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Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979) +
Woody Allen made Manhattan as an effort to combine his most serious comedy to date [the Oscar-winning Annie Hall (1977)] with his attempt to make a full-blooded Ingmar Bergman film [Interiors (1978)]. The result was a love letter to NYC, and in fact, Manhattan probably uses more NYC landmarks than any other Allen film, and that's really saying something, even if Woody and all his characters have enough neuroses to fill up Bergman's entire filmography. The strength of Manhattan is that Woody makes the most-mature character the second-youngest one in the entire film. Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) is Woody's 17-year-old lover when the film begins, and she and Woody treat each other as comfortably as an old married couple would (I'm speaking from experience here). However, all of Woody's friends are having marital/sexual problems which are totally unnecessaty if you were lucky enough to cohabit with an Angelic soul such as Tracy. Of course, Woody loves being able to teach and form a pliable, yet intelligent mind about film and music (forgive me, Sarah) and avail himself of her youthful, sexual body, but he keeps acting like she will have to move on because "this is only a temporary thing" on your way to a more-mature life.
To me, the ending's key lies in both Woody's realization of what makes life worth living and in Mariel's (Tracy's) line that "you have to have a little faith in people." Woody spent the entire movie blowing her off even though he basically loved her but treated her as some student/pet/Galatea. The scene just before this one (Scene 10) is also important so I think I have to post it too -- did it. Woody backtracks and hmms and haws to try to get Tracy to do the exact opposite he recommended the entire film, but when Tracy calls him on it and says that he has "to have a little faith in people", Woody looks around (knowing it's not really that good a thing) but eventually he smiles because he knows that if he was ever going to have faith in anybody, it would be Tracy, the Sweetest Heart to ever grace a human body in Woody Allen history.:
Woody Allen made Manhattan as an effort to combine his most serious comedy to date [the Oscar-winning Annie Hall (1977)] with his attempt to make a full-blooded Ingmar Bergman film [Interiors (1978)]. The result was a love letter to NYC, and in fact, Manhattan probably uses more NYC landmarks than any other Allen film, and that's really saying something, even if Woody and all his characters have enough neuroses to fill up Bergman's entire filmography. The strength of Manhattan is that Woody makes the most-mature character the second-youngest one in the entire film. Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) is Woody's 17-year-old lover when the film begins, and she and Woody treat each other as comfortably as an old married couple would (I'm speaking from experience here). However, all of Woody's friends are having marital/sexual problems which are totally unnecessaty if you were lucky enough to cohabit with an Angelic soul such as Tracy. Of course, Woody loves being able to teach and form a pliable, yet intelligent mind about film and music (forgive me, Sarah) and avail himself of her youthful, sexual body, but he keeps acting like she will have to move on because "this is only a temporary thing" on your way to a more-mature life.
To me, the ending's key lies in both Woody's realization of what makes life worth living and in Mariel's (Tracy's) line that "you have to have a little faith in people." Woody spent the entire movie blowing her off even though he basically loved her but treated her as some student/pet/Galatea. The scene just before this one (Scene 10) is also important so I think I have to post it too -- did it. Woody backtracks and hmms and haws to try to get Tracy to do the exact opposite he recommended the entire film, but when Tracy calls him on it and says that he has "to have a little faith in people", Woody looks around (knowing it's not really that good a thing) but eventually he smiles because he knows that if he was ever going to have faith in anybody, it would be Tracy, the Sweetest Heart to ever grace a human body in Woody Allen history.: