A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy

by Nick Lohr

The beginning of the 1980s mark a strange time in Woody’s filmography. Behind him are a series of zany comedies ramping up to a string of artistic hits like Annie Hall and Manhattan. Allen kicks off the decade with Stardust Memories, interpreted by many as a proclamation that he intends to create the movies he wants and won’t be subject to the whims of his audience. Up until now, his films have always carried a certain level of ambition. Even those operating on a smaller, more intimate scale such as Interiors, are packed with such an artistic avidity they appear as more than simply what is in the frame. All the more reason A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy feels out-of-place in the greater timeline of Woody’s career. It lands on the screen with a soft, inoffensive thud, lacking the ambition even his early comedies contained.

“I made two pictures at once,” says Woody. While work began on his upcoming mockumentary, Zelig, the writer/director had some extra time on his hands. “While they were budgeting [Zelig] and doing all the preproduction work, I had nothing to do and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to do just some little tiny summer picture?’” This is the first indication of the film’s place within Woody’s body of work. It is a film made between films. It is a side-project, done as a distraction, a light-hearted dalliance to keep busy while the real work gets underway.

A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy is a period piece, a pastoral weekend getaway set in the early 1900s. “I wanted to do for the country what I’d done for New York in Manhattan,” says Woody on the film’s rural setting. Leopold is an older man, a renowned professor, philosopher, and author. He’s taking his young fiancée Ariel, played by Mia Farrow, for a trip on the eve of their nuptials to his cousin Andrew’s country home. Andrew (Woody) is a burned-out broker who has taken refuge in the country with his wife Adrian to tinker on his inventions which include a flying bicycle (something straight out of pre-Wright Bros. news reel footage) and a spherical lantern he thinks can communicate with the Other Side. Along for the ride are Andrew’s best friend, Dr. Maxwell, a clinical casanova, and his sex-crazed nurse Dulcy. Throughout the weekend, the couples are confronted by conflicting personalities, tender hearts, burgeoning romances, and the re-kindling of old flames. Maxwell is struck by Ariel’s beauty and instantly falls in love with her. He spends most of the film pining for her, even threatening to end his life if he can’t be with her. Meanwhile, Andrew and his wife Adrian struggle with their marriage, particularly its lack of intimacy. The arrival of Ariel, coincidentally a former girlfriend of Andrew’s, adds unwanted stress. There’s sneaking around, secret rendezvous, and a whole lot of people getting swept up in the passionate heat of summer nights. It’s certainly fertile ground for sexy, even dangerous, intrigue but it’s delivered in such a light-hearted, almost whispy manner that the effect of the storytelling is as weak as curtains in a breeze.

“This all sounds very charming and whimsical, and it is almost paralyzingly so,” writes critic Roger Ebert. “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy is so low-key, so sweet and offhand and slight, there are times when it hardly even seems happy to be a movie. I am not quite sure what Allen had in mind when he conceived this material.” This seems to be the greatest failing of the film that, for all of its intricacies regarding the workings of the human heart, it’s neutered by bland delivery. “The tone of the film is whimsical rather than witty. One is charmed more than amused by Andrew’s inventions,” writes Neil Sinyard. Perhaps it is the result of being a film made between larger projects. “I wrote the script in two weeks,” says Woody. “Just this simple story, like a day-in-the-country for fun.” The brevity shows. Dialogue feels like mostly recycled bits from previous Allen films, delivered haphazardly. “Ferrer’s [the actor playing Leopold] is the only performance that seems to have a feeling for the turn of the century period and style. The others seem like contemporary Manahattan-ites unaccountably caught in a time warp,” writes Sinyard. It’s worth noting this was Woody’s first of many films working with Mia Farrow and his sole Razzie Award nomination which was given for Ms. Farrow’s performance. The film is not completely without merit. Leopold is a consistently funny wet blanket and Julie Hagerty’s doe-eyed performance is the unsung hero of the bunch. Most will remember her as Elaine Dickinson from Airplane!. “The relations are obviously quite complicated, but they’re also the source of much of the films humor,” writes John Gilpatrick of John Likes Movies. “EVERYONE in the film has an ulterior motive; they all claim at various points to be going for a walk, but none of these six just goes for a walk. Watching Leopold and Maxwell (who loathe each other) accidentally meet while waiting to sleep with the other’s partner is gold.”

Surely, such a comedy of manners gives way to a few worthwhile moments. It’s just a shame to see it mired down in banality. Even more frustrating is knowing the potential behind the actors and filmmakers. From Mia Farrow, Tony Roberts who has done wonderful things with Allen in the past, and even Woody himself who seems unsure of himself as simply part of an ensemble cast. “I had the feeling during the film that Woody Allen was soft-pedaling his talent, was sitting on his comic gift, was trying to be somebody that he is not — and that, even if he were, would not be half as wonderful a piece of work as the real Woody Allen,” writes Ebert. The problems with the film extend beyond simply Allen being unsure of himself. There are a surprising number of filmmaking gaffes throughout. For example, Maxwell waits by a nearby brook at midnight for a moonlit tryst with Ariel. Having followed from the house, Andrew enters the scene from the left, proclaiming he’s come to stop this because he loves Ariel. Shortly after, Ariel appears from the right, even though she and Andrew are supposedly coming from the same location— the house. It’s little things like this that make the film feel rushed, as lazy as the film’s title which reads like the project’s code name.

Woody seems to miss the point of the film’s criticisms. “People don’t like me in costume,” he says. “They think that there’s a quality about me that’s very contemporary, very New York, and very urban. So that was one strike against it.” It would be unfair of critics to malign the content of the film because it is not something they wish it were. However, the film is a step back in terms of writing and filmmaking technique that’s already been so exquisitely done in films like Manhattan. Likewise, the film does not showcase Allen and his penchant for creating great female characters. Ariel is marrying Leopold for fear she’ll get old and nobody will want her anymore, Adrian is frigid toward her husband because she cheated on him, and Dulcy’s take on what it means to be a “modern woman” is to be nothing more than promiscuous. It all feels a little shallow in the wake of an Annie Hall. Critics Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat get closest to explaining this ebb and flow between Woody and expectations of him as an artist in their review for Spirituality & Practice. “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy is another cinematic valentine from Woody Allen to his impatient audience who seem to want him to return to his earlier zany days. In a recent interview Norman Mailer said: “You can never understand a writer until you find his private little vanity and mine has always been that I will frustrate expectations.” That sounds just like Woody Allen!”