Such pairings work well, for the most part, except when they don’t. Weirdly, Shepard uses F. W. Murnau’s vampire classic “Nosferatu,” released in Germany in 1922, which he writes about rather brilliantly, to gloss the misbehavior of the George W. Bush administration, specifically its attempt to turn Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan into an instance of heroic sacrifice for his country, while covering up the fact that he was killed by friendly fire. It’s not that Shepard is wrong, exactly, and sure, there are liars in “Nosferatu” and liars in the Bush administration, but you can pull anything from anywhere to make a point if you ignore time and context. Shepard’s sole weakness is a lack of historicity, startling in a writer dedicated to teasing out the political implications of movies. Is it necessary to point out that the politics of “Nosferatu” have to be seen in the context of Germany circa 1922, and are vastly different from the politics of America in 2004? If Shepard is going to argue that those apples are the same as these oranges, then he has to do it at greater length than he does here.

START TO FINISH

Woody Allen and the Art of Moviemaking

By Eric Lax

353 pp. Knopf. $28.95.

Lax is perfectly right to say in the introduction that the 47 films Woody Allen has written and directed up to now, an average of one a year since 1969, constitute a “body of work unmatched in modern cinema.” The numbers are astonishing, but they leave the impression that they alone are the measure of his achievement, and ironically, they work against him. The time when Allen’s every new release was a cause for celebration is long over; now we take him for granted, and the thematic consistencies that are applauded in other auteurs are derided in Allen. In my view, he is simply one of the great world-class directors, up there with his hero, Ingmar Bergman, and the rest.

Image

Lax is not a fluent writer, but thanks, I imagine, to the previous three books he has written on this filmmaker, he was granted extraordinary access to the production of “Irrational Man” (2015). He gives us a granular picture of Allen’s process, from script to release: the money, the casting, the production and much more, including anecdotes about his previous films.

If nothing else, this study should put to rest a prevalent, although peculiar, notion that Allen is lazy. Among other exhibits, Lax reproduces a script page that has been worked over so many times it is black with scribbled interlinear revisions and marginal notes. When Allen hears the actors speak his lines, he realizes, he says, “how awful the dialogue is,” and cuts them on the set.

Among other things, we find out that he has a bag full of scraps with script ideas written on them that sometimes languish for years before the proverbial light bulb goes off, and he fleshes them out. Good ideas, he says, are a dime a dozen: “It’s the then what? that kills you.”

You don’t need to be a Woody Allen fan to enjoy this book. It’s a veritable master class in filmmaking, with much to interest and amuse anyone who loves movies.