I used to hold this film as somewhat of a sacred cow when I first saw it in 1979. I was a proscribed Woody fan and
although I still like a few of his movies, this is no longer one of them, on recent review.
I recently purchased copies of Manhattan and Annie Hall.
I watched the latter first and it charmed my socks off again. One classic scene after another signals the height of Allen's art in this hilarious masterwork. Manhattan is a different story.
Perhaps my recent viewing of Wild Man Blues has hipped
me to what an whining, pampered egomaniac Mr. Allen is.
Perhaps it's the irony of his Chaplin-like dalliances with young women that have set me against him. But I now watch Manhattan
and see a pathetic, overblown Allen literally feeding lines to his
fellow actors to give him some smarmy comeback that never fails to show how intellectually superior he is. Different from Annie Hall, Allen is no longer the underdog but an ugly, obnoxious
over-lord...
His characters in Manhattan, are cardboard. They are not real and
the situations are not real. I have no feeling for anyone in this
movie, except Woody, who I feel contempt for, given his massive
and unfunny self-indulgence. It's pathetic to see Allen set up
Hemingway with lines that a teenager would never say in a million
years, just to trump up his flaccid ego. Everyone in this movie actually feeds him lines to trump up his ego.
Like Stardust Memories, this one shows Woody at his self- indulgent worst. This movie looks wonderful and sounds wonderful with the Gershwin score, but on further review, this
one's hollow and ultimately a maddening tribute to an egomaniac.
