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Manhattan | Year: 1979 Classification: Comedy Directed: - Woody Allen Actors/Actresses: - Woody Allen - Diane Keaton - Mariel Hemingway The best Woody Allen film. Seriously. Though some people are partial to ANNIE HALL, which is an excellent film, I'll take MANHATTAN. I mean, the Gershwin music is amazing. The black-and-white cityscape cinematography is absolutely beautiful, and it fills up the frame so completely that the film is impossible to watch without widescreen formatting. As for the story, it's another convoluted Woody Allen piece, where the characters likely think too much for their own good. Allen plays a writer struggling with, among other things, abandoning his job with a TV show that's just not funny, his girlfriend who's still in high school and his lesbian ex-wife's new tell-all book about their marriage. Things get more complicated when he finds out that his best friend has recently taken up an extramarital affair with a completely unbearable woman, played by Diane Keaton. Of course, Allen discovers over time that she might not be that bad. This is the film which showed that Allen was capable of more than one truly great piece of serious cinema. And with Meryl Streep and Mariel Hemingway turning in winning roles on top of all that, you'll quickly find yourself in love with this movie. AFI 's Love Stories #66: Manhattan When Woody Allen won the Oscar (in abstentia) for writing and directing "Annie Hall," which also won the Oscar for Best Picture, it was assumed the stand-up comic turned auteur had reached the pinnacle of his career. Then Allen proceeded to go out and make an even better film with his next effort, "Manhattan." Filmed in glorious black & white (and widescreen) by the great cinematographer Gordon Willis, the opening sequence combining indelible images of New York City with Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" is a paean to city Allen loves and the most rhapsodical sequence in any of his films. Rather than talking about the plot per se, "Manhattan" is best explained as a convoluted series of wrecked and ruined relationships centering around Allen's character, Isaac Davis. Isaac is divorced from Jill (Meryl Streep), who is now living with Connie (Karen Ludwig), and planning to write an expose on her marriage. Isaac is having an affair with 17-year-old Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), but then he meets Mary (Diane Keaton), the mistress of his best friend Yale (Michael Murphy), who is married to Emily (Anne Byrne). Ultimately, however, this is not a film about love, but rather a film about loss, because you just know that forced to make choices, Isaac is going to make the wrong ones. Tracy and Mary are characters constructed as such polar opposites and it never dawns on Isaac to focus more on what each has than on what they lack. Of course, today this film is obviously open to reinterpretation given Allen's very public personal life and it is now assumed that the Isaac-Tracy relationship was a sign of things to come rather than a dramatic construction. If you can get away from the film's Freudian implications then you can appreciate Hemingway's Oscar nominated performance, which is not only at the heart of the film but provides its heart as well. In contrast, Keaton's Mary is rather soulless (the anti-Annie Hall if you will). When the choice is so clear the fault is clearly not in the women, but rather in the character of Isaac (or lack of character, as the case might be). The ending is certainly the most bitter sweet of any Allen film to date. Most Romantic Lines (remember, this is a Woody Allen film): (1) "I think people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics"; (2) "Yeah! I can tell, a lot. That's, well, a lot is my favorite number", and, of course, (3) "Why is life worth living? It's a very good question. Um...Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. uh...Like what... okay...um...For me, uh... ooh... I would say ... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... uh...um... and Willie Mays... and um ... the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony ... and um... Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues ... um ... Swedish movies, naturally ... Sentimental Education by Flaubert ... uh... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra ... um ... those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne... uh...the crabs at Sam Wo's... uh... Tracy's f Better Than Annie Hall This is how a black and white should be filmed. And in the perfect location. I'm not a Woody Allen fan but this is just simply an excellent film. Funny, smart, insightful and emminently watchable. Buy Manhattan at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on Manhattan Search with the Priority Search Engine on Manhattan This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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