曼哈顿(1979)

1.比安妮霍尔更好看.

2.看片头就觉得把午夜巴黎秒了,海报那个镜头出现时,伍迪的画外音,真美啊,我永远看不够啊.

对巴黎那是虚情假意,对纽约才是真爱.

3.这片和克莱默同年,梅姑演的两个角色都是抛掉男人出走的独立女性,一个为事业一个为搞拉.但她自己的婚姻维持了30多年.

演她女友那演员貌似长得有点像桑塔格?还是我先入为主了.

年轻时候演戏还没有现在那举手投足的"梅利尔腔",所以看上去很....清新....更喜欢那个时候的她,虽然鹅蛋脸确实有够突兀.

彼时看外形,就是cate blanchet型的演员吧,适合走青衣路线当不了花旦,看不到如今的九五至尊范.

4.花旦当然是戴安,初出场一身nora ephron式的小洋装,有点做作的拿腔拿调,但一颦一笑全是重型炮弹,杀伤力强的狠.

戴安到底算不算演技派真不好说,但她最经典的形象能换谁来演呢,美人就julie christie,悍妇就菲唐娜威,傻大姐就歌帝韩,索非亚罗兰负责大胸...

平胸女高知已经有多少年没有出现在伍迪片里了?当代的女演员,gweneth paltrow勉强可以装下,好像没有上过伍迪戏吧.最近的rebecca hall气质近,又太漂亮了,ellen page?还太年轻吧.

17年后,梅利尔和戴安再度同台,marvin's room里,梅姑名字当然排第1,第2位是当时还没演铁达尼的新晋串红小生,第3位才是戴安.

最后提名的是戴安.

和梅丽尔同台还能抢走提名的,印象里就这一个?

我甚至想,当1979年已经有了曼哈顿里的戴安基顿,2008年还在拍<革命之路>?是历史倒退还是反讽?

5.知识分子最让人厌的就是掉书袋,那种普天之大舍我其谁的腔调,"老子很重要很重要".

唯有自嘲才能化解,唯有自我刻薄,才能化酸臭为喜感化腐朽为谐趣,这就是伍迪的无敌杀手锏...

"你别吃那么多安定,你会得癌!""什么癌?""恩....腹腔癌吧."

如果每天听这样的笑话,和知识分子恋爱也不错嘛.

6.配乐啊配乐!格什温啊!cole porter啊!

大半夜和心仪女子在纽约无人街头遛狗,背景音乐是someone to watch over me...

这就是知识分子的浪漫.

这好像也是我看过的所有伍迪片里最浪漫的一刻.

30多年后同样的桥段出现在儿童电视剧里,

那是傻男孩finn和犹太女孩rachel,这部剧,叫做glee...

所有嫌弃glee的人们啊,你们错过了多少你们知道吗!

7.另一个惊恐的事实是,我发现戴安当年的声音十分象....马脸!

艾萨克：编剧，42岁。离过两次婚，人类的弱点的代言人。一心想成为“道德和原则”的拥有者，但是到最后他也摆脱不了“非道德非原则”的影响，所以至始至终他一直在做着“非道德和非原则”的事情。第一，他看到耶尔出轨这件事，他对埃米丽选择保持沉默，但是当最后玛丽耍了艾萨克重新做回耶尔的情人时，他选择向埃米丽“告状”，这表现出他的自私。第二，开始他对于他与十七岁的翠西谈恋爱这件事，称作“双方的暂时欢快”，对于翠西的真爱，他以年龄是问题为由，建议她多和班上的男士约会以及劝她去英国留学，这样可以见多识广，但是最后他为了不让翠西离开他，叫她不要去英国，从这里可以看出艾萨克的自私是伴随他到影片最后的，人性的弱点果然是弱点。第三，当艾萨克和玛丽吵架关于“四个星期”的问题，他责怪她竟然对于四个星期后的自己要做什么完全不知道，但是到了他说翠西去伦敦学习要“六个月”，他又觉得太长了，“四个星期”和“六个月”其实都是很短的时间，但是对于艾萨克来说，前者是为了挽回玛丽，后者又是为了让翠西留在自己身边，这表现了他可以为了自己的利益而置“道德和原则”不顾，多么自私。随着玛丽离他而去，他才发现，原来自己灵魂中一直追求的“道德和原则”其实就是翠西。

