In Love and Death again, a dead soldier, with a bullet hole in his forehead, rises in order to discuss with Boris the price of a ring and his tax refunds. At the end of the film, Boris tells us “not to think of death as an end but as a very effective way to cut down on our expenses.” Boris is dead at the time. He has been sentenced to death. While he was waiting in prison for his execution, an angel visited him and announced that he would be pardoned by the emperor (Napoleon, whom Boris is accused of trying to murder) and that he would live. So Boris, the coward, smiled when he met his executioners; he told them they were late; he came out on the field relaxed, refusing the blindfold, still waiting for a messenger from the emperor to come and release him. Then he was shot.

The macabre scene is turned into a joke. Boris himself does not escape. He seems to have been swindled by the angel. The wit does not save Boris but it may save Woody, and it may save us: because it shows that the fear may be tricked. There are ways to circumvent the obstacle. It is a story between Woody and us, a story that Woody tells us and that has the effect of mocking death, and belittling the fear that we all share – Boris, Woody and us.

The narrative structure of the film is noteworthy. It is a first-person narrative seemingly by Boris but which goes on after Boris is dead. There is no real paradox because, in fact, it is Woody who is speaking through Boris. We have recognized him from the start because of the anachronistic glasses that Boris wears. Woody tells us a story of himself as Boris, a Russian nobleman from the early 19th century. By Woody, I don't mean Woody Allen, the author who signs the work, but a sort of meta-character that Woody Allen plays in most of his early films: there is Woody as a spermatozoid (All You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex), Woody as a revolutionary despite himself (Bananas), Woody in love (Annie Hall), Woody in the future (Sleeper), Woody as a depressed filmmaker (Stardust Memories), etc. Though it is not necessarily explicit (as it is in Love and Death), all those films are stories told by Woody of himself in different universes. They are auto-fiction, so to speak, of this meta-character, Woody, that Woody Allen has invented. His identity is marked by the idiosyncrasies that he carries with him in these different universes, and his glasses.

Of course, it is often the case that comical actors play a similar character in different films and universes: Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, etc. However, in Woody Allen's films, Woody is not only recognizable as a character (or a meta-character) in the story, under a certain disguise, bearing then a particular name, like Boris, Alvis, or as a fearful spermatozoid, but he is also involved as the alleged author of this auto-fiction. In Love and Death, the implication is explicit. There is a voiceover, a narrator, and, since the voiceover goes on after Boris is dead, it seems that the narrator was not Boris but Woody telling this story of himself as Boris. Annie Hall is certainly the film in which Woody is the closest to his mirror character, Alvis Singer. The film starts with Woody telling two jokes that illustrate key aspects of his relationship to life and to love. He then evokes his childhood. We see an episode from his childhood where we learn that, in this film, the character whom we have recognized as Woody is called Alvis Singer. The relationship between Woody and Alvis is brought to a near identity in a scene from a TV show in which Woody appeared but is here attributed to Alvis.

It would be easier to say that these films are auto-fictions by Woody Allen, their real author, representing himself in different universes, as Boris, as Alvis, or as a spermatozoid. But that is not the case. In interviews, Woody Allen often complains that we mix him up with the character, the characters that he has invented and who are not himself. This identification is a trait particular to Woody Allen's films. We would not think that Groucho Marx in real life behaved like the character he played in his movies. As regards Woody Allen, I believe it comes from the fact that these characters – Boris, Alvis, the spermatozoid – appear as multiple versions of the same meta-character (again let us call him Woody) and that this meta-character is also involved, not exactly, or not necessarily, as the narrator, but as the one who is telling us this story (which might have another narrator): that is, as the alleged author of this auto-fiction. Some of Woody Allen's films, or scenes, have no visible narrator. At least one (Take the Money and Run) has a narrator who is not Woody (but an impersonal documentary voice). So Woody is not necessarily the narrator of the story. Rather, he is the implicit author of an auto-fiction.

Now, in his work on wit, Freud explains that wit involves three persons: the joker, his object (the person about whom the joke is made) and the spectator (the person for whom the joke is intended). In a film, the joke is intended for us, the audience. Its object might be the character that is ridiculed (Boris, Alvis, the spermatozoid) and the object of his fear (death, the unknown, disease). Often, though not always, the object of the fear is belittled through the mocking of the character who fears. But a joker is also involved, and the joker is Woody. That is why, because of the structure of wit, we tend to mix up Woody, as he is involved in the fiction, with real author Woody Allen. This meta-character, the alleged author of the story, takes on traits that might not, do not seem to, belong to the real author Woody Allen. For instance, Woody is often clumsy, whereas Woody Allen apparently is not. Woody is scared of death and jokes about it, whereas Woody Allen might not.

In the end, the point is that the characters under which Woody disguises himself in these auto-fictions – Boris, Alvis, the spermatozoid – may run into deep trouble (Boris is shot in the end) but the story is nevertheless a way to belittle, and undermine, the fear. The very fact that the character is ridiculous (think of the spermatozoid in All You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex) makes his fear, a fear of the unknown which we share with him, ridiculous. It is wit, in Freud's sense, because it expresses something that we would not want to hear if it were not disguised as a joke. But it has the effect of undermining the fear it expresses, making the fear itself, or its object, ridiculous.

It is what Freud calls tendentious wit except it is directed not against someone but against what that we fear: death.

Love and Death is centered on the fear of death but the same trick works with all kinds of fears. Annie Hall deals with the fear of beasts: lobsters in the cabin in Maine, a spider in Annie's apartment. Alvis fights the spider with a racket and breaks everything in the bathroom. One cannot but laugh and imagine (since we never see it) a black but tiny spider on the white enamel of the bathtub. One of my favorite scenes, in Manhattan Murder Mystery, shows a slightly older Woody trapped with a slightly older Annie in an elevator that suddenly stops, and the light goes off. Elsewhere, Woody is trapped in a cellar. In Sleeper, and A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, Woody takes off in very uncertain flying machines. It seems that all possible phobias may be defeated by Woody's wit. The character in the film, whatever his name is, is scared. He could die, or go mad with fear. But we, and Woody, who is telling us the story, have belittled, if not conquered, our fear.