It was 1992 when Woody Allen was first accused of harassment against his daughter Dylan Farrow, and after almost 30 years, the director, now 85, still has (or perhaps increasingly more) difficulties in having his works produced and distributed. Although those accusations have never been followed by any guilty sentence, for a part of public opinion Allen remains “the one who married his daughter”, “the one who raped his daughter” and therefore “a pedophile”.
Woody Allen and the new film, Rifkin’s Festival
On May 6, 2021, Allen’s latest film will be released in the cinemas of our country, Rifkin’s Festival, an Italian-Spanish co-production that has already grossed over a million dollars, has been screened in theaters in Spain, Russia and the Netherlands but does not yet have a distributor in the United States. In other words: there is the possibility that no stars and stripes cinema will broadcast it to their audience.
For what reason? Let’s go in order.
The Wood Allen case, Mia Farrow and Soon-Yi Previn
In 1980, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow start a love affair and stay together for 12 years without ever marrying or living together. Each maintains their own apartment in New York, and Farrow shares hers with her three biological children (from second husband André Previn) and four foster children, including Soon-Yi Previn, who is between seven and eight years old when mother starts dating Allen.
In 1985 Mia adopted the newborn Dylan, and in 1987 Ronan Farrow, the only biological child of Mia and Woody, was born, although the mother publicly admitted that the real father could be Frank Sinatra, her first husband and, in those years, lover.
Woody Allen and Mia Farrow at the time of their relationship
In 1991, Woody Allen adopted two Farrow children, Dylan and Moses. In 1992, the actress discovers the clandestine relationship between her daughter Soon-Yi Previn, who is between 19 and 22 years old (her date of birth is not known for sure) and Woody Allen, 35 years her senior.
The breakup between Farrow and the director kicks off a legal battle over the custody of the “shared” children, namely Ronan, Moses and Dylan. And it is from the latter, still a child, that the first accusations of harassment of her father originate.
Two independent committees investigate the matter for months: that of the Yale Hospital-New Haven Child Sexual Abuse Clinic and the New York State Children’s Social Services. The response is clear: there was no harassment, but the child is “emotionally vulnerable” and “scarred by a disturbed family”, and she may have invented the abuses conditioned by the tense climate in which she lives, or “indoctrinated or influenced by his mother ”, in a sort of spite against the ex for the betrayal with the other daughter.
For this reason, the judge following the case deems the allegations of child molestation against Allen unacceptable due to lack of evidence, but still grants custody of the children to Mia Farrow because she deems Allen’s behavior towards Dylan “inappropriate”.
The Farrow family at the time of Mia and Woody’s relationship
In 1997 Woody Allen and Soon-Yi got married, and have since lived in Manhattan with their two adopted daughters. The relationship between the two certainly caused a great scandal at the time and many problems for the director’s career, but he was always able to continue writing, shooting films and giving concerts (with the Woody Allen and The Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band) without too many impediments, collaborating with great actors and actresses, such as Penelope Cruz, Scarlet Johansonn and Kate Winslet.
Woody Allen and daughter Dylan’s harassment allegations
Something changes in 2014, when Dylan Farrow, now an adult, reiterates his accusations in a public letter: “When I was seven, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me to a small attic on the first floor of our house. […]. So he sexually abused me […]. For as long as I can remember my father always did things with me that I didn’t like. I didn’t like that he often took me away from my mother, my brothers and friends to be alone with me. I didn’t like it when he put his thumb in my mouth. I didn’t like it when I had to sleep with him under the covers when he was only wearing his underwear. “
But the answer is Moses, the other son of Allen and Farrow: “It is obvious that Woody did not molest my sister. She loved him and couldn’t wait to see him when he came to visit her. She never hid from him until our mother managed to create an atmosphere of fear and hatred around him. The day Dylan talks about, there were six or seven of us in the house. We were all in open rooms and no one, neither my father nor my sister, was locked in a room. My mother had gone out shopping. I don’t know if my sister really believes she was being harassed or if she is trying to please my mother. Having our mother on your side was a very powerful motivation, since having her against it was terrible ”.
Mia Farrow and teenage daughter Dylan
The #metoo movement also overwhelms Woody Allen
But since 1992 society has changed: three years later the #metoo movement explodes, which starting from the Weinstein case sweeps the whole cinema, and among the numerous names involved in the scandals, already known (as in the case of Polański) or raised for the first time, there is also that of Woody Allen, who just at that moment finished filming A rainy day in New York. The Amazon Studios, which were supposed to distribute it, terminate the contract with the director, which included four films in total, and the film only comes out in European theaters two years later. Directors and actors who worked with him apologize for doing it or say they don’t want to do it again, including Timothée Chalamet, Colin Firth and Rebecca Hall.
Broadway cancels the theatrical transposition of one of his films, then it is the turn of publishing, which turns its back on Allen’s autobiography: it is the New York Times to reveal that as many as four publishing houses have given up publishing the book, too much at risk of a boycott. Hachette secretly buys the rights but returns them to the author when employees at the New York office learn about it and improvise a street protest. The volume arrives in Italy in 2020 thanks to La nave di Teseo with the title About nothing.
It is Italy, together with Spain and France, that remains a solid market for works by Woody Allen. Perhaps it will not be enough to save his reputation and glory, but it seems to have served to make him change his mind about not writing more films, a hypothesis aired by the director in 2019. And in fact, he reveals in the press presentation of Rifkin’s Festival, has already “ready a script to be made in Paris, but the pandemic has ruined everything. As soon as it starts again I hope to be able to go back there and shoot it. It is a film that I can only say that it looks a little bit at Match Point“.
Woody Allen with his wife Soon-Yi Previn
Rifkin’s Festival instead, it analyzes the differences between American and European cinema, through the life of the protagonist, a former professor of film history married to Sue, an ambitious press officer. “I think the main thrust of a film is its innovation, the type of artistic realization” reports theAnsa. “Cinema in the States has remained immature, driven primarily by profit. European films are ahead of American films, both in cinematographic technique and in subject “.
Still earlier this year, the documentary Allen vs Farrow has again rekindled the controversy over the accusations of harassment of the director, who now seems to be seeking in Europe that ransom that the United States has decided to deny him. If it will find it right with Rifkin’s Festival we can’t say yet, but there is certainly a lot of curiosity, and a Woody Allen film is still a romantic way to usher in the return to the cinema after a year of closures and pandemics.