吉尔：作家，艾萨克前妻，通过写书把她与艾萨克分手的“真相”表达出来，虽然书里对艾萨克的某些描述是真实的，比如自我中心等，但是应该注意的是，她为这个“真相”添油加醋，如歪曲事实地写：最后艾萨克和她以及她的同性情人3P的结局。即使她之前对艾萨克说这是“基于事实的”。这对艾萨克是造成伤害的。这也是表现出她损人利己，不诚实，自私的一面——没有道德和原则。

翠西：道德和原则完美的化身，反抗世俗教条，敢于追求爱情，哪怕她爱上了一个比自己大25岁的艾萨克，也敢于追求爱。最后，艾萨克才发现，她是他心中“道德和原则”的完美化身，艾萨克在最后也终于领悟到了这一点，想把她追回，但是她并非为之感动，这是伟大的“道德和原则”的坚守者。

耶尔：彻底没有道德和原则。出轨的男人，作家，中途有过“反省”，但最后还是出轨了。他开始假装对艾萨克“处处关心”，担心他一个人在纽约过不好，其实这只是他为了逃避艾米丽想和他生孩子的借口。他是麻省理工学院的教职工，但是他没有“道德和原则”，让人想象到即使是世界文明和知识的宝藏地，也存在着“非道德和非原则”，这是不是在讽刺MIT？哈。最后通过埃米丽口中得知，他说是艾萨克把玛丽介绍给她的丈夫耶尔，背叛了朋友艾萨克，也欺骗了自己的妻子。

埃米丽：“道德和原则”的受害者，也是无力去反抗这一切的人，是耶尔的妻子。艾萨克向她告状他丈夫出轨的时候，她说任何事请都不可能完美，婚姻也需要一个妥协。这表现出她的在婚姻上没有基本的原则，连丈夫出轨都可以认为是不完美的一件事情。

玛丽：38岁左右。费城来的女记者，自带知识光芒，随时发光，亮瞎众人。离过婚，耶尔的情人。对于她和已婚的耶尔的感情，开始她认为不能接受，因为她不能完全拥有耶尔，分手的直接原因是耶尔不能随时陪她，让她觉得很委屈。中间，当耶尔提出可以搬出来和她住，但她说不想当破坏别人家庭的人，但是最后她甩了艾萨克和耶尔好上了。表现出她的虚伪、自私。


最后，艾萨克反思道：……（世界已经充满了各种“非道德和非原则”）……这样活着的意义是什么呢？他说出了最后一个：翠西。那是他心目中的完美的“道德和原则”的化身。影片最后告诉我们，虽然世界存在很多 “非道德非原则”的东西，比如伪善，自私，自我中心，欺骗，不诚实……但是最后通过“道德和原则”的化身翠西对艾萨克说的话中可以学到：只要我们能有原则地活着，能有原则地活着。

