At the Cinema Woody’s latest award winner

Press, 3 April 1980, Page 14

At the Cinema Woody’s latest award winner

After a disappointingly short run for the very good New Zealand film, “Sons for the Return i Home,” the Westend ci- ■ nema will begin screening Woody Allen’s latest award-winning film, “Manhattan,” on Saturday. Allen’s latest work already has won four British Academy Awards and has two nominations (best supporting actress, Mariel Hemingway; best screenplay, Woody Allen) .for the American Academy Awards. The following review sums up the merits of this film. It is by Joseph Gelmis, of “Newsday,” who describes “Manhattan” as being somewhat like “Annie Hall,” but dif-> ferent. A bittersweet romantic comedy as only Woody Allen does it — amusing and superbly crafted: Woody Alien’s “Manhattan" is a continuous interplay of comedy and pathos that may evoke a feeling of deja vu in those who admired his “Annie Halt” The desperate characters in search of fulfillment in love and work are familiar. Their self-centered neurotic “immaturity” makes happiness an elusive grail they can never possess. Yet the only people likely to be disappointed by “Manhattan,’ are those

who expect, or demand, to see a radical change in the character which Allen has created as his screen person. Allen has made of his life —- through experience and imagination — a work of art. We go to a Woody Allen film to see the world refracted through the eyes of a personal artist Allen is uniquely qualifid to depict failed relationships, to make Manhattan look and feel on screen like a lived-in city, to shape humour out of angst. ? • “Manhattan” is a firstrate entertainment whose resemblance to “Annie Hall” enhances a connoisseur’s appreciation. ’ It can be enjoyed as a sexual roundelay, with characters constantly changing partners. And it can be savoured as a darker variation on an Allen theme — lost love, the impossibility of lasting relationships — which evolves out of his experiment with melodrama, “Interiors.” Diane Keaton plays a neurotic intellectual who ends up Allen’s roommate for a time. She’s a freelance journalist who discredits all of Allen’s opinions and idols — “trashes" them — the first time they meet, in a museum. When we first see Ker, she is the mistress of Alien’s best friend

(Michael Murphy), a selfindulgent writer who also claims to be in love with his wife of 12 years. She subsequently takes up with Allen. Along with the farcical elements in “Manhattan,” there is a dramatic fulcrum that balances the film — in much the same way that Maureen Stapleton’s cheerful vulgarian added a perfect note of ribald comedy in the WASP family tragedy of “Interiors.” In "Manhattan,” while the fickle “grownups” cheat and trade, mates, Alien’s young inamorata — a 17-year-old high school senior — remains totally sincere, guileless, defenseless. She prodvides the tragic note, weeps innocent tears for their lost love, when Allen confesses to her he is dumping her for Keaton. As the adolescent, Mariel Hemingway gives an outstanding, deeply felt performance. She rings true, as character and as actress. Allen wrings an extra measure of poignance from his break-up scene with Heminghway by holding the camera on her tearful face — as the scene is prolonged it becomes more painful to watch and more realistic. This proves to be the tragic locus of the film — a moment of selfless pass-

ion and grief that will come back to haunt the hero when he" loses what he thinks he wants. “Manhattan” is symmetrical without being overly schematic. Written by Allen and Marshall Brickman (his co-author on “Annie Hall” and “Sleeper”), the film, .has its share of gags and funny situations. A major subplot involves Allen’s hysterical anxiety over what his sec-/ ond ex-wife (the fascinating Meryl Streep) will say about his sexual behavious in a book she is writing about their marriage and divorce. Another running joke deals with the “genius” sexual athlete ex-husband of Keaton, whom Allen finally meets and derisively describes to Keaton as “a little homunculus.” Allen finds visually arresting settings in which to place his characters as they excuse themselves, analyse their behaviour or philosophise. “Manhattan” is filmed' by Allen’s regular cameraman, Gordon Willis, in black and white. The melancholy is near the surface as a darkness in which the characters exist. That is, the film is literally shot with available light in so many nighttime and interior settings — streets, restaurants, museums, a lunar landscape

at the Hayden Planetarium — that the context is a sort of confessional in which individuals blurt out the truth. The scene in which Murphy first tells Allen that he is having a serious love affair, and the scene in which Keaton and Allen stop dueling and are nice to each other both occur in nearly total blackness. The film begins and .ends with a skyline montage of Manhattan acconw panied by George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” The score for this film about a self-styled hardboiled romantic and the town he loves is an orchestrated medley of Gershwin tunes. ’ ‘ All the parts of/“Mari* hattan” intersect to form; a meaningful pattern is both an extension of air/ artist’s personality and u bittersweet comedy about' people incapable of finding peace of mind.