Directed by:
Woody AllenCinematography:
Gordon WillisCast:
Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Michael Murphy, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep, Tisa Farrow, Gary Weis, Karen Allen, David Rasche, Wallace Shawn, Mark Linn-Baker (more)VOD (2)
Plots(1)
42-year-old Manhattan native Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) has a job he hates, a seventeen-year-old girlfriend, Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), he doesn't love and a lesbian ex-wife, Jill (Meryl Streep), who's writing a tell-all book about their marriage and whom he'd like to strangle. But when he meets his best friend's sexy intellectual mistress, Mary (Diane Keaton), Isaac falls head over heels in lust! Leaving Tracy, bedding Mary and quitting his job are just the beginning of Isaac's quest for romance and fulfillment in a city where sex is as intimate as a handshake and the gateway to true love is a revolving door. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Reviews (8)
You're happy, you lack nothing, everything is fine. And suddenly someone appears who shows you that you could be even happier and you wonder how you managed to live without them until now. Eventually, a person takes a step in one direction or another, but – something always appears anyway. The purest dose of pure romance, experiences, anti-snobbery, ironically exaggerated conversations about art, and Woody Allen's best performance, scriptwriting, and directing. I recognized myself in so many places, smiled and grew sad. I have seen scenes that seemed to come from my ideas of ideal partnership or my future. And one day, I will find myself completely in Manhattan.
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Unlike Woody Allen’s best films, Manhattan won’t make you laugh or engage you in a relationship drama. It will, however, warm the cockles of your heart with its relaxed, natural flow, black-and-white aesthetics and fantastic atmosphere of the time and place. And the final dialogue serves as an intelligent conclusion. A jazz-like film.
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First, Woody Allen clumsily picked the mistress in the form of a 17-year-old masculine woman, who looks more like a boy from a cornfield than like an underage girl from Manhattan, and then he decided to bombard me with a few unrelated texts, which were actually supposed to make sense in the context of his way of life. The result is such that I actually found out that in Manhattan at the end of the 1970s they had tap water as rusty as the freshest beer from a local tavern and that girls sought out boys who could talk about art for 20 minutes straight in an ostentatiously dull manner. An interesting movie, but I cannot say that it impressed me all that much.
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Manhattan is considered by film critics as one of the most important and highest-quality films by Allen, but to be honest, it didn't impress me as much for a simple reason. It concentrates on all the main and favorite motifs of Allen's work - emotionally unstable intellectuals, the city of New York, favorite music, criticism of intellectual snobbery, loneliness, unfulfilled romantic desires, and nostalgia. Because I saw Manhattan later than many of Woody's other films (and there were quite a few of them due to his overproduction), those previous films played a more significant role for me. Not to mention that I appreciate the much more comedic early Allen or the late experimenting version of him. In Manhattan, there are certainly classic Allen slapstick tones, but the motif of sadness and nostalgia is much stronger in the form when family relationships were far more understandable and stronger, divorces and custody battles were exceptional, and people were closer to each other. Of the two fateful women in Woody Allen's life, I like Diane Keaton much more than Mia Farrow, but even that didn't get Allen a fourth star this time, even though everyone in the film delivers honest acting work. Finally, the greatest impression is made by the black-and-white cinematography and the dreamlike photographic scenes of the nocturnal panorama of Manhattan and the most famous New York architectural wonders, as well as similarly shot scenes of the connection between the two tragic protagonists of this sad love story. Overall impression: 65%.
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It's not better than the two best Allen films I've seen so far (i.e. Annie Hall and Zelig), but it's still very good. I didn't want to burst out laughing or be particularly moved by Manhattan, whereas the film felt rather very authentic, believable and like (as much as I dislike the phrase, I have to use it again now) real life. And in addition to a number of irresistible dialogues, it contains a beautiful scene in a planetarium and a wonderful declaration of love: "You're like God's answer to Job. He would say: I do a lot of terrible things, but I can still make one of these." I'll give it four and a bit.
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In short, typical Allen. A film seemingly about nothing, and noticeably weaker and less entertaining than the similarly focused Annie Hall, but so good and relaxing to watch nonetheless. A caress to the soul in the form of a charming black-and-white production design, excellent background music, incredibly real and funny dialogues and above all likeable actors. For New Yorkers, this must be very close to the heart. 80%
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Manhattan didn't awaken bursts of laughter in me, rather it impressed me with its highly intellectual and sophisticated script, in which, paradoxically, I didn't understand much of the dialogue at all. The plot is neither complicated nor unorthodox, it is simply a story from life. The cast was really perfect, especially Diane Keaton and Mariel Hemingway. I liked the music, which reminded me terribly of the atmosphere of the music clubs and entertainment venues of the first half of the 20th century. A typically conversational Woody Allen, who, although he doesn't wow or burst your diaphragm with laughter, nevertheless captivates and puts a smile on your face.
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Woody Allen in fine form, but it's almost annoying how fixated he is on New York and its beauty. It's almost propaganda in places. But his dialogues flow like poetry, they're appropriately punchy, and thanks to him, they're delivered absolutely brilliantly. Some of his lines you just can't make up. Using black and white was definitely an interesting step.
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