Manhattan

Director Woody Allen

Allen with actress Mariel Hemingway

Mariel Hemingway

Allen with actress Mariel Hemingway

MANHATTAN          A                    

USA  (96 mi)  1979  ‘Scope  d: Woody Allen

Made in an era when Woody Allen films were still funny, where his cleverly written dialogue was likely the best thing you heard in a movie all year, convincingly real and naturalistic, with Allen’s giant ego as well as his phobias and anxieties at the heart of the film through his own autobiographical central character, yet this also has a majestic view of New York City and is really a love letter to a city of magical possibilities, beautifully captured in black and white by cinematographer Gordon Willis, the same man who filmed THE GODFATHER (1972), where this may be Allen’s first art film, shot in ‘Scope, visually intoxicating while driven by the melodies and natural rhythm of George Gershwin’s music, making this the quintessential Woody Allen film, listed at #1 from an October 4, 2013 Guardian Poll, "The 10 best Woody Allen films".   Accentuating the impressive skyline as well as city streets, parks, and museums, much of the film becomes a travelogue taking us through a tour of New York City’s most magnificent borough, never looking so stunning, filled with cultural landmarks and significant locations, offering a Who’s Who of what to see there, caught in a moment in time, like a time capsule, or a metaphor for contemporary culture, accentuating all the things Allen loves about his exalted city.  Opening to the lush sounds of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” Rhapsody in blue -  George Gershwin - Gary Graffman, New York Philharmonic - Zubin Metha (16:37), including luminously romanticized shots of the city, the skylight at dawn, a silhouette of the Empire State Building, the neon lights of Broadway, all framed in an idealized montage of a perfect city, Allen in voiceover as writer Isaac Davis narrates the opening lines as if typing out the first draft of a 40’s pulp fiction crime novel, where he’s a Raymond Chandler tough guy in a noirish story describing the gritty pulse of New York City through expressive language, but finds it difficult to choose the right words, stopping and starting again several times before finally getting it right, elegantly setting the tone for what’s to come, where Allen has a history of romanticizing New York City in films, again idealizing his favorite city with familiar city streets, Manhattan - Woody Allen (HD) Opening Scene (3:09), “New York was his town and it always would be.”  In contrast, next to this glorious backdrop, the citizens who call this place home are themselves flawed and plagued by ordinary, everyday problems, caught up in their own tawdry melodramatic betrayals and personal issues.  To start out with, Isaac’s best friend is Yale Pollock (Michael Murphy),  married for over a decade to Emily (Ann Byrne Hoffman, the first wife of Dustin Hoffman), yet he’s caught up in an affair with Mary Wilke (Diane Keaton), a bright and attractive but somewhat flaky personality, while Isaac, annoyed that his ex-wife Jill (Meryl Streep), who left him for another woman, is writing a tell-all book about their marriage falling apart, while he’s dating an attractive 17-year old high school student Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), mature beyond her years, both seemingly happy, though he’s obviously using her, yet deep down he thinks she’s too young, never really taking her seriously.  Nonetheless, their time onscreen together is positively charming, where despite his omnipresent litany of neverending neuroses, Allen has rarely been seen this happy and relaxed before, an essential component to why this film is so revered, as it’s perhaps closest to his authentic self. 

