At the end of the Venice premiere of Woody Allen’s Coup de Chance, the audience gave the film-maker a standing ovation that lasted three minutes. He was visibly moved by the response, but after two and a half minutes, left the stage. Who knows, otherwise, how long it would have gone on for? And was it entirely, or even at all, about the film?
Countering the rapturous response to Allen on the red carpet before the screening was a smaller group of protesters, handing out sheets of paper that urged the festival to “turn the spotlight off of rapists”. This took in the whole programme, which also includes films by Luc Besson and Roman Polanski. Besson was formally cleared of rape in 2023, his accuser barred from pressing any further charges in France or elsewhere in Europe. Several other women have accused him of sexual misconduct anonymously, but no charges have been brought. Polanski, meanwhile, has spent decades of his adult life on the run from US justice, having been found guilty of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.
But if all three directors were in the spotlight for protesters, there’s a reason why Allen in particular would become his cheerleaders’ cause. There is still so much confusion around the terms of #MeToo. Does a man have to be legally convicted before his reputation is torched, or is a rumour enough? How about multiple rumours, and do they all have to say the same thing? Does art come into it at all, or to put that more simply, what happens to the oeuvre of a disgraced artist, is it separable from his disgrace? What about behaviour that was never illegal or non-consensual, but just left a bad taste in the mouth?
Woody Allen once called himself the “poster boy” of #MeToo, a remark which appeared to spur Amazon’s cancellation of a four-film deal (he sued, and the case was settled privately in 2019). He stands by it, elaborating this year: “I’ve made 50 films. I’ve always had very good parts for women, always had women in the crew, always paid them the exact same amount that we paid men, worked with hundreds of actresses, and never, ever had a single complaint from any of them at any point.” In fact, he may or may not be the poster boy of equal pay, but he’s undeniably the poster boy of the sheer social confusion around claims of sexual misconduct, its burdens of proof and its consequences.
To recap: Allen was accused of sexual assault by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow in 1992. Two investigations subsequently cleared him, but Dylan reiterated the charge in 2014, supported by her brother Ronan. Another son, Moses, defended Woody Allen, in 2018. A documentary made Dylan’s case again in 2021. In the wake of that morass Hollywood and, indeed, the world, has tended to pick a side based on hunches and vibes.
Woody Allen always said that the accusations were orchestrated by Mia Farrow, in retaliation, when she discovered his affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. That started in 1992, when she was 21 and he was 35 years her senior. Without question, the relationship gripped the world’s attention not as a fun showbiz soap opera but because the whole scenario – the age gap, the Greek tragedy leapfrog from mother to daughter – looked so off.
Since #MeToo, Woody Allen has been cold-shouldered by much of Hollywood, with some actors publicly expressing regret for working with him (though others have come out in support, and plainly he can still readily get films made). Whenever the director talks about #MeToo and attendant concepts like “cancellation”, it cleaves carefully to his professional behaviour, citing the respect and pay parity he carefully maintained with female colleagues. But he knows that that’s not really what his cancellation is about: rather, it’s about the accusation which hangs over him, a fog that will not disperse.
