- If you want to understand Woody Allen's Manhattan, consider these two quotes:
- Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion. Eh uh, no, make that he, he romanticized it all out of proportion. Better. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin. Uh, no, let me start this over.
- He was given to fits of rage, Jewish liberal paranoia, male chauvinism, self-righteous misanthropy, and nihilistic moods of despair. He had complaints about life but never any solutions. He longed to be an artist but balked at the necessary sacrifices. In his most private moments, he spoke of his fear of death, which he elevated to tragic heights when in fact it was mere narcissism.
- The "he" referred to in both quotes is a born-and-bred New Yorker named Isaac (Woody Allen). Perhaps tellingly, the first quote comes from Isaac himself, who frets over the details of the opening chapter to his possibly hypothetical book before finally settling on an introduction that grossly exaggerates his masculinity. The second quote comes from Isaac's ex-wife (Meryl Streep) who left him "for another woman" and documented their break-up in her own new book. Paradoxically, both quotes are incredibly accurate. Isaac is a hopeless romantic in love with New York. He's also enough of a neurotic that being in a relationship with him would convince most women to consider an alternative approach to personal and sexual fulfillment.
- Miraculously, people tolerate and even appear to enjoy Isaac's company. For example, he takes his girlfriend Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) on double-dates with his best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) and Yale's wife Emily (Anne Byrne). Lest that arrangement sound too stable and psychologically healthy, however, let me point out that Tracy is a mere seventeen years old and that Yale is cheating on his wife. The woman Yale is cheating with is a journalist named Mary (Diane Keaton). She begins and ends this story in Yale's arms, but her significant romantic detour is the defining event of the film.
- You see, Isaac is also in love with Mary. Theirs is a particularly mismatched relationship when it comes to artistic, musical, and literary tastes, but they both love New York and apparently that's enough. As a couple, they stay up all night engaging in pseudo-intellectual conversations and exchanging kvetches. Occasionally, they pause to take in the truly miraculous and awe-inspiring urban scenery that surrounds them. Perhaps part of what drives their relationship is that they both seem to go out of their way to create difficult situations for themselves and the people around them. Maybe such situations are a realistic reflection of the human condition, but do they make for a good movie?
- As a lovely black-and-white photolog of New York City in the early 1970's, Manhattan works. Surprisingly, Gershwin's sweeping melodies never feel even remotely anachronistic when accompanied by a multitude of dramatic cityscapes that Allen and cinematographer Gordon Willis capture with obviously unadulterated affection. Unfortunately, the film's main characters are so annoying, inconsiderate, and illogically argumentative that one quickly regrets that this is not a silent film. Issac's treatment of Tracy is particularly off-putting since she is certainly the least pretentious and, ironically, the most emotionally mature of the lot. Put to mostly comedic use, Allen's complaining and Keaton's erratic magnetism worked wonders in Annie Hall. Here, their petty, self-imposed problems and abrasive personalities inadvertently provide an argument against visiting New York, no matter how beautiful it may appear.
- Wallace Shawn has an excellent surprise appearance.