          “He adored New York City.” (Manhattan)Of course. Why else would Woody Allen title his film Manhattan? He makes it clear from the very beginning that this film is dedicated to the city. Seeing Midtown in black and white unfolding to the rhythm of “Rhapsody in Blue”, the audience romanticizes the city together with Allen and eagerly awaits what he has to say about the city. And then through the hustle bustle of daily street scenes of Manhattan, we hear it, “a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture”(Manhattan).
          Before we proceed, we shall ask ourselves, what is the “contemporary culture” that Allen is referring to? The film was released in 1979 and the “Manhattan” he refers to is the one in the 70s. New York City in the 1970s was “dirty, dangerous and destitute”(Tannenbaum). Crimes were rampant around the city and Times Square was filled with hookers and drug dealers. The economic chaos and political upheaval brought by the war and Watergate rendered the city powerless in the face of crisis. It is not surprising that Allen was heartbroken, seeing his beloved city turning into a nest of crimes and drugs. While Manhattan is not Taxi Driver, which exposes the crimes of New York unreservedly and praises actions against them, that doesn’t mean Allen shies away from all the trouble the city and the society is in. He turns it, instead, into a celebration of New York and the people living in it. Allen, born in Brooklyn, has spent his entire life living in the city, knowing all the bits and pieces about it. Certainly it is far from perfection, but neither is anything else. Nonetheless Allen knows that New York is a great city, and the reason is written all over Manhattan, from the stunning 59th Street Bridge at dawn to the enchanting and dark Planetarium in the American Museum of Natural History.
          The film centers on four people living in Manhattan, Isaac (played by Allen himself), Mary, Yale and Tracy. These characters embody the spirit of the city. All of them are highly educated and possess rich cultural knowledge. Cultural debates take place among them throughout the film. The most heated debate happens when Isaac meets Mary at an art fair, where Mary criticizes the photography Isaac likes as derivative and witless and praises the steel cube Isaac dislikes as textual and “has a marvelous kind of negative capability”, which is clearly a reference to John Keats. These polished critiques of art clearly reflects their knowledge and insight in art. Thanks to the city’s inexhaustible amount of cultural institutions, numerous scenes in the film take place in museums, art galleries and special art exhibits, which allows these debates to happen. These characters themselves also work in television, book editing and universities. They are supposed to represent the intellect of this city that is famous for its huge international media conglomerates, Broadway and several of the greatest museums in the world, among others. Allen himself obviously takes pride in the status of New York as one of world’s greatest cultural capitals. When Mary later says that she is from Philadelphia, believes in God and does not want to have this conversation, Isaac is confused by what Mary means by that. But we know for sure that Allen himself isn’t. From these characters, we can see how the status of New York as a cultural capital affects the way they live and shape them as who they are.
          However, apart from their glamorous appearance and fanciful cultural glossary, what is truly intriguing about those characters is the problems they each have, just as in the case of New York City. A lot of their problems have to do with their relationships and emotions. For Isaac, the fact that he is involved with a teenage girl, Tracy, bothers him greatly. Upon knowing that Tracy goes to a high school, Mary wittingly remarks that “somewhere Nabakov is smiling”, referring to the devastating relationship between Lolita and Humbert in the novel Lolita. If anything, the feelings Humbert has for Lolita, a girl much younger than his age, ruins his life almost completely. After Lolita disappears all of a sudden one day, Humbert goes on a frantic search for her that lasts years. When he finally finds her at the end, he goes on a killing spree of her abductor that ends in a disaster. Though not nearly the case of Lolita, the relationship between Isaac and Tracy is equally troublesome because of the age gap. The difference here is that Isaac keeps things under control because he knows that he might wind up in a similar situation as Humbert if he lets things go freewheeling. But at the end, feelings still get the upper hand. Yet the struggle of Isaac is the battle between his ideal and his morality. The same thing can be said about Mary, who is involved in an extra-marital relationship with Yale. She constantly repeats that she is from Philadelphia and her parents are married for 43 years and “nobody cheats at all”. This indicates her repulsion towards the nature of her relationship with Yale because she knows that “this is going nowhere” and she’s merely wasting her time. She knows that she is “young, highly intelligent and got everything going for [her]” yet she is “wasting herself on a married man”. This happens to the best of us. Regardless of how much knowledge one has or how well-to-do one is, it seems inevitable that we at some point struggle to find the right places for ourselves. This is especially true for New Yorkers in the 1970s who all of a sudden find themselves in the middle of an ailing city. Allen’s film, clearly dedicated to this city and all the problems it has, rings a bell among audiences.
          Is there anyway that these problems can be solved? Allen certainly explores some of the possibilities in this film. He has an earnest appreciation for great minds, which he constantly shows in various films. Notably, Interior is written in the style of Ingmar Bergman and Stardust Memories is a remake of Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2. There are also several references to Bergman and Fellini in Manhattan itself, showing their tremendous influence on Woody Allen. When Mary includes Ingmar Bergman in her “Academy of the Overrated”, Isaac rebuts with “Bergman? Bergman is the only genius in cinema today.” Later on, after meeting Mary’s friends at MoMA, Isaac remarks that “it’s an interesting group of people, your friends. It’s like the cast of a Fellini movie”. Apart from the apparent influence, is Allen suggesting that we should rely on them to solve our own problems? Mary doubts so, harshly criticizing that “it is the dignifying of one's own psychological and sexual hangups by attaching them to these grandiose philosophical issues”. It suggests that appreciation for the great minds is merely a hypocritical dignification of one’s own problems, but not the solution to them. In the case of Manhattan, we can see that the abundance of culture institutions and marvelous exhibits still cannot save Times Square from becoming the haven for prostitutes. Maybe art merely provides us a way to recognize or discern the problems, but fails to actually prevent them from happening.
