Manhattan **** (5th time)
1979, Allen, US
The chronicles of a TV writer's complicated sex life in the city he loves.
Mature conversational piece with a fine balance between Allen's neurotic jokes and realistic observations of human relationships; beautifully shot and acted.
Top 5

A full MFA Top 100 review, which I posted a while back:

Manhattan

Dir. by: Woody Allen
Year: 1979
Country: US
Running Time: 90 minutes

“Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolised it all out of proportion.”

Woody Allen, the immeasurably influential New York auteur, has always been a director with a unique taste for the unconventional. Somebody unaware of their film history may mistake his Sweet and Lowdown (1999) as a film made in the trend of the likes of This is Spinal Tap (1984), unknowing that it was Allen himself, with his debut feature Take the Money and Run (1968), who coined the mockumentary into a recognisable success. In Annie Hall (1977) , Allen’s unconventional approach is at its most acute: the opening talking head addressing the audience directly with an old joke accredited to Groucho Marx; the flashbacks within flashbacks; subtitles revealing subconscious thoughts while a real conversation takes place; split screens showing two parallel psychiatrist meetings; characters revisiting their past as third person onlookers, a device taken straight from Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957).

With Manhattan, Allen embeds in us his usual flair for the cinematic bold. Its success relies on several interdependent facets, which, while not as overtly avant garde as Annie Hall , are more subtly ‘classic’ and cinematically mature. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Gordon Willis’ loving black and white photography, the sublime acting, script and direction, and the wonderful feel for balanced editing. But its cultural popularity and sustained social importance must nevertheless be questioned. Here we have a series of scenes in cafés, restaurants, libraries and bedrooms, in which people discuss their marriages, affairs and failing careers. A gamble, really, for, when it comes down to it, who wants to watch a film which depends so much on wordy psychobabble and neurotic misanthropy?

Isaac (or Ike, played by Allen) is a television writer with problems. His best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) is having an affair with a journalist Mary (Diane Keaton) who hates Bergman and mispronounces Van Gogh; his second ex-wife, now a lesbian (Meryl Streep) is about to publish a book about their failed love life; his own sex life exists only with seventeen-year-old Tracy (Mariel Hemingway). Ike happens to meet Yale’s mistress Mary, and, due to the fact she is as neurotic as Ike, he begins to like her…

This is as fine a blend of humour and insight as you’re likely to see. Much like his later Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), which diverted Allen back into the grand themes covered here after much lighter comedies, Manhattan’s success comes from its stuttering dilemmas and genuinely moving character arcs. The writing (co-scripted by Marshal Brickman) is extraordinary. Each of the characters has their own way of speaking. Mary, for instance, is the only character who, when pushed to the extreme, is honest enough to throw away her highbrow, Philadelphia façade and drop the F-word. When offered tokenism from Yale, who breaks off with her and suggests meeting with Ike, she stutters and bursts out with truth: “Fuck off, Yale.” Isaac, meanwhile, internalises when he is hurt. Between brown water and a strangling parrot noise, he tells Mary that he never gets angry; “I grow a tumour instead.”

The very personification of the anti-hero, Allen is bespectacled and small, paranoid because he is all-too fully aware and proud of being Jewish. He is foolish and cowering, growing tumours which are in his mind, awake all night because he believes somebody is strangling a parrot upstairs. When out in a thunderstorm with Mary, he makes sure he has his fair share of the newspaper to keep his head dry. Allen has always been aware of this. True, he may not be an acrobat, but his physical shortcomings are no different to those of the bumbling tramp or unsmiling, accidental hero, (Buster) Keaton. He exploits them, makes fun of them, laughs along with his would-be mockers. And the joke is, then, on those who doubt this guy’s sex problems. Allen the intellectual, perhaps for the first time in his career, far outweighs Allen the skinny man.

That we feel for Ike and empathise with him pays testament to two major points: again, Allen’s ability to depict the human condition and say something important about the lives we lead; and two, that deep down in us all, we share the same fears and insecurities as he does when it comes to love. Allen comes dangerously close (knowingly, too) to Chaplinesque sentimentality, with postcard shots of Ike and Mary under the 59th Street Bridge, and a final line of optimism which only just rings true. But, also like Chaplin, Allen gets away with it, moving from soppiness to sophistication like a sneaky chameleon worthy of a role in Zelig.

Thanks for reading,
Mick