Throughout the film it’s clear we are part of Allen’s world, awash with stunning Gershwin melodies, while the pathetic counterpoint to the city’s romanticized perfection is the deceitful affliction of the feeble-minded humans residing there, suggesting humans sabotage their own personal happiness, filling the screen with writers and intellectuals, all supposedly working on books, each one viewed as selfish to the core, overly self-absorbed and emotionally naive, where their morally tangled lives are founded on enormous personal transgressions that are breezily swept away with the greatest of ease, with each relationship built upon a series of betrayals, where one of Allen’s self-confessed intellectual anxieties (raised near the end of the film as an idea for a short story) is creating unnecessary neurotic problems that prevent his characters from dealing with life’s more important issues, finding amusement in their sheer ineptitude.  Because humor is so ingrained into the fabric of the film, one excuses the misogynistic leanings, as duplicitous characters falling from grace are at the heart of the film, providing a near mythical landscape of what amounts to a gargantuan distance between heaven and earth.  In this film, romantic attachments fall apart, love never lasts, the exact opposite of the typical 30’s Hollywood musical with Fred Astaire, as exemplified by Yale’s marriage to Emily, which Isaac thought was air tight and would never crumble.  But everything touched by the hand of humans eventually falls apart, thereby leaving their own ephemeral imprint or legacy.  When Yale breaks up with Mary, it opens the door for Isaac to step in, where their initial meeting is disastrous, at emotional and artistic extremes, yet he can’t get her out of his head, thinking perhaps she’s the voice of maturity that he’s looking for, despite her swooning mood changes that are epic, both caricatures of changeable artistic temperaments, exposing the pretentiousness of New York intellectuals as culture snobs, rehashing their relationship in Annie Hall (1977).  Part of the fun of this film is watching Allen’s continual self-obsession, which he mocks with sarcastic humor, yet he can’t disguise a constant need for attention, which seems to be the standard operating position of male characters in Woody Allen movies, who delude themselves by forgiving their own flaws, but not in others, having little time to sympathize with the rest of the world, as they’re too busy thinking of themselves.  There are plenty of digs at his own character and the inflated view of himself, with Yale attacking his moral self-righteous attitudes, “You think you’re God,” claiming moral superiority, always presuming he’s right, to which Isaac coyly responds, “Well, I gotta model myself after someone.”  But ex-wife Jill gets the motherload of targeted barbs, with his friend Yale (rubbing it in) reading aloud from her memoir, scathingly accurate, so piercingly true that one can’t help laughing in approval, as this is the epitome of self-deprecating humor, “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.”  Not sure Allen has ever been more accurately described in one of his own films, continually inviting ethical scrutiny, reading like it’s straight from the hallowed halls of heaven, or from psychiatric notes, yet dripping with veracity.

After this game of musical chairs, with Yale returning to Mary, claiming he never stopped loving her, willing to sacrifice his marriage for her (while buying himself a flashy Porsche sports car to help ease the pain), Isaac has a revelatory moment of honesty, like how stupid he was to throw away what he had with Tracy, who despite being 25 years younger displays more emotional maturity than he ever does, yet he always kept her at a distance, never really accepting her for who she was, now viewed as innocence personified, remaining one of the most gorgeously appealing characters in any Woody Allen film, just 16 when filming, so open and vulnerable, untainted from cynicism, very much like who she is in real life, where her screen persona represented her own, even-keeled and wise beyond her years, very reserved and grown-up (coming from a family with deep-seeded emotional turmoil, with the public glamorizing the Hemingway misfortunes with suicide and depression), becoming a shining star in Allen’s universe of misfits, where he was fortunate to discover her at the height of her beauty and stardom.  She famously rejected Allen’s advances after the film was completed, showing a surprising independence, where she is the antithesis to his moral fallibility, where her virtuosity only makes her stand out even more in the universe of his films, nominated for Best Supporting Actress, but losing to Meryl Streep in KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979), who was more of a lead character, countering Dustin Hoffman who won for Best Actor.  Allen and co-writer Marshall Brickman were nominated for Best Original Screenplay, but lost to the writer of BREAKING AWAY (1979).  In the abyss of his personal rejection, Isaac lies on the sofa and recounts into a tape recorder those things that make life worth living, each very carefully thought out, “Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, the 2^nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony, Louis Armstrong’s Potato Head Blues, Swedish movies, Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, those incredible apples and pears by Paul Cézanne, the crabs at Sam Wo’s, and Tracy’s face.”  The pause afterwards says it all, as he’s internalizing what a shmuck he was to give up on her for someone his own age but so emotionally unstable, whose anxiety level mirrored his own, subject to catastrophic mood swings, while Tracy is as well-grounded a human being as exists opposite his own, and he ignored her, like something Jean-Pierre Léaud’s adolescent Antoine Doinel would do in Truffaut’s series of autobiographical encounters in Introduction to The Adventures of Antoine Doinel.  Attempting to call her by phone, but the line is busy, he instead runs through the streets of the city in an extended sequence accentuating the city streets that he adores, bookended by the “Rhapsody in Blue” music of Gershwin, blending together the loves of his life, creating a seamless encounter that may as well be with fate, testing his luck once again, thwarted by a 6-month adventure that she’s about to embark upon to study in London’s Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts that he actually encouraged, thinking it would do her a world of good.  Running up against his own advice, he begs her to stay, not wanting to lose that essence about her that he likes, hoping it will never change, but she reassures him “not everybody gets corrupted,” and all the plans have already been made by her family, suggesting 6-months isn’t so long, concluding with the kind of line Billy Wilder might have written, “You have to have a little faith in people.”  Gobsmacked and completely befuddled, he can only offer a wry smile, like that magical Chaplin moment at the end of CITY LIGHTS (1931), where he can’t weasel his way out of this one, caught like a deer in the headlights, perhaps seeing himself for the very first time, as the curtain drops, Manhattan (1979) Ending (HD) YouTube (8:00), offering a few final shots of the city skyline, with Gershwin’s Embraceable You playing over the end credits.  Strangely, of all the Allen films, this one holds up better and feels more contemporary than all the others. 

