Word: manhattan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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LIKE VICTIMS of psychoanalysis everywhere, Woody Allen's characters talk too much. Allen has, we're told by the many promotional articles or-chestrated to coincide with Manhattan's opening, spent an hour a day for the past 20 years talking to his analyst about his problems. It shows. From the low-key beginning--with Allen's voice dubbed over panoramas of the New York skyline--to the emotional crises towards the end, Manhattan is a movie of words. Its characters erect their troubles out loud, and try to tear them down in conversation...
...same disease ravaged Allen's last film, Interiors, and laid low his high-serious intentions. In Manhattan, it is less severe, and Allen's clever lines flow as copiously as ever, insuring that Manhattan is an entertaining movie. But the sheer wordiness of its characters keeps them from being engaging and distances them from any emotional contact with the audience. In farces like Sleeper or Love and Death, of course, no one expected the characters to reach out and seize viewers' hearts. But Allen has broadcast his intention to write serious comedies, or funny dramas. Judged by the standards...
ALLEN'S TROUBLE with writing serious dialogue does not totally overwhelm Manhattan because much of his intellectual humor remains, and his cinematic direction--with the work of Gordon's Willis's camera--continues to develop in exciting ways. Manhattan is shot entirely in black and white. Along with careful application of gushy George Gershwin music at critical moments, the black and white suggests nothing more than Capra and corniness...
...neurosis and confusion in Manhattan's plot is thus both unexpected and disturbing. It is a story of love affairs nearly broken up, communication nearly established, people nearly honest with each other. If Allen was unfair to California in Annie Hall by depicting it as a doped-up land of sun and stylessness, he is doubly hard on his native city. The extensive location shooting in Manhattan--of the Museum of Modern Art, Rizzoli's Bookstore, Hayden Planetarium, even the Dalton School--may be the worst thing for the heartland's vision of New York City since the fiscal crisis...
...Allen's other recent films, he plays himself or a close approximation thereof, in Manhattan. But this short, balding little Jew has come a long way from the pitiful failure he played in Bananas. In Manhattan he's successful television writer who has no trouble meeting women. The new Allen is more fleshed out and believable than the old, but the troubles which the old might have hidden with quips are now revealed as deep crevasses in his personality. When Keaton tells him she is still in love with old flame Michael Murphy. Allen is reduced to shrugging his shoulders...