Take the Money and Run

Woody Allen: genius or pariah? Or both? One unfortunate casualty of the Allen saga is the slow but steady disappearance of his work online as streamers disassociate themselves from his name. Which is too bad- Allen has contributed so many great pieces to American Cinema and clearly influenced almost everyone who has come after, not just with his comedy but his entire intellectual, dialogue-driven aesthetic.

Take the Money and Run is how it all started- his first fully-written and directed feature, and a hilarious mockumentary about a young miscreant named Virgil who’s just as bad a criminal as he is a cellist. While later Allen films explore bleak, philosophical territory about the human condition, his earlier films are all about the gag. This is no truer than in Take the Money and Run, sending up one absurdist setup after another, with a sophisticated vibe American comedy had previously never been known for: Virgil tries to hold up a bank with a note, but his handwriting is so bad, people keep misreading “gun” for “gub.” And so on.

There’s absolutely no moral to Take the Money and Run, though it firmly establishes Woody’s neurotic persona; Chaplin had his tramp, Groucho his wisecracks, Allen his bumbling, nebbish self. The surreal jokes thrown into the mix (in one background, a criminal ventriloquist is visited, in prison, by his partner- both communicate through their dummies) will be taken to even more extreme levels by Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker a decade later with Airplane! And while the documentary genre exists here simply to be parodied, it does serve as a dry run for Allen’s more mature Zelig, which takes the mockumentary concept into deeper emotional territory.

Full of self-deprecating jokes, including a longstanding Allen tradition of ridiculing his Jewish heritage, Take the Money and Run takes us back to more innocent times, with a marvelously 60’s score by the great Marvin Hamlisch. Janet Margolin does a wonderful job as Virgil’s shy, timid wife, establishing a type Allen would later revisit with Mia Farrow in many films. Speaking of Farrow, for those who would rather not support Mr. Allen as a filmmaker, you can take comfort in the fact that you’re not giving him a penny watching his film through here, while still basking in the brilliant comedy that is Take the Money and Run.