Word: manhattans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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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...
...spectators' visual perception is seized from the very outset of the film: stunning views of Manhattan's urban setting introduce the location of the film's action in a dynamic montage flow. Black and white photography together with wide screen ratio ideally combine to present the architectural-pictorial aspect of the metropolis. With its metal, stone, dark brick, glass and concrete structures, New York projects a black-and-white vision. Color belongs to San Francisco, Palm Beach, Las Vegas and even Washington, while dark and bright contrast, especially at night, is what makes New York visually the most exciting city...
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...
...conversing in close-ups). This concept of the film as a juxtaposition of visual events unforcefully related to each other is in accord with the modern 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...