Post Note

In hindsight, one may re-examine the film after the very public fallout of the Woody Allen/Mia Farrow breakup, where sexual assault allegations were made against Allen by his seven-year old daughter Dylan Farrow in 1992, claiming Allen sexually molested her in Farrow’s Connecticut home, though Allen has always denied the accusation.  The Connecticut State’s Attorney investigated the allegation and contended there *was* probable cause for a criminal case but did not press charges, claiming the effected child was too emotionally fragile, while the Connecticut State Police referred Dylan to the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of Yale–New Haven Hospital who concluded that Woody Allen had not sexually abused Dylan, and the New York Department of Social Services found “no credible evidence” to support the allegation, though it was never demonstrated conclusively that it had not happened.  Nonetheless, Dylan’s brother, Ronan Farrow, now a journalist, has publicly supported his sister, where the incident has become embroiled in the #MeToo movement’s insistence that victims must be listened to.  Adding to the controversy, Allen (at the age of age 56) began having an affair with Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn (essentially his step-daughter, though he and Farrow were never married) when she was a senior in high school, graduating in June 1991, with a sexual relationship allegedly beginning December 1991.  While there is some controversy surrounding Soon-Yi’s actual birth date, it is generally recognized as October 8, 1970, making her 21 years of age, eventually marrying Allen in 1997.  Lesser known to the public, just a few years before making this film, Allen (at the age of 42) previously dated a 17-year old high school student named Stacey Nelkin who was attending public magnet school Stuyvesant High (17 was and remains the legal age of consent in New York).  He likely had her in mind while writing this film.  In the custody turmoil, Farrow labeled Allen a child molester and a sexual predator, charges that were initially ignored, but resurfaced again when Allen was awarded a lifetime achievement award at the Academy Awards in 2014, with Dylan Farrow (now age 28) repeating her allegations in an open letter to The New York Times, writing another to The Los Angeles Times in December 2017, again reiterating her allegations.  This time, however, there was public fallout from the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, affecting Allen’s ability to work again in the industry, with Amazon Studios backing out of a 4-movie distribution deal in April 2019, cutting ties with him all together, and no new films have been distributed since the release of Wonder Wheel (2017).  This history brings to mind suggestions that Allen is a sexual predator, with many finding Allen’s behavior in this film, combined with his history, as enough proof, featuring Allen as a grown man developing sexual and romantic inclinations with a high school student.  Her parents and their reactions are never considered, as they are not part of the self-obsessed delusion that the Allen character represents.  Does this history effectively alter one’s appreciation for the film?  For some it not only could, but it does (Woody Allen Is Both a Genius and a Predator ... - Alternet.org).  Not so much for me, now in his mid 80’s, Allen poses no risk to anyone (though his children may feel otherwise), where this may arguably be Allen’s best film, as it’s presented essentially as a fantasy, cleverly funny, at times hilarious, offering a swooning romanticization of both the city and its inhabitants, using a lush Gershwin musical score as a backdrop, poking fun at the inherent flaws of human fallibility, becoming a gloriously visualized operatic work, where humans never live up to their potential, becoming an idealized dream versus reality, Beauty and the Beast fable, with humans (the beasts) still learning how to make their way in a cold and indifferent modern world.  

Jersey Boys

Rebel Without a Cause

Clint Eastwood thinking he’s in a Michael Jackson "Beat It" video

Millionaires on parade, Clint Eastwood on the set with Frankie Valli

JERSEY BOYS           C        

USA  (134 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Clint Eastwood        Official site

