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Storyline
Isaac, 42, has divorced Jill. She is now living with another woman, Connie, and is writing a book in which she will reveal some very private points of their relationship. Isaac has a love affair with Tracy, 17, when he meets Mary, the mistress of his best friend Yale. Yale is already married to Emily. Written by
Yepok
Plot Summary
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Plot Synopsis
Taglines:
Woody Allen's New Comedy Hit
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Did You Know?
Trivia
While talking to Mary in the museum, Issac (
Woody Allen) says that the brain is the most overrated body part. While in Allen's film
Sleeper, his character Miles Monroe says that it's his second favorite body part.
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Goofs
In the first scene at Elaine's, as Isaac is beginning to say something, someone (presumably a customer of the restaurant, as it was running while they were shooting) walks in front of the camera. Isaac laughs, and quickly recovers with an impromptu remark about how his girlfriend has to go and do homework.
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Quotes
[
first lines]
[
music: the opening of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Voiceover]
Isaac Davis:
Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion. Eh uh, no, make that he, he romanticized it all out of proportion. Better. 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. Uh, no, let me start this over.
Isaac Davis:
Chapter One: He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else. He thrived on...
[...]
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Crazy Credits
There are no opening credits, save the production company bumper and the film's title, which appears as part of a flashing neon sign in New York City.
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Soundtracks
"Embraceable You"
(1930)
Music by
George Gershwin (uncredited)
Performed by the
New York Philharmonic (as The New York Philharmonic)
Music director:
Zubin Mehta See more »
Woody Allen has been churning out mediocre films for so long now that it's easy to forget how good some of his older films were. "Manhattan" is the product of Allen's "mature" 1970s phase, the phase that also produced "Annie Hall" and "Interiors," and it's a wonderful film. It's not the plot that makes it singular -- it's typical upper-crust New York Allen, full of neurotic people in therapy cheating on one another and making mistake after mistake in their pursuit of what they think will make them happy. No, what makes "Manhattan" so effective is its style. Filmed in black and white (because, as Allen's character says in an opening voice over, New York is a city that has always and will always exist in black and white), the film is a love letter to NYC, and it suggests that the neuroses that fill its denizens are as much a part of the city's character as its architecture, culture and diversity. I would instantly be annoyed by the people that populate Allen's films if I met them in any other context. As it is, I can't imagine any Allen film (at least not one set in New York) without them.
Grade: A