Allen and Keaton sit in front of the Queensborough bridge in Manhattan.
While watching Manhattan, Woody Allen’s 1979 “masterpiece,” it is impossible not to be astounded and annoyed with the mise en scène. The film opens with a montage of various New York City locations set to a beautiful George Gershwin score. I know I am not the first to write that New York is the most important character in this film, but I may be one of the few to admit to not liking the main character. I’ll go into that in a bit.
Our supporting character, Isaac Davis, played by Woody Allen, verbally introduces himself as a man who absolutely adores New York. He is a 42 year old television writer who is going through a midlife crisis. His ex-wife, Jill (Meryl Streep), has fully embraced a lesbian lifestyle and is writing an in depth book about her relationship with Isaac. His girlfriend is a 17-year old high school girl named Tracy, beautifully played by Mariel Hemingway. As if these women problems were not enough, Isaac is falling in love with his best friend’s mistress, Mary (Diane Keaton).
Woody Allen, while filming this, used the entire frame throughout the whole movie. IMDB.com states that this is his first and, to date, only film shot using the 2.35:1 anamorphic Panavision process. The movie is filmed entirely in black and white, giving New York a classical fantasy quality throughout the film.
Manhattan is so important to Manhattan that, at times, the actors are unnecessary or completely forgotten. A few scenes in particular bring this to mind. In one scene, a busy Manhattan street is shown in full (I will not attempt to correctly label the street as I have never been to Manhattan) with a phone booth on the far right of the screen. Our dominant character, The City, looms of our jittery squirlish Isaac Davis as he places a call to Yale. Unless the viewer is looking for the phone booth, which is inevitable as the audience can clearly hear the conversation, one would almost miss the driving action of the scene. Naturally, I assume that this is Mr. Allen’s point: the action on the street is far more important than that of any of the human characters. This scene portrays the stressful choreography of New York traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, that permeates normal life. In other words, the phone call you feel is important means nothing to this thriving and growling city.
Another scene where the characters are secondary in the mise en scène is in one of the many museums shown in the film (again, I will not attempt to correctly name the museum as I have never been to a New York Museum). We see our supporting characters, Isaac and Mary, running in from the rain and, to dry off, visiting a planetarium. These unimportant and boring characters are suddenly the focus of the film as the screen becomes claustrophobic compared to other shots of the city as a whole.
You're boring me, please stfu.
Suddenly these underdeveloped characters thoughts and opinions are to be listened to, and Woody makes sure the audience knows that. The camera stays close to them to capture the obtuse conversation, and at the same time the stars in the planetarium are in the background simulating a romantic moonlit sky. This entire conversation is one long continuous shot that often fades to black as our characters pass into unlit areas. This tells the audience that the audio, for once, is more important than the visual. There are long moments when the screen is blank-black while dialogue is passed back and forth. Dialogue that bores the hell out of the viewer.
If it is not painfully clear, I do not hold this film in high regard. I can see the appeal – if you live in or have visited Manhattan. Otherwise, you are merely watching thinly veiled pseudo-cerebral bullshit with unlikable characters; including the namesake Manhattan. We get it: Manhattan is the center of the universe… can we move on already?
Manhattan. Dir. Woody Allen. Perf. Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, and Meryl Streep. DVD. 1979.