       Allen then goes on to explore other possibilities, again through Mary’s voice. At this point we can see that while Isaac clearly represents Allen himself, Mary can be considered the “other” in his mind that constantly doubts the “self” and proposes alternative ideas. In this case, in an intimate setting at the planetarium, their heads appear as silhouettes in front of a huge bright image of Saturn. The dark images of heads seem to suggest the insignificance of their appearance at this point and the importance of their ideas instead. Mary suddenly asks Isaac fondly how many satellites of Saturn he knows, and Isaac frankly admits that he doesn’t know any. As Mary boasts that she “got a million facts on [her] fingertips”, Isaac defends himself calmly with “nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind. Everything really valuable has to enter you through a different opening”. “Where would we be without rational thought?”, asks Mary in disbelief, to which Isaac quickly responds with “You rely too much on your brain. And the brain is the most overrated organ.” What we have here is a debate between rationality and emotionality, which has certain connections with the previous discussion regarding the great minds but is one step further. Mary, critical of the importance of great minds, relies on her own instead and emphasizes on rational thought, while Isaac suggests that rational thought cannot get us anywhere. The “different opening” Isaac talks about here must be emotions, unrelated to mind and rationality, yet makes up a huge part of our lives. Isaac, thus, may appreciate the great minds precisely for their emotional capabilities, the way they stir up feelings inside us that we might not have before. But aren’t feelings the cause of all the problems in the film to begin with? Mary describes her extra-marital relationship with Yale as “a no-win situation” and the only thing that keeps them from getting out of that dreadful situation is their feelings for each other. However, when Yale rationalizes everything and finally decides to break up with her, he becomes “depressed and confused”. It seems that rational thought cannot really help them out here, and feelings only make it worse. It has come a full circle since we started.
          Isn’t it just like New York City in the 1970s? As the fiscal crisis loomed over the city, there was really little people could do. The police couldn’t do anything about the soaring crime rates since they needed money and thus were corrupted themselves. Anyone fond of rebuilding the city’s ailing infrastructure couldn’t change the situation because people have lost their faith and started leaving, which meant that bricks and broken walls of those demolished buildings in the Bronx just lay there without redevelopment. Even the federal government refused the city’s grant for bailout. Any form of rationality wouldn’t work because nobody had the strength to take actions anymore. Emotions didn’t help either as everyone was left in a hopeless and frustrated state. So what was it, as Allen may ask, that could change the fate of the city and the Isaacs and Marys living in it?
          In 1977, Ed Koch was elected the new mayor and he might have an answer to this. He did a marvelous job pulling the city out of its nadir and the most important factor for his success might be the active restoration of hope. At one of his most iconic attempts, he spent hours riding subways and asking passengers “How am I doing?”. In order to restore hope, he used his limited funds to refurbish city streets and subways. He also made a considerable effort clearing the city’s iconic parks such as Washington Square Park and Central Park from drug dealers and broken glasses. Though not the most financially profitable conducts, these acts essentially changed people’s attitude toward the city. People once again started having hopes for the city to come back to its glory. And that’s a starting point for any significant changes since you need to believe in them first. “Nothing’s perfect,” says Yale’s wife Emily calmly after acknowledging Yale’s affair with Mary. She is supposed to be the most agonized character in the film since she is the only one being cheated, while the others are just confused about their inappropriate relationships. Yet she seems to be the calmest and most understanding one. Because she, of all people, knows what a difference it makes if you just admit that nothing is perfect and prepare to make compromises along the way. She tolerates Yale’s affair with Mary and thus she still has her marriage unbroken. Just as how the Koch administration was willing to give up some financial profits in order to reconstruct the public faith in the city. If you are willing to take a look at anywhere in the city now, especially in the Bronx, you know these compromises in the name of hope and faith paid off tremendously.
           And fortunately, that is exactly what this film is trying to do, to give us hope. Just as Tracy’s final words before leaving for London, “you gotta have a little faith in people”, followed by some astounding images of Manhattan along with “Rhapsody of Blue”, as we are once again impressed by the beauty of the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and the 59th Street Bridge. We can almost hear Allen whispering to our ears, “you gotta have a little faith in the city too.” Tracy cannot stay with Isaac and has to leave him for the time being, just as the city disappointed its people and was in disarray back then. But that doesn’t mean changes won’t happen. “Six months isn’t that long,” says Tracy. And we know she will be back eventually. As for the city, a decade is nowhere near the end of the world. It’s exactly because of people like Woody Allen and his Manhattan that we realize how difficult it is to be free of trouble and how little that matters when we have the right attitude, and a little faith.