Last night on ABC Radio with Dominic Knight you heard me refer to the term 'sprezaturra' which I read about in this article thanks to my informant Carlos Oppenheimer. Carlos is a massive fan of Woody Allen's, one of his favourite lines that he quotes all too frequently is when Woody refers to having problems with his accountant, that he isn't liquid enough, or something is not flowing. At home after I returned from the ABC, I was connecting a few dots and it came to me that Woody has too much 'sprezaturra'. So to back up my thought, I went through Manhattan, which you can buy here from Amazon.
It is my belief that Woody Allen's greatest contribution to New York tourism is his film Manhattan. The movie features so much wonderful cinematography from the skylines to the sidewalks of New York City and brings together a great nostalgia for the city through the score which accompanies the visual beauty. No other film springs to mind which captures New York this eloquently, but I have been proven wrong, so if you have a comment, feel free to post it below.
Back to Woody's 'sprezaturra'.... Let us talk about the way in which the art of dishevelment is so innate in Woody's persona that it comes out in every outfit he wears. From the way in which he wears a t-shirt under his shirt so that often you can see the top of it through his unbuttoned collar, his untamed head of hair, his choice of a button down collar with a bow tie and dinner suit, his bow tie being skewed, the colour schemes (well, what we should envisage are his colour schemes given it is a black and white film), the tweeds, the corduroy. Even the way that he accents a hard 't' on the end of every sentence purposefully like 'it's not a complaintt'. It all lends itself to a peculiar sense of 'sprezaturra' which I would venture to say is perhaps too much. However, the reason why it is 'sprezaturra' and not plain old sloppiness is given away to me by the fact that he never has any facial hair showing. The man is always shaved, always very neatly tucked in at the waist line, always wearing a belt, always wearing clean clothes. This is why we can label his artful dishevelment as 'sprezaturra'.
Much love, N_.
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