Take The Money And Run

If you really want to appreciate Take The Money And Run,  Woody Allen's feature-film debut, you should see it within 24 hours of one of its contemporary movies, like Midnight Cowboy, just to ground yourself back in low-budget film-making of the late 1960s.

If you can do that, you may well be able to go beyond the budgetary limitations and enjoy Take The Money And Run, a film played strictly for laughs, both verbal and visual. If you can do that, you may see why Allen was considered the great hope for comedy in the early 1970s and why Annie Hall was such a brave and stylistic step forward for him...and why so many old-timers say "...I liked him in his funny movies...". 

Shot on location in San Francisco, Woody plays Virgil Starkwell, a failed bank-robber and the subject of a mockumentary, looking back on his life.

• His parents, of course, will talk about their difficult child but only behind Groucho Marx fake nose & glasses disguises
• we see him as a teenage cellist in the school marching band awkwardly carrying his chair as well, desperately trying to stay both mobile and seated to play his parts
• and everything just keeps going wrong in his life of petty crime, until he meets VVV (Janet Margolin) who he falls deeply in love with.

Needing more money to impress her, Virgil decides to rob a bank but his note to the teller which should read "I have a gun" instead looks like "I have a gub"...and all sorts of discussion ensues with the bank's staff and customers joining in, eventually leading to Virgil's arrest and incarceration.

Escaping from jail he tries to go straight but easy money keeps dragging him back to crime and more and more ridiculous failures. These vignettes, linked together by an exaggerated voice-over by Jason Beck may seem a little unsophisticated now but they were very funny then and Allen's frenetic physicality is an important part of the gags.   

Take The Money And Run DVD

"...Allen's directorial debut is a joy from beginning to end. By no means does it have the depth and sophistication of his later work, but it's consistently funny, with one gag running into the next, and there are teasing moments of that blur between fantasy and reality that characterized his films..." Amazon reviewer David L. Rattigan

Take the money and run was Allen's directorial debut and it still stands as a wonderful glimpse of the artist that was to be.   

Take The Money And Run original movie poster

see also:

• wikipedia Take The Money & Run