8.1 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A middle-aged TV writer, living in Manhattan, finds himself torn between relationships with a teenage girl who idolizes him, a thirtysomething woman who shares his intellectual passions, and an ex-wife who left him for another woman.
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep, Michael Murphy (I)Drama | 100% |
Romance | 36% |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.34:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (224 kbps)
French: DTS 2.0 Mono
German: DTS 2.0
Italian: DTS 2.0
Spanish: DTS 2.0 Mono
English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Polish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
In an interview with Time Magazine shortly after the semi-scandalous news broke that he was having a relationship with his former lover Mia Farrow's
21-year-old adopted daughter, Soon-Yi, Woody Allen famously replied, "The heart wants what it wants. There's no logic to those things. You meet
someone and you fall in love and that's that." The quote is a good entry point into Allen's 1979 film, Manhattan, which is very much about the
irrationality of love, broadly, and more specifically about his character's relationship with a significantly younger, high school-aged girl. Though
Allen has always been careful to draw a line between his movies and his own life--in fact, he claims there's never any autobiographical connection
whatsoever--it's hard not to see Manhattan as prescient in retrospect.
But let's not get bogged down in the distinctions between fiction and reality. Manhattan may bear some resemblance to events in Allen's life,
but the film is bigger than that, encompassing the entire moral and cultural milieu of 1970s liberal intellectuals in New York, a psychoanalyzed and self-
medicated social set whose best relationships were with themselves. Of course, the film is also a black and white ode to the city, glamorized and
sentimentalized here and made wonderfully timeless. If Annie Hall is where Woody Allen matured as a storyteller, Manhattan is where
he could finally back up his narrative substance with visual style.
Manhattan looks gorgeous on Blu-ray, even more so than Annie Hall. With its stark black and white cinematography it's obviously the more stylized of the two, and MGM's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer more than does it justice. To start, the print is in nearly immaculate condition. I don't know if it was extremely clean to begin with, or if MGM spent the time and effort to do a frame-by-frame restoration, but either way the results are fantastic. There are very few white specks to be noticed throughout the film, and no major debris or staining or brightness flickering. The 35mm image is faithfully presented here, with a natural-looking grain pattern--which is admittedly somewhat heavy at times--and no apparent digital noise reduction, edge enhancement, or other forms of unnecessary filtering or boosting. There are no real compression or encode issues either. While the film isn't always sharp sharp, clarity is greatly improved over previous standard definition editions, with fine detail--like in threading of Woody's sports jackets--that you've probably never noticed before. If I have one concern, it's that the tonal balance seems to be shifted very heavily toward the shadows. The film has always been kind of dark, but it does seem possibly a bit too dim here. I'll give MGM the benefit of the doubt, though. Overall, Manhattan looks wonderful.
As with Annie Hall, MGM has wisely avoided trying to wrangle a 5.1 surround sound presentation out of the film's original single-channel soundtrack, opting instead for a faithful DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono mix. And it sounds great. Of course, this being a Woody Allen film, where characters do nothing but talk, a good 80% of the aural activity is dialogue. Thankfully, then, the vocals are always clean and easily understood. There are a few spots where the volume of the voices seems potted a bit low, but never to the point where you'll feel like you need to grab your remote and make some adjustments. If you're familiar with the film, you already know that it's practically an introduction to George Gershwin, featuring a number of the composer's jazzy, classical Americana pieces. (Most notably, "Rhapsody in Blue," which opens the film.) The music sounds lovely--rich and full and lively. The disc also includes a number of foreign language dubs in Dolby Digital Mono--it's fun to to listen to the various voice actors do their own takes on Woody--and there are lots of subtitle options too, for those who might need or want them.
Woody Allen just doesn't do bonus features--he never has--so the only extra you'll find on the disc is the film's theatrical trailer, in high definition.
The jury is still out on whether or not Manhattan is Woody Allen's masterpiece--personally, I'm more fond of Annie Hall--but there's no doubt that this is a great film and, more specifically, a great film about New York. As far as I'm concerned, it belong in every Blu-ray collection, and MGM's fantastic 1080p transfer should easily convince you to add it to yours. There are no extras to speak of--Woody Allen is notoriously against bonus features--but the bump in picture quality is reason enough to upgrade from the DVD. Highly recommended!
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