Human beings can be an ungrateful lot. Like spoiled children at a picnic we will eat too much, give no thanks, then protest there isn’t more. Consider the man who made so many films we loved – so many that we almost took them for granted: Annie Hall, Manhattan, Zelig, Hannah and Her Sisters… all the way to the bitter but brilliant Husbands and Wives. Once upon a time he was simply, for us, a prolix genius, a one-person industry, bearing the name Woody Allen. He could scarcely fail. He seemed impervious even when, in some critics’ views, he did (Stardust Memories, Interiors). Those exceptions merely proved the rule that he was born funny and just had to make sure he stayed that way.

Then the dazzle flickered and faltered. The failures started to form sequences. The funny films weren’t so funny. (His break-up with Mia Farrow seemed the moment when his concentration broke as cinema’s clown prince.) We sensed a fallible Woody, a lone wizard behind the curtain, a little man controlling a less co-operative fantasyland.