Manhattan
by Woody Allen
(Click here)
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep, Michael Murphy, Woody AllenDirector: Woody Allen
Brand: Manhattan
Producer: Charles H. Joffe
Producer: Rollins, Jack
Producer: Greenhut, Robert
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 96 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-07-05
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Manhattan
Movie Review: Three stars if you like Woody Allen movies or tend to romanticize NYC, otherwise, two stars compared to other films
Summary: 2 Stars
So, Woody (here known as Isaac) was married to a younger woman, played by Meryl Streep, who decides she is a lesbian after having a son with Woody. The Streep character is writing a book about her marriage to Woody, who works as a writer on a TV comedy show. That's the backstory. Obviously, written to put the Woody character in a sympathetic light since Woody, as always, plays the loveable loser who the Universe is out to get via "death by paper cuts".
The actual story, however, is not nearly as interesting as the backstory. It revolves around Woody hanging out with his best friend and complaining about women and the fact that their romanticized view of life as young adults does not "hold water" to the reality which is life.
As an extension of this malaise, the best friend is having an affair with a woman played by Diane Keaton even though the best friend is happily married. Why he finds the Keaton character so attractive that he is willing to put his twenty year marriage at risk is impossible to fathom since she is portrayed as self-satisfied and assured to the point where she is absolutely convinced she is always right. Apparently, if you have a mature relationship, brashness is refreshing.
The Keaton character's one "endearing" affectation is that, while being a paragon of New York self-love, she continually tries to claim sensibility by declaring she is originally from Philadelphia. Apparently, Keaton's character believes that New Yorkers are given to sensationalizing themselves. The irony, of course, is that the Keaton character is a common lady, albeit bright, living a common life. Consequently, her own self-importance is not sensible but sensationalized.
Meanwhile, Woody is screwing Tracy, a seventeen year old played by Mariel Hemingway. The Tracy character is basically a two-dimensional ideal who has nothing meaningful to say within the film but "lives" to act as an apparent contrast to the "adults" played by Woody, Keaton, and the best friend. Whereas, they are "sophisticated", "jaded", and "selfish" due to the dog-eat-dog world of the big city, Tracy is "simple", "pure", and "selfless" - a ripe seventeen year old with the wisdom of a seventy year old.
And so, we enter Woody's fantasyland: a world in which adults act like self-involved teenagers and teenagers act like selfless grandparents.
When the best friend decides he should not be cheating on his wife, he suggests Woody date the Diane Keaton character. Woody, in a rare show of morality, decides a 40 year old man screwing a high school senior may be wrong. Consequently, he accepts his friend's suggestion and, after tossing Tracy aside, he and Keaton begin seeing each other.
Only to have her dump him when the best friend decides to throw his marriage away because he can't do without Diane Keaton and, as it would be, Diane Keaton's character cannot do without the friend.
So, does Woody get angry at the friend or Keaton as would any normal person? Of course not, he does his "sad sack" routine, playing up how unfair the Universe is to him. Instead of the expected anger, Woody has an "epiphany" during which he realizes he loves Tracy (Hemingway) - even though he dumped her months before. Apparently, her simple devotion and their uncomplicated carnal couplings are suddenly seen to be abiding love.
So, Woody runs over to her apartment building - apparently, running conveys he really likes her and, therefore, it must be love rather than self-pity since New Yorkers don't run, they take taxis.
Only to find she is leaving for school in London.
Never one to be anything other than selfish, Woody tries to convince Tracy that shacking up with a 40+ year old man is "way cooler" than getting a real life by going to London. In the first glimmer of sensibility in her life, Tracy sweetly but firmly tells Woody she is going.
Woody wanly smiles and the film fades out.
This bare review of the plot shows the main problem with this film. There is little to it and what there is, is tripe dressed up as more.
First, the whole backstory and most of the events during the actual story, such as Woody quitting his job and moving into a new apartment, don't serve any other purpose than to portray Woody as, you got it, a "lovable loser".
Why the Streep character becomes a lesbian or why a book about her marriage to Woody is in demand is never explained. As such, these are simple plot devices to imply Woody's character continually gets the "short straw" in life.
Second, it is de facto in Woodyland that this seventeen year old "loves" the Woody character. Why is never explained. How they got to together or what attracted each to the other is never developed. Ignoring the statutory rape issue, it remains that they don't seem to talk about anything nor to be "in love". They're two friendly people simply having sex. Yes, he's kind to her, but is that enough to support the "love" Woody expects the audience to believe by the end of the film? For that matter, why is an attractive, fairly emotionally healthy seventeen year old in a relationship with this older man?
