Censorship

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Censorship

• One of the first post-Hays Code films to deal
  with difficulties of divorce in a serious way.
• Allen is the first filmmaker to accept divorce as
  the norm, focusing on the wreckage of
  relationships and the difficulties if not
  flat-out impossibility of the recovery process.

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Woody Allen as Isaac

• Twice-divorced yet intent on finding another
  girl.
• Dumped by his lesbian wife who has written a
  tell-all bestseller.
• Having an affair with a 17-year-old, High School
  girl who is far more mature and wiser than he is.
• Also having an affair with the older, indecisive,
  pseudo-intellectual Mary.
• Quits his successful comedy-writing job to write
  the great American novel.
• Yale You are so self-righteous, you know. I
  mean we're just people. We're just human beings,
  you know? You think you're God.Isaac I... I
  gotta model myself after someone.

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Woody Allen as Woody Allen

• Many critics have argued that Allens films are
  autobiographical and Manhattan is one where he
  plays himself a neurotic New York Jew whose
  career involves entertaining the masses with his
  sense of humor and whose love life involves a
  continual string of mismatches and failures.

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Diane Keaton as Mary

• Mature, older, pseudo-intellectual.
• Nervous, searching, insecure, flawed.
• Having an affair with a married man, a professor
  named Yale.
• Hey, listen. Hey, listen. I don't even wanna
  have this conversation. I mean- really, I mean,
  I'm just from Philadelphia. You know, I mean, we
  believe in God, so- uh, uh, okay?
• Her fling with Isaac is only because she doesnt
  have anyone else to hang out with on Sunday
  afternoon.
• She tries not to be judgmental when she first
  meets Tracy And what do you do, Tracy? Tracy
  I go to high school.

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Meryl Streep as Jill

• She dumps her husband in order to have a lesbian
  relationship, with the boy being raised by two
  women.
• She writes a bestselling book about it
  Marriage, Divorce and Selfhood.
• She bests Allen at every turn
• Isaac I did not try to run her over....it was
  dark...the driveway was very slippery...you know
  I don't drive well... Jill Oh yeah? What
  would Freud say?Isaac Freud would say I
  wanted to run her over. That's why he was a
  genius.
• How sound is Jills relationship when she is so
  obsessed with the past that she had to write a
  book about it?

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Mariel Hemingway as Tracy

• High School girl having an affair with a 42-year
  old, divorced, out-of-work, man.
• Tracy We oughta go cos I've got an exam
  tomorrow. Isaac Oh, do you? The kid's gotta get
  up... She's got homework. I'm dating a girl who
  does homework.
• At first she is upset that Isaac breaks up with
  her (he does it at a soda fountain after school!)
  but in short order has gained perspective and
  asks him to wait six months for her to return
  from London. Will she return and live happily
  ever after with Isaac?

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Divorce and the Single Girl

• As in all Allen films, the young girl is
  portrayed as far more mature than the other
  characters. Why?
• Allens use of sage, young girls is a commentary
  on marriage and relationships. Girls represent
  the unspoiled innocence and purity of being
  single (pre-marriage and therefore pre-divorce).
  Allen contrasts this with older, cynical
  often-divorced and/or married women.
• For Allen, divorce is a terribly wounding
  experience from which it is virtually impossible
  to recover.
• Ultimately in real life as in art, Allen chooses
  the young girl. Why? Because temptations and
  seductions are the downfall of human existence
  and for older, insecure, men young girls are
  the ultimate temptation and therefore ultimate
  destructive force on their lives. For young
  girls, they cannot help but fall for
  father-figures as they try to heal the wounds of
  their childhoods (which of course they can rarely
  if ever do).
• At the time of shooting, Allen was reportedly
  involved with Stacey Nelkin, a student at New
  York's Stuyvesant High School, and widely thought
  to be the inspiration for Tracy. Nelkin went on
  to a minor acting career.

Stacey Nelkin had a small part in Annie Hall
(1977) that ended up on the cutting-room floor as
did her part as the sixth replicant in Blade
Runner (1982). She starred in Halloween III
(1982) and appeared in the TV soap opera
Generations in 1990. Allen cast her in a small
part in his 1994 film Bullets Over Broadway.
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A Better Person

• Why is this picture regarded by many as Woody
  Allens finest work?
• Allen deals explicitly with formerly taboo film
  themes such as divorce, lesbianism, and
  pedophilia.
• Allen wants us to be aware that these themes have
  been present throughout the 20th century even
  though they have not been portrayed in film.
  Hence his use of black and white and composer
  George Gershwins music for the score.
• Allen deals with the harsh realities of life in a
  postmodern way through humor, mixing high and low
  cultural references, and shattering convention.
• Wounded by past decisions, Allens protagonist is
  doomed to repeat his mistakes in a quixotic
  attempt at healing.
• Ultimately, like all postmodern filmmaking, if
  you truly get it the film makes you want to be
  a better person.
• And in postmodern relationship films, in order to
  be a better person, you have to stop searching
  for another person to help you heal your
  childhood wounds (where inevitably you will only
  fail and create even deeper issues) and instead
  heal yourself. Hence, marriage may be bad, but
  divorce is far worse.

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Finding Meaning in a Godless/Meaningless/Postmoder
n World

• The larger point about fear and why we
  continually choose selfishness over altruism is
  summed up by Isaac
• The important thing in life is courage. People
  in Manhattan are constantly creating these real,
  unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves,
  because it keeps them from dealing with more
  unsolvable, terrifying problems about the
  universe."
• It's very important to have some kind of
  personal integrity.
• What does money have to do with it? I've got
  enough for a year if I live like Mahatma Gandhi.
  My accountant says I did this at a very bad time.
  My stocks are down. I'm cash poor, or something.
  I've got no cash flow. I'm not liquid
• In an interview Allen remarked, Manhattan is
  about the problem of trying to live a decent life
  amidst all the junk of contemporary culture - the
  temptations, the seductions.
• But has Isaac, like Allen, failed?
• Yes Isaac craves selfish immortality through
  Tracy and his novel just as Allen has sought it
  through Soon-Yi and his public career.
• No Life is about helping others and if via
  marriage and child-rearing you are able to help
  family members and through your work/art are able
  to help current and future generations, then you
  have succeeded in life.
• About this film he remarked in an interview that
  he had hoped to communicate my subjective,
  romantic view of contemporary life in Manhattan.
  I like to think that, 100 years from now, if
  people see the picture, they will learn something
  about what life in the city was like in the
  1970's.

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Credits

• Brode, Douglas. Woody Allen his films and
  career. N.J., Citadel Press, 1985.
• Canby, Vincent, The Screen Woody Allens
  Manhattan, New York Times, April 25, 1979.
• Ebert, Roger, Manhattan (1979),
  www.rogerebert.com, March 18, 2001.
• Girgus, Sam B. The Films of Woody Allen. England
  Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• Lax, Eric. Woody Allen. A Biography. N.Y. Alfred
  A. Knopf, 1991.
• Stevens, Joanna. The Inside Edge Woody Allen in
  Manhattan, http//torp.priv.no/woody/reviews/manh
  attan-essay-stevens.html.