"A fool in prison"
Thankfully, in Woody Allen participated in three super lousy films "The Merry Gentleman", "Iron King Kong Breaks the Royal Nightclub", "What's the matter?" After "Tiger Lily", a new film company, Palomar Pictures, approached Woody. They gave him a $1 million budget to make a movie, and gave him absolute film production rights and final editing rights. It was such a wonderful collaboration that Woody couldn’t help but sigh as he recalled: “It was a pleasant experience. Since then, I have been going well in movies. No one interferes with my thoughts anymore.” It can be said that “Fools” "In Prison" is Woody Allen's true directorial debut. Woody put all his experience and interesting stories as a stage comedy performer into this movie, trying to make a blockbuster. The end result is that this movie is undoubtedly an outstanding masterpiece comedy no matter it is seen at the time and now.
I have to admit that at this time, Woody Allen is still very immature. He just wants to show his excellent jokes and stage performances to the audience, but has not realized the use of cinematographic techniques to hierarchize the film. At this time, Woody Allen's understanding of film lenses is just a tool to interpret his comedy. He had to stuff one comedy after another into this comedy film in the form of a pseudo-documentary. But just as far as these jokes are concerned, they are all the best martial arts in comedy performances. "Lighter pistols", "soap bubble pistols", "candle bombs", "cello performers who hinder the march of the marching band". . . . . . These jokes are so outstanding that people will never forget them. At the same time, Woody Allen's comedy character image of the "lewd and enthusiastic little man" based on himself has finally been finalized in this movie. From this we can conclude that the simple, naive, and young comedy master proved that he is the strongest comedy filmmaker when he was given the opportunity to show off his funny skills. He proved that the successful experience of comedy performance on the nightclub stage can be copied to the ultimate artistic performance stage of the movie.
Let us calm down and think again about what makes the comedy film "Fools in Prison" truly outstanding. Woody Allen believes that comedy should be real. His performance in "Fools in Prison" is extremely restrained, avoiding the frenetic and manic frolic scenes. The exaggerated comedy giggles, the real comedy hits the soul. Woody Allen portrays an image of a man who is extremely serious in doing things but messed up because of his stupidity. The image of this repeatedly defeated little man resembles us whose dreams in life have been shattered. In other words, the audience can finally laugh arrogantly on the screen, and they finally find that they have failed and dreamed even more than them. The ultimate dreamer fool. This allows the audience to finally get a sense of consolation stemming from failure in their career and life. The audience gains dignity by laughing wildly at a loser who fails even more than them. Woody Allen is like a pressure tank, madly releasing the tension and frustration of the city people, and at the same time gaining people's character recognition and sympathy for his persistence, stubborn desire for victory, and pursuit of success. We teased him, in fact, we ridiculed ourselves; we longed for his success as longing for our own success.
The film "Fools in Prison" establishes the funny mode of Woody Allen’s early comedy films: the protagonist lives a serious life but stupidly makes mistakes. The absurd storyline satirizes the causes of people’s pain in real life and releases them. The audience's pressure on life, to relieve the audience's frustration. Woody Allen studied the performance styles of comedy masters such as Maute Sell, Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Jonathan Winters, Chaplin, Keaton, Marx Brothers, etc., and finally found the Own comedy style.
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