For five decades, no American filmmaker has been as prolific or as paradoxical as Woody Allen. From Play It Again, Sam (1972) to Midnight in Paris (2011) and Blue Jasmine (2013), Allen has produced an average of one film a year; yet in many of these movies Allen reveals a progressively skeptical attitude toward both the value of art and the cultural contributions of artists.

In this second edition Peter J. Bailey extends his classic study to consider Allen's work during the twenty-first century. He illuminates how the director's decision to leave New York to shoot in European cities such as London, Paris, Rome, and Barcelona has affected his craft. He also explores Allen's shift toward younger actors and interprets the evolving critical reaction to his films?authoritatively demonstrating why the director's lifelong project of moviemaking remains endlessly deserving of careful attention.

The book is published by University Press of Kentucky.

"Bailey's rigorous study will please the serious student of film and of 20th-century artistic impression." (Virginia Quarterly Review)

"An important contribution to American film studies." (American Studies)

"Bailey knows Woody Allen's work backwards and forwards, and his book makes many illuminating connections among the films in the Allen canon." (Christopher Ames, author of Movies About the Movies)