We celebrate the 45th anniversary of Woody Allen’s Manhattan, reflecting on its portrayal of New York as a city of black and white contrasts, pulsing to George Gershwin’s music. Despite Allen’s dissatisfaction with the film, it became iconic, depicting the interplay of intellectual and romantic entanglements among its characters against the backdrop of urban existentialism. The film, known for its deep dialogues, sophisticated comedy, and poignant moments, continues to resonate as a satirical and tragic depiction of human vulnerability and cultural decay.
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“Chapter one. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion. Uh, no. Make that “He romanticized it all out of proportion. 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.” A voiceover stumbles in search of the right words, as dark silhouettes of skyscrapers rise towards the gray sky of a still sleepy metropolis, but animated by avant-garde visual rhythms—reminiscent of Manhatta (1921)—to the jazz tunes of Rhapsody in Blue: the slow animation of streets and sidewalks under a blanket of snow, the bustling traffic and crowds, the arrival of the ferry, the end of the school day, the sharp architectures, the museums, the shops, and then, at sunset, the lights, the taxis, the theaters of Broadway.
A declaration of love and an urban symphony. In this way, exactly 45 years ago, Manhattan presented itself to the American public against the wishes of its director: once editing was completed, Woody Allen was so dissatisfied with the result, dramatically far from his expectations, that he would have made another film for United Artists for free, just to avoid distributing it, thereby depriving, in hindsight, the history of cinema of what is today rightly considered the quintessence of Allen’s work. And here’s why authors are one thing and producers, distributors, sellers another.
If there is a city capable of exerting a powerful fascination on the collective imagination, especially through cinema, it is New York (after Paris, of course), always—before and after Allen, from Breakfast at Tiffany’s to When Harry Met Sally— a city of endless possibilities and a thousand stories, a favored theater of unexpected encounters, indecisive comings and goings, and last-minute romantic dashes, revisited more recently by the director in Whatever Works (2009) and A Rainy Day in New York (2019).
It is the same city of Manhattan, where Ike (Woody himself), a 42-year-old TV writer, is in a relationship with the sweet Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), a 17-year-old student, but falls in love with journalist Mary (Diane Keaton), lover of his best friend Yale (Michael Murphy), who is also a writer, slash intellectual, slash vaguely defined critic.
Ike, Mary, and Yale, in their spasmodic attempt to bring order to their lives, find themselves united in a feverish tarantella of feelings above the existential void, amid slapstick interludes à la Chaplin, brilliant dialogues—crafted by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman, according to the sophisticated comedy standards of the 1930s—and moments of unspeakable romance à la Annie Hall, amplified by the wide breadth of Gershwin’s music, the depth of field, and the panoramic format; the same format that, with an always impeccable construction of the shot, punctually encloses them again in claustrophobic apartments, unresolved conflicts, and incurable neuroses, like dancing ants forced to chase each other to exhaustion.
“He adored New York, though for him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture”: a microcosm of the entire American society, “desensitized by drugs, loud music, television, crime, trash,” which, as stated by the director in an interview for the documentary Question de Temps: Une Heure Avec Woody Allen, make it impossible to confront the most terrifying universal problems (death, lack of meaning) and inhibit any long-term vision of life, prompting people to invest in genuine relationships. Manhattan, under the guise of a comedy, is thus also satire and tragedy: a delighted and sagacious portrait of a Fellinian humanity on the brink of an emotional and existential abyss.
The protagonists are part of that New York intelligentsia—in which the author, with his usual self-irony, also includes himself—frequenters of theaters and museums, adept at juggling narcissistic musings on the meaning of art and cultured references, ever-present in Allen’s writing (from Mahler to Fitzgerald, from Bergman to Kierkegaard). Yet, despite their established public image as intellectuals, they suffer from an immobilism that prevents them from “straightening” their own lives, from acting honestly for themselves and others, inducing them, rather, to hop from one fleeting relationship to another insignificant one, unable to concede to the most authentic vulnerability except in darkness, like dark silhouettes wandering between lunar surfaces and Saturn’s rings, obscured by Gordon Willis’s stunning black and white cinematography.
Men, in particular, come off badly, busy writing books never completed and buying cars just to avoid facing the unpleasantness of loneliness: so lacking in moral integrity that Ike, as soon as he is left by Mary, rushes to Tracy, whom he had kept at a distance until then, vainly trying to keep her in New York and selfishly depriving her of an opportunity for growth and change.
“You have to have a little faith in people”: faith, not in God as Kierkegaard would have said, but in the other people who inhabit this Earth is the only possible answer to despair. These are the simple yet disarming words of Tracy that conclude Manhattan, one of the most beautiful and timeless comedies about romantic relationships and the meaning of life, or rather, its absence; striking words that ignite a faint light of hope for a potentially better humanity tomorrow (or perhaps not), while, among the skyscrapers, another sun sets and the evening lights come on.
Veronica Rossi
Birdmen Magazine, April 25, 2024
