3 - Manhattan

Summary

Evil in the sense of willful and conscious malevolence usually has not intruded upon the worlds of Woody Allen. Probably not until Crimes and Misdemeanors does Allen engage forces of intentional harm and destruction. In Annie Hall the closest we get to such evil is the lobsters crawling around the floor and behind the refrigerator in Alvy's beach house in the Hamptons. Evil functions in Annie Hall as part of existential absence. It is structural, linguistic, and intellectual, but rarely felt as lived experience with the possible exception of crazy brother Duane. Manhattan also remains relatively free from malicious evil. Nevertheless, the film introduces a new degree of deception into a major Allen film. We soon learn that the characters in Manhattan frequently are not what they appear to be – which oddly enough represents many people's sense of New York, going back at least to the lonely excursions of Melville's distraught heroes into the inner depths of the city. Personal dishonesty and deceit are never far removed from all experience and relationships in Manhattan. Appearances of concern and commitment among friends only dissimulate latent jealousies, fears, and aggressions.

Although Manhattan examines a new moral dimension for Allen, it begins in a familiar place, the narrator's search for the right words. This search leads Allen to the creation of a visual panorama that literally explodes on the screen to the extraordinarily beautiful accompaniment of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.