Third, it is de facto in Woodyworld that middle age adults are indifferent to the presence of a teenager hanging out with them. Woody, Tracy, his best friend, and the best friend's wife continually have couple dates. The three adults are all in their forties. They are all "sophisticated" persons who love spewing their views and opinions. Tracy just sits there nodding her head sweetly. Despite this lack of commonality, all the adults accept Tracy as their equal, even though she basically acts as would a seventeen year old daughter amongst her father and his friends.
Similarly in Woodyworld, his friend and the friend's wife have no opinion, let alone concern that Woody is screwing a high schooler.
And it never gets better for the Tracy character. She is given no breadth or human dimension. The character simply serves in the most obvious way as a counterpoint to the adults. She is the wise, self-centered and balanced Madonna amongst the childish, me-first, self-pitying forty year olds. Yes, I realize that Allen is jewish, yet the Tracy character is based on the Virgin Mary archetype, too good and unconditionally loving to actually exist other than in myth. As stated before, in Woodyland, it's the kids who are mature and the adults who are immature.
So, the movie's entertainment value is based upon finding it humorous to see a bunch of middle aged people mess up their lives and put their own interests in front of their loved ones, a grim worldview which is "happily" saved by Woody being redeemed when he rejects the petty selfishness of the adult world and accepts as ideal the unsophisticated "love" of a seventeen year old who has no life experience to distinguish between love and infatuation.
I am not as smart as Woody Allen. Consequently, I have to believe Woody Allen knew the Tracy character and her "noble love" was not realistic and that his ending was b.s. - he just couldn't come up with a better one.
For Woody Allen fans, there is the typical Woody character, a guy who continually whines at the Universe for always making him the victim since, even though he selfishly puts his own interests first, he is a "good guy" since the other characters are also putting their own interests first and, at least, Woody feels "guilty" for continually screwing over his loved ones.
In simpler terms, Allen's "humor" is based upon the argument that one does not have to follow the Golden Rule common to all of the world's moral systems, if one is willing to "feel guilt" and, thereby, "punish" oneself for gaining from greed and selfishness.
This argument is false for me since Allen is not actual "feeling guilt", since he does not change his ways, but is using self-deprecation to gain sympathy so he can continue in his selfish ways. Allen is masterful at using "character ticks" (namely, his continual whining tone), plot devices, and backstory to portray himself as the victim of life, however, his characters usually are winners at life once you take away all this affectation. It may be a clever act, however, it is more pathetic than profound. However, to each his tastes.
For New York fans, the cinematography is beautiful. The film is in black and white, which was probably chosen to make it otherworldy and, thereby, a fantasy. People don't question fantasies and, therefore, most reviewers blithely ignore the absurdity of the Isaac/Tracy relationship. Be that as it may, the black and white filming does make Manhattan look much prettier than it does in actuality.
As to Manhattan, you either see something "special" about NYC or you see it as another city. I don't tend to romanticize places and, therefore, it's just another city to me. However, if you like pretending a bunch of buildings have personality or enjoy that self-satisfied "moxy" which the typical New Yorker continually assures you that he and his brethren share, then the movie should give you a warm feeling since it is set in NYC and claims to show just how "sophisticated" a New Yorker can be.
Of course, "sophisticated" is relative. In this movie, it means a bunch of self-assured individuals saying clever and pithy things about ... nothing.
Ah yes, but it's sophisticated nothingness!
