Woody Allen: A Documentary

Woody Allen: A Documentary (2011) is Robert B. Weide's feature-length profile of the New York filmmaker, free to watch online on iFILM. Across more than three hours it traces a career that runs from gag-writing to "Annie Hall" and well past it.

Weide earned a level of access most directors never get. The camera follows Allen into the editing room, around his Manhattan apartment, and over to the battered Olympia typewriter he has used to draft scripts for decades. Collaborators and friends fill in the rest — Diane Keaton, Scarlett Johansson, Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Larry David, Martin Landau. It moves chronologically, from a teenager selling one-liners to newspapers to the run of films that made him.

What lands is the tone. There is no worship and no prosecution, just a working comedian who still turns out a movie a year and still dreads that the next one will flop. A solid entry point if you have seen a couple of his films and want the whole arc in one sitting. Stream Woody Allen: A Documentary (2011) online on iFILM.