"How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I don't know how the can opener works!"

Indeed, we saw the great Hannah and Her Sisters last night, which happily fills a significant cultural gap. Now we just have to read Moby Dick and that goddamn Jane Austen! Anyway, the experience was, on a very deep level, depressing as a motherfucker: it's awfully difficult to shuck the feeling that Woody used to have such a gift for filmmaking -- witness the meal with the three sisters, which, although it's a series of shots, feels like one extraordinary take -- but now his films have become "as deep as the average male bellybutton, and its contents are about as appealing."


We believe it was Roger Ebert who said that one of the marks of a well-written character is, Could he or she exist off-screen? For Hershey, Wiest and Farrow -- not to mention Allen himself -- the answer is absofuckinglutely.


So what's happened in the intervening years? Why have his characters become little more than mouthpieces for -- and we hate to say this, because it makes us sound like, well, Roger Simon -- Upper West Side wisdom?


Naturally, we look to Paul Tatara, who, when he wrote for CNN, was our favorite film critic -- if there's any justice, historians will note that he was one prescient SOB.


Here's what Tatara had to say in 1998, which was well before most critics realized how far Allen's stock had dropped:


Allen's movies are all rather small in scope, so they're consistently cheap to make; the biggest stars in the world clamor to work with him for next to no money; and the end product (if everyone gets lucky) usually grosses about 10 or 15 million bucks at the box office. It's not exactly "Titanic," but, for once, nobody really cares. Playing the game with Woody Allen means you're an artist. And once a self-lauding concept like that gets established in the film industry, it doesn't just go away.


This has been happening for so long now, Allen has started to take the situation for granted, with the result being some embarrassingly lazy screenplays. Gone are the intricate verbal exchanges of "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan"'s near-sociological dissections of friends and lovers. Even the somewhat more obvious interplay of "Hannah and Her Sisters" is a distant memory.


Now, all we seem to get are the blatherings of a very bitter man who doesn't know what to do with himself but point a camera at some actors and have them unload his anger and self-loathing at a captive audience. ...


Allen joked in 1980's "Stardust Memories" that people always want to praise his "early, funny movies" in lieu of his more dramatic, character-oriented work. Well, I, for one, used to be obsessed with all of his work. By now, though, I'd be willing to praise him for simply piecing together something that actually holds together as a film, funny or not. Both "Celebrity" and "Deconstructing Harry" play like unfinished ideas for four or five different scripts cobbled together into one, largely indecisive whole.


The point is, if you have something to say, then you should make a movie. And God bless you if you've actually managed to finagle a situation where you get slapped on the back no matter what you do. That part's really a miracle. If you don't have anything to say, though, how about actually waiting for inspiration to hit? It beats a vaguely formed essay about the difficulties that even alluring, coddled-types can have when they're trying to get properly laid.


Where have you gone, Paul Tatara? This blog turns its lonely eyes to you...