Match Point is a 2005 psychological thriller film written and directed by Woody Allen, and starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode, Brian Cox, and Penelope Wilton. In the film, Rhys Meyers' character, a former professional tennis player, marries into a wealthy family, but his social position is threatened by his affair with his brother-in-law's girlfriend, played by Scarlett Johansson. The film deals with themes of morality and greed, and explores the roles of lust, money, and luck in life, leading many to compare it to Allen's earlier film Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). It was produced and filmed in London after Allen had difficulty finding financial support for the film in New York. The agreement obliged him to make it there using a cast and crew mostly from the United Kingdom. Allen quickly re-wrote the script, which was originally set in New York, for an English setting.
Critics in the United States praised the film and its English setting and welcomed it as a return to form for Allen. In contrast, reviewers from the United Kingdom treated Match Point less favorably, finding fault with the locations and especially the British idiom in the dialogues. Allen was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Plot
Recently retired Irish tennis professional Chris Wilton is taken on as an instructor at an upmarket club in London. There, he strikes up a friendship with wealthy pupil Tom Hewett. Tom's sister Chloe is smitten with Chris, and they begin dating. During a family gathering, Chris meets Tom's American fiancée Nola Rice, and they become attracted to each other.
Chloe persuades her father, Alec, to give Chris a job as an executive in one of his companies. After this, Chris begins to be accepted into the family.
One afternoon, Tom's mother, Eleanor, questions Nola's choice of profession. Furious, Nola leaves the house during a thunderstorm. Chris follows Nola and confesses his feelings for her, and they have sex in a wheat field. Feeling guilty, Nola treats this as an accident. Chris, however, wants an ongoing affair. Chris and Chloe marry, while Tom ends his relationship with Nola.
Chloe, to her distress, does not become pregnant immediately. Chris tries to track down Nola but later meets her by chance at Tate Modern. He asks for her number, and they begin an affair.
While Chris spends time with his wife's family, Nola calls to inform him that she is pregnant. Panicked, he asks her to get an abortion, but she refuses, saying she wants to raise the child with him. Chris becomes distant from Chloe. She suspects Chris is having an affair, which he denies. Nola urges him to divorce his wife; he feels trapped and finds himself lying to Chloe as well as to Nola. Nola confronts him outside his apartment and he barely escapes public detection.
Soon afterwards, Chris takes a shotgun from his father-in-law's and brings it to his office in a tennis bag. After leaving the office, he calls Nola on her mobile to tell her he has good news. He goes to her building and gains entry into the apartment of her neighbor, Mrs. Eastby, whom he shoots and kills, staging a burglary by ransacking the rooms and stealing jewelry and drugs. As Nola returns, Chris shoots her in the stairwell, then takes a taxi to the theater to watch a musical with Chloe. Scotland Yard concludes the crime was likely committed by a drug addict stealing money. The following day, as the murder is in the news, Chris returns the shotgun and he and Chloe announce that she is pregnant.
Detective Mike Banner invites Chris for an interview concerning the murder. Before he goes to see the detectives, he throws Mrs. Eastby's jewelry and drugs into the river, but by chance, her ring bounces on the railing and falls to the pavement.
At the police station, Chris lies about his relationship with Nola, but Banner surprises him with her diary, in which he is featured extensively. He confesses his affair but denies any link to the murder. Chris appeals to the detectives not to involve him further in their investigation as news of the affair may end his marriage just as he and his wife are expecting a baby.
One night, Chris sees apparitions of Nola and Mrs. Eastby, who tell him to be ready for the consequences of his actions. He replies that his crimes, though wrong, were committed for a "grander scheme", and that he can suppress his guilt. The same night, Banner dreams that Chris committed the murders. The next morning, however, Banner's theory is discredited by his partner, Dowd, who reveals a drug addict found murdered on the streets had Eastby's ring in his pocket. The detectives consider the case closed and abandon any further investigation. Chloe gives birth to a baby boy named Terence, and his uncle Tom blesses him not with greatness but with luck.