As someone who never much liked Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons when they were incessantly overplayed on the radio in the 60’s and 70’s, where it always sounded like they had a “produced” rather than a natural sound, it would be a challenge to sit through yet another disappointing Clint Eastwood film since MILLION DOLLAR BABY (2004), a few of which have been among the worst films in this director’s career.  The Four Seasons were the epitome of mass marketing, viewed as old-fashioned and square, the kind of Lawrence Welk schmaltz and sentimentality that even your grandmother could enjoy, where live performances included few spontaneous moments and were identical to the radio sound, as there was little actual performance in an era that featured some of the greatest performers in pop, rock ‘n’ roll, and rhythm and blues history, where the sheer unconventionality of these artists broke from the suffocatingly conformist chains of the 50’s, an era when performers simply stood at a microphone and sang in tune.  Compare that to Tina Turner, Janis Joplin, James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Eric Burdon, Jimi Hendrix, or Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, who all revolutionized the stage performance.  Nonetheless, adapted from the writing team that produced the Tony Award winning 2005 Broadway musical that won Best Musical, with John Lloyd Young (now at age 38, where his character ranges from a teenager to the father of a teenager, also winning a Tony for Best Leading Actor in a Musical) in the lead role of Frankie Valli as the sole original Broadway performer to be featured in the movie, the film is largely a recreation of the theatrical conception.  This is what’s commonly known in the trade as a moneymaker, a “can’t lose” proposition given to an A-list director, while the investors then sit around and wait for the cash dollars to come rolling in.  That’s been the story of this theatrical production from the outset, costing $7.8 million dollars to produce on Broadway in November 2005, recouping all of their investments by the following June, where 9-years later the show continues to average $715,000 per week in grosses, where the weekly running costs are only about $400,000, which is low by Broadway standards, passing over $1.7 billion dollars in worldwide grosses earlier this year, where there are no announced plans to end its New York run.  Frankie Valli and his songwriter Bob Gaudio have earned $4.1 million dollars so far on the Broadway production alone, as well as a steady stream of revenue from their musical royalties, where early in their careers they inked contracts where they take 6% of the music’s net profits.  And now, the movie, which is wall-to-wall songs, nearly every one a similar looking set piece, which is cheap, easy to construct, assemble a cast, and shoot, which just earns more money into the hands of the investors.  All of this sounds like the Hollywood cash cow business formula, having little if anything to do with cinema itself.  But this typifies what the movies have become—a successful business product.

From the opening thirty seconds, one is immediately less than impressed to the point of being maddened by the look of the film, shot by Tom Stern, who has worked with Eastwood on every film since BLOOD WORK (2002), as the desaturated look has the color faded out, leaving the picture looking dull and lifeless, while every street scene, with every speck of dirt washed away, also resembles the look of a movie set, mostly shot on the Warner Brothers backlot, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to reality.  This deglamorization detracts from the showbiz glitz that is otherwise accentuated throughout, which is basically a trip down memory lane, where the musical production is a showpiece for the Frankie Valli songbook that is heard throughout, with each song sounding so similar, where they even make fun of this criticism early in their rise to success, calling the songs “derivatives,” unoriginal, but copies of similar sounding hit songs.  Apparently the fascination is not so much with the actual voice itself, but with Young recreating the swooning falsetto of Frankie Valli, which was all the rage in soul music in the 60’s and 70’s, like Sam Cooke A Change Is Gonna Come -- Sam Cooke (Original Version in HD YouTube (3:15), Smokey Robinson & the Miracles Smokey Robinson - The Tracks Of My Tears Live (1965) on ...  YouTube (3:05), Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions Gypsy Woman - YouTube (2:20), Eddie Kendricks from the Temptations JUST MY IMAGINATION (1971)- THE TEMPTATIONS YouTube (2:41), or the Isley Brothers ISLEY BROTHERS LAY LADY LAY.wmv - YouTube (10:21), but also Roy Orbison Roy Orbison - In Dreams - YouTube (2:54), Del Shannon Del Shannon - Runaway (Rare Stereo Version) - YouTube (2:20), and Barry Gibb with the Bee Gees Bee Gees _ How Can You Mend a Broken Heart ('71) HQ ... YouTube (3:56), where the sound is so uniquely distinctive that listeners often can’t tell if the singer is black or white.  Coming from the Doo Wop tradition of the late 40’s and 50’s, the term originated in the early 60’s, getting its origins from four guys singing a cappella on the street corner while harmonizing, where the lead falsetto voice was a must, like Little Anthony and the Imperials, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, or Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, often taking advantage of a young teen singer’s natural adolescent voice before it matures through puberty, at which point that singer’s career was over by the time they turned twenty (which thankfully never happened with Michael Jackson).  The 60’s were perhaps the golden age of the falsetto in pop and rock music, where hearing falsetto voices was common, while today practitioners would include Prince, Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Bono of U2, Chris Martin of Coldplay, or Justin Timberlake.  Frankie Valli is certainly one of the best mainstream pop singers to legitimize the falsetto, where you could hit the high notes while still expressing a masculine feeling of love or defiance.  While he sounds a bit tinny and screeching at times, the group broke into the music scene with Valli’s indisputable sound, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons - Sherry ( 1962 YouTube (2:34), the first of a string of #1 hits.   

