Manhattan (1979)
Directed by Woody Allen

Film Review

The majestic panoramas that fill the screen in those entrancing opening minutes of Manhattan, rendered even more beautiful and alluring by the music that accompanies them (Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue), are enough to convince you that New York City is the most wondrous place on Earth.  It is a sublime overture to Woody Allen's greatest film, pulling us into a world that is totemic of human achievement, where unfettered art and grubby capitalism find a way to live side-by-side and where even the air itself seems to be alive, a drug that once it enters your lungs hooks you for life.  There is probably no other film in which a city is presented with such intense affection, bordering on idolatry, but Allen's artful billet-doux to his beloved home town is a work of profound irony and contradiction.  Magnificent it may be, but New York also symbolises all that went wrong with America in the 1970s - the wholesale surrender to materialism that resulted in so much insecurity and lack of personal fulfilment.  The mindless quest for wealth and enjoyment in this new age of hedonistic freedom brought more misery than happiness.  Still, it was a good time to be a psychoanalyst.

The 'grown up' protagonists in Manhattan all suffer from this malaise.  Each is a fully paid up member of a society that mistook material well-being for genuine happiness and ended up being drawn like pins to a magnet into a soulless mire of decadence and dismay.  They are comfortably off intellectual sophisticates who have good jobs and no trouble in finding members of the opposite sex to share their beds with, but at no time do they appear settled or satisfied.  Allen's character Isaac Davis is (typically) the most extreme case of this - an over-sexed 42-year old writer who is Ignmar Bergman's greatest fan and yet he acts and talks like a juvenile delinquent who is incapable of expressing or feeling any real emotion.  Tracey, the 17-year-old he is in a relationship with at the start of the film, is by contrast emotionally mature and far more in touch with her true feelings.  She hasn't (yet) been corrupted by the narcissism of the cultural elite and so is able to appreciate what love really is.  In common with his middle-aged cohorts, Isaac wouldn't recognise true love even it were standing stark naked in front of him, with a gigantic Valentine's card in one hand and a DVD of Now, Voyager in the other.

Diane Keaton's character - a more neurotic, less emotionally secure version of the one she played alongside Allen in Annie Hall (1977) - is almost a mirror image of Isaac.  She is just as incapable of experiencing real love, owing to the intellectual defence mechanisms she has created for herself to spare her the pain of rejection and disappointment.  For both characters, and we may add Isaac's friend Yale (Michael Murphy) and his venomous ex-wife Jill (a wonderfully waspish Meryl Streep), the obsessive need to make money and forge a big career becomes a barrier to true happiness.  They are destined to end up isolated, pursuing solitary lives in separate bubbles, sustained not by love or the things that truly matter but by the hollow decadence of the buzzing metropolis.  By the time Isaac finally realises what true love is, it is too late.  His one chance of real happiness has gone forever and all he can do is watch with a wry smile as it slips from his fingers.  He must content himself with being a mere brick in the fabric of the city he adores, his heart marching to the almighty beat of the great metropolis.

Manhattan isn't just a cogent morality tale (one that remains depressingly current), it is also a lovingly crafted visual ode to New York.  The film's widescreen format was forced on Allen by his original conception of showing us the Manhattan skyline in all its glory, a vista that is surely every bit as awe-inspiring as the pyramids of ancient Egypt.  The 2.35:1 aspect that Allen went for is a tricky one but his cinematographer Gordon Willis manages to fill every inch of the screen and repeatedly we are treated to a succession of dazzling images, none more arrestingly beautiful than the exteriors depicting the familiar New York landscape.  Grandiose shots of the Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge and Central Park, along with glimpses of the city's thronging streets, bookshops and cafés, make up a vibrant living tapestry in which we soon feel we are as immersed as the protagonists themselves, and the fact that the film is in black and white somehow lends it an even greater visual impact and immediacy.  It is hard to name another film of the 1970s that is so exquisitely photographed as Manhattan.  Every frame is a work of art, seductively stylish and yet imbued with a sad longing for that small part of paradise which is gone forever.

Film Synopsis

Isaac Davis is a television comedy writer who is so disgusted with his milieu that he decides to chuck it and start a new career as a serious writer.  His inspiration is the city of New York, in which he has lived his entire life and which perfectly encapsulates his idea of romanticism.  Now in his early forties, he is half-heartedly pursuing a relationship with a 17-year-old schoolgirl, Tracey, just as his embittered ex-wife is poised to publish an account of their marriage that will make him a laughing stock.  His best friend is Yale Pollack, a married college professor who is having an affair with columnist Mary Wilkie.  Convinced that his relationship with Tracey cannot last, Isaac presses her to start going out with boys of her own age.  Heartbroken, Tracey agrees to part company with Isaac and is soon making plans to go to London to study drama.  With Tracey now out of the picture, Isaac is free to make his move on Mary, who has by this time broken up with Yale.  Although Isaac has more in common with Mary than he did with his teenage lover he soon regrets giving up Tracey...