The script was originally set in The Hamptons, a wealthy enclave in New York, but was transferred to London when Allen found financing for the film there.[5] The film was partly funded by BBC Films, which required that he make the film in the UK with largely local cast and crew. In an interview with The Observer, Allen explained that he was allowed "the same kind of creative liberal attitude that I'm used to", in London. He complained that the American studio system was not interested in making small films: "They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500m."[6] The production budget was an estimated $15 million.[7] A further change was required when Kate Winslet, who was supposed to play the part of Nola Rice, resigned a week before filming was scheduled to begin. Scarlett Johansson was offered the part, and accepted, but the character had to be re-written as an American. According to Allen, "It was not a problem...It took about an hour."[6]
The film's opening voiceover from Wilton introduces its themes of chance and fate, which he characterizes as simple luck, to him all-important. The sequence establishes the protagonist as an introvert, a man who mediates his experience of the world through deliberation, and positions the film's subjective perspective through his narrative eyes. Charalampos Goyios argued that this hero, as an opera lover, maintains a sense of distance from the outer world and that ramifications therein pale in comparison to the purity of interior experience.[10]
The film is a debate with Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, which Wilton is seen reading early on, identifying him with the anti-heroRaskolnikov.[10] That character is a brooding loner who kills two women to prove that he is a superior being, but is racked by guilt and is finally redeemed by confession of his crime, the love of a young woman forced into prostitution, and the discovery of God. Wilton is a brooding loner who kills a poor girl who loves him because he considers his interests superior to those around him, knows little guilt, and avoids detection through luck. Allen signals his intentions with more superficial similarities: both are almost caught by a painter's unexpected appearance in the stairwell, and both sleuths play cat and mouse with the suspect. Allen argues, unlike Dostoevsky, that there is neither God, nor punishment, nor love to provide redemption. The theme of parody and reversal of Dostoevsky's motifs and subject matter has been visited by Allen before, in his film Love and Death. In Love and Death, the dialogue and scenarios parody Russian novels, particularly those by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, such as The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, The Idiot, and War and Peace.[11] In Match Point, Allen moves the theme from parody to the more direct engagement of Dostoevsky's motifs and narratives.[11]
Allen revisits some of the themes he had explored in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), such as the existence of justice in the universe. Both films feature a murder of an unwanted mistress, and "offer a depressing view on fate, fidelity, and the nature of man".[12] That film's protagonist, Judah Rosenthal, is an affluent member of the upper-middle class having an extramarital affair. After he tries to break the affair off, his mistress blackmails him and threatens to go to his wife. Soon, Rosenthal decides to murder his mistress but is racked with guilt over violating his moral code. Eventually, he learns to ignore his guilt and go on as though nothing has happened. Philip French compared the two films' plots and themes in The Observer, and characterized Match Point's as a "clever twist on the themes of chance and fate".[13]
Money is an important motivator for the characters: both Wilton and Nola come from modest backgrounds and wish to enter the Hewett family using their sex appeal. That family's secure position is demonstrated by their large country estate, and, early on in their relationships, both prospective spouses are supported by Mr. Hewett Wilton with a position on "one of his companies." Nola reports being "swept off her feet" by Hewett's attention and presents.[14]Roger Ebert posed the film's underlying question as "To what degree are we prepared to set aside our moral qualms in order to indulge in greed and selfishness? Wilton is facing a choice between greed and lust, but his sweet wife, Chloe, herself has no qualms about having her father essentially 'buy' her husband for her."[14]
Jean-Baptiste Morain, writing in Les Inrockuptibles, noticed how the strong do not accept their own weakness and have no qualms about perpetuating an injustice to defend their interests. This wider political sense is, he argued, accentuated by its English setting, where class differences are more marked than in the USA. The film pits passion and the dream of happiness against ambition and arrivisme, resolving the dispute with a pitiless blow that disallows all chance of justice.[15]
Musical accompaniment
The film's soundtrack consists almost entirely of pre-World War I78 rpm recordings of opera arias sung by the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. This bold use, despite Caruso's variety of musical styles, constitutes a first for Allen. Opera has been used before in his work as an indicator of social class, such as in Husbands and Wives (1992). In Match Point, the arias and opera extracts make an ironic commentary on the actions of the characters and sometimes foreshadow developments in the movie's narrative. Furthermore, given Wilton's status as an introvert and opera enthusiast himself, the accompaniment emphasizes his detachment from his crime.[10]
The 10-minute murder scene which forms the film's climax is scored with almost the whole of the Act II duet between Otello and Iago from Giuseppe Verdi's Otello. This is an atypical scoring for a film since Verdi's piece is not an aria, but a dramatic dialogue in which the words are as important as the music. Thus the astute spectator will be presented with two dramatic narratives to follow; Allen is not respecting traditional conventions of cinematic accompaniment since the score's events do not match the story unfolding onscreen.[10]
Allen has said that Match Point is one of his few "A-films", and even "arguably may be the best film that I've made. This is strictly accidental, it just happened to come out right. You know, I try to make them all good, but some come out and some don't. With this one, everything seemed to come out right. The actors fell in, the photography fell in and the story clicked. I caught a lot of breaks!"[17]
The film received generally strong reviews from critics, particularly in the United States. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 77% based on 216 reviews with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus states: "Woody Allen's sharpest film in years, Match Point is a taut, philosophical thriller about class and infidelity."[20]Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 72 out of 100, and thus "generally favorable reviews", based on 40 professional critics.[21] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.[22]
Roger Ebert gave the film a full four stars, and considered it among the four best Allen films.[23] He described it as having a "terrible fascination that lasts all the way through".[14]Empire magazine gave the film four stars out of five, calling it Allen's best of his last half a dozen films, and recommended it even to those who are not fans of the director.[24]
Reviewers in the United Kingdom were generally less favorable. Philip French, writing in The Observer, criticized Allen's grasp of British idiom and the film's lack of humor, especially considering that two comic actors from the UK were cast in minor roles. Also, he called the dialogue "rather lumbering" and said that "the lexicons of neither the City financier nor the London constable are used convincingly."[13] Tim Robey, writing in The Daily Telegraph, disdained the claim that the film was Allen's return to form. Although he acknowledged that the consensus was stronger this time, he called it "as flat-footed a movie as Allen has ever made, a decent idea scuppered by a setting – London – which he treats with the peculiarly tin-eared reverence of a visitor who only thinks he knows his way around." He called Johansson's character "the chain-smoking mistress from hell", but said the tennis net analogy has an "unexpectedly crisp payoff" and that the last act was well handled.[25] Reviewing for the BBC's website, Andy Jacobs awarded the film four stars out of five and called it Allen's best film since Deconstructing Harry (1997). He also criticized some other British reviewers whose dislike, Jacobs stated, was due to the fact that Allen presented an agreeable portrait of middle-class life in London. He also praised the performances by Rhys Meyers and Johansson.[12]
Like many of Allen's films, Match Point was popular in France: AlloCiné, a cinema information website, gave it a score of 4.4 out of 5, based on a sample of 30 reviews.[26] In Les Inrockuptibles, a left-wing French cultural magazine, Jean-Baptiste Morain gave the film a strong review, calling it "one of his most accomplished films".[15] He characterized Allen's move to London as re-invigorating for him while recognizing the caricatured portrayal of Britain which made the film less appreciated there than in Allen's homeland, the United States. Morain called Rhys-Meyers and Johansson's performances "impeccable".[15]
Match Point has also been the object of scholarship. Joseph Henry Vogel argued the film is exemplary of ecocriticism as an economic school of thought.[27] Several critics and commentators have compared elements of the film to the central plot of George Stevens' film A Place in the Sun (1951), but with some characters in reverse positions.[13][28]
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces. Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), The Adolescent (1875), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature.
Heywood Allen is an American filmmaker, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. Allen has received many accolades, including the most nominations (16) for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He has won four Academy Awards, ten BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Grammy Award, as well as nominations for a Emmy Award and a Tony Award. Allen was awarded an Honorary Golden Lion in 1995, the BAFTA Fellowship in 1997, an Honorary Palme d'Or in 2002, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2014. Two of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Annie Hall is a 1977 American satirical romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay written by Allen and Marshall Brickman, and produced by Allen's manager, Charles H. Joffe. The film stars Allen as Alvy Singer, who tries to figure out the reasons for the failure of his relationship with the eponymous female lead, played by Diane Keaton in a role written specifically for her.
Manhattan is a 1979 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen and produced by Charles H. Joffe from a screenplay written by Allen and Marshall Brickman. Allen co-stars as a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl but falls in love with his best friend's mistress. Meryl Streep and Anne Byrne also star.
Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume. It is the second of Dostoevsky's full-length novels following his return from ten years of exile in Siberia. Crime and Punishment is considered the first great novel of his mature period of writing and is often cited as one of the greatest works of world literature.
Dame Penelope Alice Wilton is an English actress.
Stardust Memories is a 1980 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen, who stars alongside Charlotte Rampling, Jessica Harper, Marie-Christine Barrault, and Tony Roberts. Sharon Stone has a brief role, in her film debut. It follows a filmmaker who recalls his life and his loves—the inspirations for his films—while attending a retrospective of his work. The film is shot in black and white and is reminiscent of Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963), which it parodies.
Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is the fictional protagonist of the 1866 novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The name Raskolnikov derives from the Russian raskolnik meaning "schismatic". The name Rodion comes from Greek and indicates an inhabitant of Rhodes.