Summary of Manhattan
Nominated for two Academy Awards?(r)* in 1979 and considered "one of Allen's most enduring accomplishments" (Boxoffice), Manhattan is a wry, touching and finely rendered portrait of modern relationships against the backdrop of urban alienation. Sumptuously photographed in black and white (Allen's first film in that format) and accompanied by a magnificent Gershwin score, Woody Allen's aesthetic triumph is a "prismatic portrait of a time and a place that may be studied decades hence" (Time). 42-year-old Manhattan native Isaac Davis (Allen) has a job he hates, a seventeen-year-old girlfriend, Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), he doesn't love and a lesbian ex-wife, Jill (Meryl Streep), who's writing a tell-all book about their marriage and whom he'd like to strangle. But when he meets his best friend's sexy intellectual mistress, Mary (Diane Keaton), Isaac falls head over heels in lust! Leaving Tracy, bedding Mary and quitting his job are just the beginning of Isaac's quest for romance and fulfillment in a city where sex is as intimate as a handshakeandthe gateway to true love is a revolving door. *Supporting Actress (Hemingway); Original ScreenplayManhattan, Woody Allen's follow-up to Oscar-winning Annie Hall, is a film of many distinctions: its glorious all-Gershwin score, its breathtakingly elegant black-and-white, widescreen cinematography by Gordon Willis (best-known for shooting the Godfather movies); its deeply shaded performances; its witty screenplay that marked a new level in Allen's artistic maturity; and its catalog of Things that Make Life Worth Living. But Manhattan is also distinguished in the realm of home video as the first motion picture to be released only in a widescreen version. You wouldn't want to see it any other way. Allen's "Rhapsody in Gray" concerns, as his own character puts it, "people in Manhattan who are constantly creating these real, unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves, because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe." It's a romantic comedy about infidelity and betrayal, the rules of love and friendship, young girls (a radiant and sweet Mariel Hemingway) and older men (Allen), innocence, and sophistication. (a favorite phrase is used to describe a piece of sculpture at the Guggenheim: "It has a marvelous kind of negative capability.") The movie's themes can be summed up in two key lines: "I can't believe you met somebody you like better than me," and "It's very important to have some kind of personal integrity." OK, so they may not sound like such sparkling snatches of brilliant dialogue, but Manhattan puts those ideas across with such emotion that you feel an ache in your heart. --Jim Emerson
Comedy DVD Video
DVD Video
- Action & Adventure
- African American Cinema
- Animation
- Anime & Manga
- Art House & International
- Classics
- Comedy
- Cult Movies
- Documentary
- Drama
- Educational
- Fitness & Yoga
- Gay & Lesbian
- Horror
- Kids & Family
- Military & War
- Music Video & Concerts
- Musicals & Performing Arts
- Mystery & Suspense
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Special Interests
- Sports
- Television
- Westerns
Movies most talked about in Favorite Woody Allen
SeptemberFARROW,MIA; Release date: 2001-06-05; DVD
Best price: $2.98
Price in other shops:
Husbands and WivesALLEN,WOODY; Release date: 2002-04-16; DVD
Best price: $12.99
Price in other shops:
Crimes and MisdemeanorsALLEN,WOODY; Release date: 2001-06-05; DVD
Best price: $6.43
Price in other shops:
ManhattanManhattan; Release date: 2000-07-05; DVD
Best price: $28.95
SleeperALLEN,WOODY; Release date: 2000-07-05; DVD
Best price: $6.95
Price in other shops:
Mighty AphroditeALLEN,WOODY; Release date: 1999-05-18; DVD
Best price: $16.73
InteriorsKEATON,DIANE; Release date: 2000-07-05; DVD
Best price: $3.77
Price in other shops:
Hannah and Her SistersALLEN,WOODY; Release date: 2001-11-06; DVD
Best price: $3.98
Price in other shops:
Whatever WorksSon; Release date: 2009-10-27; DVD
Best price: $14.70
Price in other shops:
Annie HallRelease date: 2000-05-30; DVD
Best price: $34.77
Similar DVD Movies
Love and DeathALLEN,WOODY; Release date: 2000-07-05; DVD
Best price: $7.39
Price in other shops:
InteriorsKEATON,DIANE; Release date: 2000-07-05; DVD
Best price: $3.77
Price in other shops:
Manhattan Murder MysteryALLEN,WOODY; Release date: 1998-12-15; DVD
Best price: $11.78
Price in other shops:
Broadway Danny RoseALLEN,WOODY; Release date: 2001-11-06; DVD
Best price: $2.88
Price in other shops:
SleeperALLEN,WOODY; Release date: 2000-07-05; DVD
Best price: $6.95
Price in other shops:
Husbands and WivesALLEN,WOODY; Release date: 2002-04-16; DVD
Best price: $12.99
Price in other shops:
Stardust MemoriesALLEN,WOODY; Release date: 2000-07-05; DVD
Best price: $6.95
Price in other shops:
Crimes and MisdemeanorsALLEN,WOODY; Release date: 2001-06-05; DVD
Best price: $6.43
Price in other shops:
Hannah and Her SistersALLEN,WOODY; Release date: 2001-11-06; DVD
Best price: $3.98
Price in other shops:
Annie HallRelease date: 2000-05-30; DVD
Best price: $34.70