Word: allene
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Manhattan. Woody Allen's latest is, as perceptive critics in every national publication have pointed out, a gloppy mixture of Annie Hall and Interiors--bits of the former's clever humor sprinkled on top of a stale layer of the latter's unbearable dialogue. Manhattan is black-and-white, entertaining, not quite as good as Annie Hall, but better than most other movies you could choose to see. If Allen ever overcomes the paralysis his years of psychoanalysis have induced in his capacity to write serious dialogue, he may yet emerge as the American Bergman. Until then, he should stick...
...each Allen movie, Keaton's performances improve by an inch or two, but she still has miles to go before anyone can take her seriously as an actress. Try hard as she may she still sounds like she's reading lines. Murphy is little better. Hemingway does her best to make the role of a 17-year-old in love with a 42-year-old seem believable, and her scene breaking up with Allen strikes the most genuine emotional note in Manhattan...
WITH MANHATTAN, the media tell us, Allen enters a new phase of his career--intertwining the consummation of his humor in Annie Hall with the depth and seriousness of Interiors. If so, the Interiors strand nearly strangles Manhattan. Why are so many critics deaf to the poverty of the language in Interiors and parts of Manhattan? The direct study of personality in a society of encounter sessions and "meaningful relationships" threatens to scour all metaphors and imagery from both critics and artists...
...Allen remains potent only when he weds his old instinct for incongruous humor to his new skill as a director. Several times in Manhattan he accomplishes this, points to promising possibilities in his use of language and the camera, and creates memorable images. Allen and Keaton wandering across the lunar surface in the planetarium, discussing their affair, hold our attention, but not the same couple silhouetted before an empty screen a la Bergman...
...serious moment Allen can bring up the interesting point that New York's chic artist culture may create its own neuroses so it won't have time to worry about true problems, like death. But we forget that and remember instead Allen's head filling the screen next to an ape's skull. He rants about the decline of morality to Murphy, then points to the simian and says, "In a few years we'll be like him--and he was probably one of the beautiful people...