Love and Death is a 1975 American comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen. It is a satire on Russian literature starring Allen and Diane Keaton as Boris and Sonja, Russians living during the Napoleonic Era who engage in mock-serious philosophical debates. Allen considered it the funniest film he had made up until that point.
Crimes and Misdemeanors is a 1989 American existential comedy drama film written and directed by Woody Allen, who stars alongside Martin Landau, Mia Farrow, Anjelica Huston, Jerry Orbach, Alan Alda, Sam Waterston, and Joanna Gleason.
Small Time Crooks is a 2000 American crime-comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen. It stars Allen, Hugh Grant, Elaine May and Tracey Ullman. The picture's plot has some similarities to that of the 1942 comedy Larceny, Inc.
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is a 2001 crime comedy film written and directed by and starring Woody Allen. The cast also features Dan Aykroyd, Helen Hunt, Brian Markinson, Wallace Shawn, David Ogden Stiers, and Charlize Theron. The plot concerns an insurance investigator (Allen) and an efficiency expert (Hunt) who are both hypnotized by a crooked hypnotist (Stiers) into stealing jewels.
Scoop is a 2006 romantic crime comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen and starring Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, Ian McShane and Allen himself. It was released in the United States by Focus Features on July 28, 2006. The film follows an American journalist and a magician being guided by the spirit of a reporter to investigate a British aristocrat who might be a serial killer. Scoop received mixed reviews from critics regarding its humor, but was a box-office success, grossing $39.2 million against a $4 million budget.
Gareth Wiley is a film producer, whose professional life started in the world of investment banking, working with County NatWest, Salomon Brothers, and UBS Warburg, moving into film producing in 2002.
Cassandra's Dream is a 2007 crime thriller drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. Shot in England, the film is a co-production between the United States, France, and the United Kingdom.
The 52nd New York Film Critics Circle Awards honored the best filmmaking of 1986. The winners were announced on 15 December 1986 and the awards were given on 25 January 1987.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a 2008 romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. The film stars Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson in lead roles. The plot centers on two American women, Vicky and Cristina, who spend a summer in Barcelona, where they meet an artist, Juan Antonio, who is attracted to both of them, while still enamored of his mentally and emotionally unstable ex-wife María Elena. The film was shot in Spain in Barcelona, Avilés, and Oviedo, and was Allen's fourth consecutive film shot outside the United States.
Scarlett Ingrid Johansson is an American actress and singer. The world's highest-paid actress in 2018 and 2019, she has been featured multiple times on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021. Johansson's films have grossed over $15.4 billion worldwide, making her the highest-grossing box office female star of all time. She has received various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, a Tony Award, and nominations for two Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.
Midnight in Paris is a 2011 fantasy comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen. Set in Paris, the film follows Gil Pender, a screenwriter, who is forced to confront the shortcomings of his relationship with his materialistic fiancée and their divergent goals, which become increasingly exaggerated as he travels back in time each night at midnight.
To Rome with Love is a 2012 magical realist romantic comedy film written, directed by and co-starring Woody Allen in his first acting appearance since 2006, as well as his most recent appearance in a film he's directed. The film is set in Rome; it was released in Italian theaters on April 13, 2012, and opened in Los Angeles and New York City on June 22, 2012.
1 2 Stafford, Jeff. "Love and Death (1975)". TCM.com. Archived from the original on 31 July 2019. Retrieved 23 August 2013. ...he was able to pay homage to some of his favorite films: a battlefield hawker who sells blinis to the troops recalls Harpo Marx in Duck Soup (1933), a dueling scene appears modeled on a Bob Hope routine in Monsieur Beaucaire (1946), the climax is a direct nod to Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) and the Scythian Suite by Stravinsky is used as background music in one scene, just as it was in Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (1938). Famous dialogue from the novels of Tolstoy like War and Peace and Anna Karenina is also parodied along with in-jokes about the poetry of T. S. Eliot.
1 2 3 Morain, Jean-Baptiste, Match PointArchived 6 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine , Les Inrockuptibles, 1 January 2005, Retrieved 22 January 2012. (in French)
↑ Harvey, Adam (2007). "Match Point (2005)". The Soundtracks of Woody Allen. Macfarland. pp.87–90. ISBN9780786429684.
↑ Vogel, Joseph Henry (2008). "Ecocriticism as an Economic School of Thought: Woody Allen's Match Point as Exemplary". OMETECA Science and Humanities (XII): 105–119.
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