‘Allen v. Farrow’ Dives into Allen’s Relationship with 17-Year-Old Christina Engelhardt

For decades the public at large has dissected Woody Allen’s relationships with Mia Farrow, Dylan Farrow, and Soon-Yi Previn. But there’s another troubling relationship in this renowned filmmaker’s life that has been largely overlooked. In Allen v. Farrow‘s second episode the docuseries examines Allen’s relationship with Christina Engelhardt, a model who was 17 when they started to see each other.

Engelhardt and Allen first met each other at restaurant Elaine’s in October of 1976. She was a young model on the rise at the age of 16. He was a filmmaker in the prime of career at 41. Soon after their chance meeting, the two began a secret affair that would last several years.

“I was 16 when I met him, but I’m going to stand by at 17 we developed our relationship,” Engelhardt says in the docuseries, referencing the legal age of consent in New York. “But didn’t tell him what my age was. It wasn’t that I was holding back anything. He didn’t ask me, I didn’t ask him. And it wasn’t like it only happened once. It went on until I was 23.”

Allen’s relationship with Engelhardt has always been one of the lesser known chapters in this saga. Though they met before Allen started a relationship with Mia Farrow, they allegedly continued to see each other while Allen was with Farrow. Engelhardt is best known for inspiring Manhattan, Allen’s film about a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who starts a relationship with a 17-year-old. Though Engelhardt has spoken about Allen before in the wake of the #MeToo movement, Allen v. Farrow marks one of the first times she’s discussed their relationship in her own words.

Engelhardt says she was in love with Allen and thought he was “magical.” “After I saw Manhattan, I was the same age and there was Muriel looking like myself. And I thought, ‘Oh my god I’m his muse. I’m an inspiration.’ I even said to Woody, ‘Am I your muse?’ And he said, ‘Of course you’re my muse,'” Engelhardt reveals. “I felt I was the lucky one.”

Engelhardt has always stated that she had a positive relationship with Allen. “I was in Seventeen magazine, COED magazine, and did all the advertising. I mean, I had this sex appeal as a young girl. And you know I had trauma,” Engelhardt says. “I had been raped four times around the age of 12 to 14 by people my family knew. And so I start thinking who can I trust? And I trusted him. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong or good.”

By delving into Allen’s relationship with Engelhardt, Allen v. Farrow doesn’t exactly point another finger at Allen; but it does work to build a pattern of Allen’s sexual interest in women who were much younger than him. This same episode explores who Soon-Yi Previn was before she started spending time with Allen, painting her as an innocent young woman who had allegedly never even kissed a boy. Priscilla Gilman, a family friend, even claims that Allen tried to seduce her when she was younger.

“I think Woody spent a lot of time grooming Soon-Yi, taking her to the Knicks games by herself, telling her she could be a model, giving her a part in his film, knowing that Soon-Yi was the one child who didn’t date, who had never had a boyfriend and then inviting her to the screening room,” Gilman says. “Something that he tried to do to me and I didn’t buy it. I didn’t go for it.”

These relationships paired with Allen’s focus in his movies make for a damning characterization. Alissa Wilkinson, a film critic and culture reporter from Vox, puts it best.

“You get the feeling [from] Woody Allen’s films that he’s trying to make us acclimated to the idea of these kinds of relationships, this sort of power dynamic. In a sense, grooming us. It’s something that he does repeatedly over and over in films throughout the films the same archetypes show up, the same kind of big age gaps in relationships show up,” Wilkinson says. “And so when you see it over and over it kind of attunes you to think this is normal. This is a thing that people do. It’s fine. There’s nothing that I should feel odd about.”

Watch Allen v. Farrow on HBO NOW and HBO Max