly A. Blessing and Paul J. Tudico. Chicago: Open Court, 2005. 113–124.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Demons. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Vintage, 1995.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Idiot. Trans. Constance Garnett. New York: Modern Library, 1935.
Grinberg, Marat. “The Birth of a Hebrew Tragedy: Cassandra’s Dream as a Morality Play in the Context of Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point.” Woody on Rye: Jewishness in the Films and Plays of Woody Allen. Ed. Vincent Brook and Marat Grinberg. Waltham, MA: Brandeis UP, 2014. 37–57.
Hibbs, Thomas S. “On the Dark Nihilism in the Films of Woody Allen.” Mars Hill Audio Journal 106 (December 2010). CD.
Hibbs, Thomas S. Shows About Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture. Waco, TX: Baylor UP, 2012.
Jacobson, Harlan. “Manhattan Transfer.” Film Comment (January–February 2006): 48–50.
Lantz, Kenneth. The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004.
Lax, Eric. Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Moviemaking. New York: Knopf, 2007.
Lax, Eric. Woody Allen: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1991.
LeBlanc, Ronald D. “Deconstructing Dostoevsky: God, Guilt, and Morality in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Film and Philosophy Special Issue (July 2000): 84–101.
Lee, Sander H. Eighteen Woody Allen Films Analyzed: Anguish, God and Existentialism. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002.
Lucia, Cynthia. “Status and Morality in Cassandra’s Dream: An Interview with Woody Allen.” Cineaste 33 (2008): 40–43.
Nichols, Mary P. Reconstructing Woody: Art, Love, and Life in the Films of Woody Allen. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.
South, James. “‘You Don’t Deserve Cole Porter’: Love and Music According to Woody Allen.” Woody Allen and Philosophy: You Mean My Whole Fallacy Is Wrong? Ed. Mark T. Conard and Aeon J. Skoble. Chicago: Open Court, 2004. 118–132.
Stuchebrukhov, Olga. “‘Crime without Any Punishment at All’: Dostoevsky and Woody Allen in Light of Bakhtinian Theory.” Literature/Film Quarterly 40.2 (2012): 142–154.
Williams, Rowan. Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction. Waco, TX: Baylor UP, 2008.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Zachary T. Ingle
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ingle, Z.T. (2015). “A full meal with a vitamin pill and extra wheatgerm”: Woody Allen, Dostoevsky, and Existential Morality. In: Szlezák, K.S., Wynter, D.E. (eds) Referentiality and the Films of Woody Allen. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137515476_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137515476_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-51546-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-51547-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)