Comments on: Manhattan forever

By: Ruben Mancillas

Ruben Mancillas — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 07:22:27 +0000

I remember reading an interview with a director (I believe it was David O. Russell) who said he thought of the ending of Manhattan as a Rorschach test for how much of a romantic someone is. This intrigued me because I had never thought there could be another reading to one of my favorite films, I mean, it’s Tracy with that voice, skin, and those duly noted tears, right? But that last look of Isaac’s, how knowing is the character? How about the man who wrote/acts/directs him? Is he calling himself for his own delusions regarding his young fantasy girl or are we to buy into it all and swoon? Tracy as the romantic ideal works brilliantly and yet seems like a bit of a cheat in this regard, I mean, how can you not want to desperately believe inheras your moral center?

As for the famous list, I loved it as a younger person but it strikes me as more than a little self-aggrandizing now. I realize that part of the point is that it makes us consider what our own lists might look like but Woody veers dangerously close to those NYRB personal ads where the people define themselves by all the devastatingly perfect and culturally precise things they like to do and places they like to go. In his defense, I remember a specific joke of his about those ads, something along the lines of “Sensitive intellectual would like to get together for discussions of Kafka and sodomy.”

But c’mon Woodman, “those incredible apples and pears by Cezanne” and the “second movement of the Jupiter symphony” sound like someone who says Van Gawk, doesn’t it? Nah, when you’ve got a trump card like Tracy’s face you don’t need to impress me with anything else.

I know this L.A. boy feels like pushing Personal Best to the top of my queue (supplanting Star 80 just this once) and settling back for yet another evening in the hot tub…

By: Dave Barber

Dave Barber — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 23:44:39 +0000

Manahattan is my favorite Woody Allen filim, although I acknowledge the superiority of Annie Hall. But I’ve never really thought about it that much, just enjoyed the cinematography and characters and the goddamn sophisticated romance of it all. Mariel Hemingway’s tears — incredible. And the slight falling of Woody Allen’s face as he watches Tracy leave for London, knowing he has to let her go, is masterfully understated acting. I’m going to have to watch it again with this post in mind.

By: Jeremy Zitter

Jeremy Zitter — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 21:06:15 +0000

The first (and only other) film I ever saw at the Hollywood Forever cemetery was the quintessential Los Angeles film, Chinatown (in which the theme of corruption plays a similarly primary role), so for me it was interesting to see Manhattan in this foreign context–and, obviously, to get a NYer’s take on it. I rarely think of the context in which I see movies, since the multiplex has a way of homogenizing all filmgoing experiences, but I’m glad you called attention to the LA/NY tension inherent to this scene: and, indeed, there is something disorientingly postmodern about watching this particular film, “projected onto a Hollywood cemetery wall, with palm trees swaying above it.”

By: Bryan Waterman

Bryan Waterman — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:36:10 +0000

oops. thanks, wendy, for the correction on her last line. obviously i heard it how i wanted to hear it … i like the idea that everyone gets a little corrupted & that may just be something you have to deal with. but i like your reading of her line as well.

yes — thank God for those almost-rainclouds, which certainly cooled things off for the night.

By: WW

WW — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:25:56 +0000

I believe Tracy’s last lines of the move are “Not everybody gets corrupted. You gotta have a little faith in people,” an idea which only reinforces Tracy’s role as the film’s moral center – and the hope that we all have that cities and lovers will be the same when we return to them, even though we know, really know that they won’t. The very act of watching this movie, which won’t be corrupted – it will be the same every time we watch it, no matter where we see it – is one way for us to live Tracy’s last lines. In this sense the movie becomes our Tracy. That Diane Keaton will always say Van Gogh “Van Gawk” or that the soundtrack to fireworks over the Brooklyn Bridge will always be Gershwin is a way for us to have a touchstone that is pure, that is faith-inspiring, no matter how your life has changed since the last time you saw it.

Such a great night, BW. MF, you were missed (as was all of the Waterman clan). I love how the sky was white, pregnant with the possibility of rain, and how the palm trees were silhouetted against it – our own black and white movie playing above Woody Allen’s (and instead of Gershwin, the soundtrack to the city that night was “Tainted Love.”)