A week later, he was back on the bandstand at Michael's, and the room was jammed. Newsweek took in the scene, noting that ''Woody has graduated from nebbish to enigma'' and marveling at the stream of women throwing themselves at the newly minted auteur. One in particular, a ''very young'' brunette, prompted a ''complex appreciation'' from Allen -- and the premonitory comment: ''If my moral sense ever sinks as low as my other senses... but it wouldn't look good for me to hang around the Dalton School with my coat collar turned up.''
Newsweek also noted the director's new, as-yet-untitled movie, a ''brooding, Bergmanesque affair without a single laugh in it.'' This would turn out to be an accurate description of Interiors, which was nominated for five Oscars (including director, original screenplay, actress, and supporting actress) but won none. Neither did 1979's Manhattan, nominated only for original screenplay and supporting actress, for Mariel Hemingway's performance as a, er, Dalton student with whom Allen's character has an affair. The real loser this time was Gordon Willis, who wasn't nominated for his luscious black-and-white cinematography. Said fellow director of photography Caleb Deschanel, ''To ignore Gordon Willis is a crime.''
The early '80s included a string of almost pro forma nominations for Allen -- Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Broadway Danny Rose (1984), Best Original Screenplay for The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) -- and then the Second Coming: Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). Variety called this piercingly comic New York psychosexual roundelay ''one of Woody Allen's great films''; the critics' groups loved it, and so did the Academy, with seven nominations that included Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress.
As for Woody, he told a reporter that his favorite film of the year was Blue Velvet, and when David Lynch was subsequently nominated for Best Director he quipped, ''I'd like to thank Woody Allen.'' Come the Oscar ceremony itself, Allen once again tootled the night away in New York while Hannah won three statuettes -- Dianne Wiest for Supporting Actress, Michael Caine for supporting actor, and Allen for original screenplay -- in the face of a Platoon onslaught.
After that, it seemed like just about every new Woody Allen film was guaranteed a Best Original Screenplay nomination: Radio Days (1987), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Alice (1990), Husbands and Wives (1992). The latter came out amid the firestorm of the Allen/Mia Farrow/Soon-Yi Previn scandal, a mess that combined just about every salacious element short of absinthe abuse and put major dents in the Woodman's lovable public persona. That the film was a caustic look at modern relationships, however, seemed oddly honest, and Judy Davis was considered to have a good shot at Best Supporting Actress. Reality chose to be more unlikely: Marisa Tomei won for My Cousin Vinny.
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