Word: keaton
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...camera merely as a vehicle to record physical gags, comic facial expressions and amusing dialogue. Despite the risk of reducing his popularity with movie fans, Allen courageously broke with this former concept of film comedy and revived the style exemplied by the best works of Chaplin and Keaton which, at times, emphasized aesthetic considerations to the detriment of box-office success. In Manhattan Allen demonstrates his growth from entertaining performer to genuine film auteur, yet maintaining his bond with millions of movie-goers. Contrary to all expectations, current reports confirm that Manhattan is booming at the box-office throughout...
...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 in this sequence. Although...
...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" is the most prominent), these inserts...
...tendency in art to conform to an open structure rather than to depend on tight dramatic unity. With such an "indented" narrative line, Manhattan can be seen as a cinematization of Allen's personal diary as opposed to novelization of a film (ironically touched upon in the film with Keaton's involvement in this type of "literary" work...
...Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) takes place in the bar (Elaine's), composed of a dozen brightly lit medium and close-up shots. then the first long tracking take occurs along the street with Allen and his girlfriend in the foreground; in contrast, this is succeeded by an interior sequence with Keaton and Murphy in their apartment, with several medium shots executed by a panning camera. Again there is a long tracking take with Allen and Hemingway walking through the streets, and turning corners, on a sunny day. An abrupt cut of the dark apartment with spiral stairs-a static shot with...