Word: visualizers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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...
...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 serve as auditory-visual transitions which intensify the editing pace of the film and connect the plot junctures...
...principle of their organization is contrapuntal: a predominantly brightly lit sequence is succeeded by a dark one, while a long take is almost invariably replaced by a sequence composed of many edited shots (principally of characters 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...
This pattern of sequential order is carried out throughout the film-a rhythmic progression which, step by step, builds up the dynamic pace of Manhattan. Like a series of visual vignettes culled from a personal log (Allen calls them chapters), these sequences begin and end abruptly: the opening conversation between Allen and his girlfriend is, we immediately realize, a part of an ongoing relationship, while the closing conversation leaves us, as well as Allen, in a quandry; will they meet again and what will be the denouement of their romance...