  

Recreated by screenwriters Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, Brickman is a former head writer of the Tonight Show (1969—70), also Woody Allen’s writer for ANNIE HALL (1977), MANHATTAN (1979), and MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY (1993).  There are some extremely funny, drop dead laughter moments, most generated by Christopher Walken as Gyp DeCarlo, easily the best thing in the film as the local mobster, where according to one of his underlings, local hood Tommy Devito (Vincent Piazza), “If you’re from my neighborhood, you got three ways out:  You could join the army.  You could get mobbed up.  Or—you could become a star,” where for this group, “it was two out of three.”  Set in an Italian-American town of Bellevue, just outside of Newark, Jersey, where Frankie was actually born Francesco Stephen Castelluccio, a kid with a voice, the depiction of the mob, however, couldn’t be more sugar coated, where Gyp loves Frankie’s voice to the point of tears when he sings “My Mother’s Eyes” My Mother's Eyes by Frankie Valli (Valley, Vally) - YouTube (3:26) (“That was my mother’s favorite song,”), so he does what he can to protect him, literally offering his services out of the goodness of his heart (only in the movies), as if it’s his responsibility to look after this kid and keep him out of harm’s way.  When local punks and hoods get jail time (including their founder and lead guitarist), in this film prison is a home away from home, where they greet everyone with a smile, even the guards, where everyone asks about the family, where it’s more a family reunion than a prison sentence.  This sanitized version accounts for why little of this criminal record was known about the Four Seasons before the Broadway production, where it likely would have impacted their early years, as record companies might have refused to play their records.  This part of Jersey’s history, which was the major emphasis in David O. Russell’s American Hustle (2013), is simply used for jokes here, suggesting it’s normal for kids get into a little trouble in their youth, but they straighten it all out by the time they become adults.  Of interest, it’s not Frankie, but Vincent Piazza as bad-boy Tommy DeVito that runs the show for most of the picture, playing the swaggering founder of the group, whose loud mouth, obnoxious personality, and lack of business sense gets the band into a deep hole financially, spending the rest of their careers paying off the debt.  So when he steps aside, the vanilla character of Frankie Valli is so underdeveloped that the movie falters without the interest of a mob connection.  All attempts to revive a dysfunctional family fail miserably, so without much of a story, the only thing that matters throughout are the songs. 

An amusing anecdote is Frankie and the Four Seasons actually performed in prison for the real-life Gyp after he was handed a 12-year sentence in 1970, where there were strong intimations that his onscreen persona should be portrayed “respectfully,” where the choice of Christopher Walken must be criminal royalty.  Additionally, Joseph Russo’s depiction of Joe Pesci as just one of the boys from the neighborhood comes across reverentially, as if he’s waiting in the wings to gladhand all the patrons after the show, flashing that big smile.  Also amusing is an Eastwood nod to himself in showing Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen) watching TV, which turns out to be a clip of the young actor Eastwood half a century ago on the television show Rawhide (1959—65).  While the direction is utterly conventional, shooting a cavalcade of hits as one set piece after another of the group singing onstage to yet another thrilled audience somewhere, anywhere, which is like watching a Vegas act, where one of the most unnerving aspects is when, at different stages throughout the film, each member of the Four Seasons speaks straight into the camera, telling the story of the group by talking directly to the audience, as they do in the theatrical version, the difference being on stage there’s a connection to the songs, while here’s it’s just disconnected talk that gets lost as extraneous material.  Once they get going, however, the endless blur of Frankie Valli hits just keeps coming, where this may be music to the ears of some, perhaps reaching a crescendo with the performance of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” Can't Take My Eyes off You - Frankie Valli and The 4 ... YouTube (3:45), but the only break in the entire picture was a road performance by an all-female group, The Angel’s, singing “My Boyfriend’s Back” Angels - My Boyfriend's Back - YouTube (2:09), which felt like a revelation.  The film is a bit lackluster and overlong, despite Eastwood cutting out several of the songs, and runs out of steam, where eventually it all looks and feels the same, with John Lloyd Young channeling Michael Corleone in THE GODFATHER (1972) by the end of the picture, which ends with a celebratory Coke advertising style dancing-in-the-streets medley over the closing credits that features every character in the film, a style put to better use by Ellen DeGeneres in her Oscars trailer Oscars® Trailer: Ellen DeGeneres - YouTube (1:00), perhaps originating in Marc Webb’s (500) DAYS OF SUMMER (2009) with Hall & Oates 500 Days Of Summer - You Make My Dreams - YouTube  (2:00), where what’s missing is the urgency and sense of vitality that exists onstage in the live theatrical performance.