MANHATTAN

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring Woody Allen

Trailer

Y

  Finally, a masterpiece. Everything that’s been attempted and fudged and chipped away at in all the other films on this list presses into a cohesive whole, a stunning, twisting experience that rewards repeated viewings and amazes on nearly every frame. Firstly, the surface stuff: the soundtrack is incredible. Using Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue gives a weight and elegance to the plot that elevates it to the golden years of Hollywood, whilst filming in black and white here delivers a sense of timelessness attempted but failed in other stuffing like Broadway Danny Rose or Celebrity. The cinematography across the board is incredible, from the iconic shot of the Brooklyn Bridge to an exchange within an astral observatory, all stars and silhouettes and some of the most sublime dialogue ever written by a twitchy, nervous man. Most of Allen’s films fall into easy camps of ‘funny’ or ‘deep’, but here, perhaps for the only time, he skips a perfect line between the two, mixing real pathos with a reined in version of his usual yammerings; not a scene goes on too long or doesn’t develop the story or characters, whilst the usual collection of intellectuals and artistic lost souls are drummed up to the giddy heights of real people you could meet on the street and wonder how they survive. The women are again the standouts, from Diane Keaton’s about face from her other roles as a difficult, sometimes unlikeable foil for Woody’s neuroses to Mariel Hemingway’s brutally fresh take on a naïve young girl who sums up Allen’s whole career in her final line. There’s a confidence here missing from a lot of his work before and since, a sense that he’s telling the story he wants to tell free of inhibition or outside influence save his own heroes, a fusing of the timelessness of Annie Hall with the more sombre nature of much of his later work. As aesthetically pleasing as Zelig, deeper and more satisfying than his later essays on human weakness and obsession, it serves as a mature partner to Annie and Alvy’s rambling, a grown up in a sea of hyperactive children. If you’re only going to watch one Woody Allen movie, watch Annie Hall. It’s funnier. But if you want something beautiful, thoughtful and black and white, then Manhattan beats the rest in a pinch.