Manhattan

Manhattan is a wry, touching and finely rendered portrait of modern relationships set against the backdrop of urban alienation. Sumptuously photographed in black and white (Woody Allen’s first film in that format), and accompanied by a magnificent Gershwin score, Allen’s aesthetic triumph is a “prismatic portrait of a time and a place that may be studied decades hence” (Time). Forty-two-year-old Manhattan native Isaac Davis (Allen) has a job he hates, a seventeen-year-old girlfriend, Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), he doesn’t love, and a lesbian ex-wife, Jill (Meryl Streep), who’s writing a tell-all book about their marriage…and whom he’d like to strangle. But when he meets his best friend’s sexy, intellectual mistress, Mary (Diane Keaton), Isaac falls head over heels in lust! Leaving Tracy, bedding Mary and quitting his job are just the beginnings of Isaac’s quest for romance and fulfillment in a city where sex is as intimate as a handshake, and the gateway to true love…is a revolving door.