This great book is an in-depth study that analyzes a recurring theme of Allen's movies plays
and short stories: his characters' desire to escape in various forms and to different degrees
the world they come from to find refuge in another. This new world can be sociocultural mental
or fictional. Dirk Clara explores the characteristics and resemblances of these worlds and the
dangers for Allen's characters in passing from one world to another. In the process the author
discusses the themes of the Jewish Mama and the so-called Waspish woman the influence of
Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint on Allen's oeuvre the particular originality of the
director's mise en scène in his most ambitious movies and the way he lures us into believing
that many of his stories are autobiographical. 'Dirk Clara's study is fundamental to understand
not only Woody Allen's cinema but also Woody himself his greatness and his weakness his
sexual fantasy and his dreamed women. The author clearly shows that regardless of what could
be said or written about Woody Allen recently and his alleged relationship with women we must
avoid judging the filmmaker based on his films only.' Alain Saint-Saëns
