Word: allenated
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ALLEN'S auteuristic attitude has been apparent in a number of his films: Sleeper, Love and Death, Annie Hall and, especially Interiors. More and more he has been concerned with not only the thematic-interpretive aspect of the film narrative, but also with specific cinematic devices which convey the film's content and message in a cinematic way. Accordingly, Interiors marks the crucial point in Allen's directorial evolution, expressing much of the script's meaning through purely auditory/visual means instead of via dramatic situations, mise-en-scene, dialogue and acting. Like Chaplin (in A Woman of Paris ), Allen...
Some film reviewers expressed disappointment with Interiors for its lack of "comedy flair," failing to realize that this film possesses more psychological depth and metaphorical ideas than the great majority of recent American films. Historically, Interiors can be considered as Allen's prelude to Manhattan in which psychological complexity is successfully integrated with refined lyrical humor. From the structural standpoint, Manhattan is realized with an extraordinary sense for pictorial composition, mistage and camera movement. Most germane is the tight unity between these properties and the narrative continuity; at its best, this unity in itself becomes the film's message. Hence...
Photographically, Manhattan is a film in which almost every shot is designed to expand its narrative meaning through pictorial composition. Many sequences contain shots of memorable visual beauty-never for their own sake, because the composition of the images is always subordinated to the pictorial event. The conversation between Allen and Diane Keaton in the planetarium is saturated with chiaroscuro density which can challenge, graphically, the famous "Aquarium Sequence" in Welles' Lady from Shanghai. The function of darkness and use of galactical phenomena which often dominate the stationary frame, add considerably to the philosophical implications of the Allen-Keaton interchange...
MOST OF THE cinematic dynamism in Manhattan is contributed by camera movement: it is the major expedient by which Allen transforms mise-en-scene into mise-en-shot (i.e., the kinesthetic interaction between the camera's mobility and the movement of objects or characters within the shot). The tracking camera ideally relates to the theme of this film, merging into the film's content. If any environment can be epitomized by incessant and omnipresent movement-both physical and psychological-then that locale must be New York. As a New Yorker (perhaps even more as a Brooklynite who observed the "pulsating...
Many films have used great cities as a "stage" which has been no more than a backdrop, however beautiful, for their action. In contrast, Allen and Willis perceived New York's irresistable dramatic force and succeeded in making it an integral part of their film. Even in the brief montage inserts(i.e., Allen and Keaton sitting under the 59th Street Bridge; Allen running through traffic or playing in the park with his son), the architecture of New York functions as an "emotional ingredient" of the photographed event. Supported by characteristic musical compositions (of which Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue...