曼哈顿1979

        1. 这才是Woody Allen城市系列的第一篇章吧——只不过故事里午夜的份量不重。巴塞罗那是春梦，巴黎是幻想出来的白日梦，纽约才是导演的真实生活。

        2. 90分钟的电影把人物都塑造得这么丰满足见导演的功力——男主角是导演本人，少女的真和因为真而有的可见事物本质的聪慧，男配和男配老婆的自欺欺人，前妻的自私自我，还有女记者——她并不了解自己：她不断强调自己是正统的费城人、有多么多么的理性，不过是在给自己贴标签，而事实上她做得都是与标签相反的事。

        3. 中心思想——说我们都会死掉所以我们都应该有一些优点那句；对着录音笔碎碎念的我们之所以要活着是因为有东西值得追求那些；还有就是人人都在说的最后一句——要对人有点faith. 最后那句，算是导演的超我，他当下想有尚没有的。

        4. 很多配乐桥段都非常复古，尤其让我想起另一位犹太大导演和喜剧大师——查理·卓别林。不知道是否有向他致敬的意思。

        5. 很多人都想起最后陪伴他至今的妻子，他们相恋时她19岁，是Woody前女友的养女。可以证实导演爱萝莉的另一例证，其实还有2009年的Whatever Works，让人觉得有意思的是，相应地，他把男主角的年龄也调整得更老了。这并不让人觉得有什么错，她们可爱的原因，并不是因为更juicy的身体。其实我是想说，让我们都有一颗少女心。

        暂时想到这里。我爱Woody Allen.

          “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.

“Tracey you look great. You're gonna be the thing that settles the argument between God and Job. God would've said: ' Well I did a lot of terrible things but, hey, I made one of these.' ”




After the uttering of the above, Woody Allen kissed her over-aged Lolita (17 years old) on a coach striding around the Central Park. See the problem with me is that, I can never spurt out the name of any heroes in a Woody Allen film, especially those played by himself, not even immediately after the viewing. I guess old Woody’s mind-spinning pace of speaking and the facial expression on his weirdly attractive potato-shaped, you know, face, are enough hors d'oeuvre to savor on, leaving little room for mundane dessert like “a name”.



See I never got the chance to ride the coach when I was in the Big Apple, and when the chance pop up before me, I mean in Atlanta, I didn’t take it. For one thing they charged 20 bucks for 20 minutes’ ride around World of Coca-Cola. For another it was kinda pointless to embark on such a journey without a lover at your side. I’ve seen Big and Carrie riding it in Sex and the Cites, now there comes old Woody, prattling about the tackiness of it all while taking all the advantages. There is this nostalgic thing about two skinny old horses hardly fit to look up dragging a coach around Manhattan. It is almost tragic, and I don’t just mean the horses.



Yes, Manhattan is strangely sad. Every skyscraper, town house and tenement hall, antiquated or brand new, is personifying that sadness in various traces, left by their inhabitants who mourn the brevity of life’s happiness everyday, starkly exposed in the downtown sunlight. I’m starting to sound helplessly melodramatic and vehemently dull. Yes I know how dull I can be.
 


That’s the different between old Woody and me. He takes a dull theme (could be an unbelievably dull one, mind you) and makes it otherwise. Just for everybody’s information, I don’t usually sound so dull. Once I joked a man into orgasm, I really did. But I’m losing the grip lately. I think it has something to do with a detective novel I’m translating. What kind of detective story is it that blabbers along 6 chapters without anyone being killed?—No one even bleeds, for god’s sake. Those Viking people really should’ve made better decision about introducing books to China.



In Manhattan, the highly intelligent woman who nominate George Gershwin, F. S. Fitzgerald and Ingmar Bergman for Prize of Being Horribly Overrated is always wasting herself with a married man, the stunningly beautiful wife is always leaving her husband for another woman and publishing a book describing every single detail of her empty and meaningless late marriage, Richard Cory is always falling in love with the girl he just dumped, the saintly integrated teenager is always hung up too much to a man older than her father. Let’s say Manhattan is the place for these things. Few truly know the desire of their hearts, and those who do know, are in lack of means to secure it.

                   

 "He adored New York City. He idolised it all out of proportion. "
 "To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin. "
 "He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else. "
 "He thrived on the hustle, bustle of the crowds and the traffic. "
 "To him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. "
 "The same lack of integrity to cause so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams..."
 "He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. "
 "Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat. "
 "New York was his town and it always would be. "



There’s never gonna be a perfect way to tell a story about Manhattan, New York. You’re either too angry, too preachy, too corny, or of too poor a taste. Our old pal Woody thinks that New Yorkers are constantly creating real (now that’s important), unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves “cos it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe.” Well, I think the neurotic problems are results of people’s disinterest in “more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe”. They just don’t give a damn. They’re too tired. There’s no strategic shrinking here. This is just one more stale fact about existence.



Do you get the moral here? Have fun with and faith in people with whatever might you can summon up, lest the ducks in the lake of Central Park fly away in summer instead of winter.



 

电影结尾，面对前男友（伍迪艾伦饰演）的苦苦挽留，翠西一句话点破玄机：你连6个月都等不起，还谈什么爱情。在中年男人让人回味无穷的无奈苦笑中，观众恍然发现了真正懂得爱情的不是那帮虚伪、脆落又自恋的知识分子们，而是这位刚刚成年的小姑娘。

这也许是伍迪·艾伦这部电影的重点所在。如同在《甜蜜的生活》结尾，费里尼为马斯楚安尼饰演的男主角安排的那个小姑娘，为了是向这位堕落于虚伪世界中的男人指出天真的可贵之处。不知道伍迪·艾伦在《曼哈顿》中是否借鉴了此片，但两部电影的主旨是一样的。

当你长大，进入社会，只会越来越被这个社会的虚假运作所卷入。如同电影中三个知识分子间的爱情往来，看似是一种自由的恋爱行为，实则已经变成通过爱情游戏来逃避枯燥现实的借口。当他们口口声声为自己的爱情行动辩护之时，暴露的是他们为这个社会（曼哈顿）所浸染的不自觉倾向。

这位尚未成年的小女友出现在电影中，因而具有象征意义。她依然保存着对爱情的美好向往，而不是将其看作摆脱苦闷生活的游戏。不懂生活的规则，可能会失去很多乐趣；但天真的人对世界有一种直觉的理解，这是费里尼告诉我们的真理。或许从这个角度理解这部电影。

   这是我看的伍迪艾伦的第二部片子，第一部是《安妮霍尔》。相比之下，我喜欢曼哈顿一些，但也只能是相比之下。我不知道伍迪艾伦的片子是不是都是关于学院派知识份子的，如果都是，这位导演的名字将注定不在我的伟大导演名册上。这些知识份子吸取着那些真正的人类精英的脑髓，偷窃他们敏锐的判断，假装它们是自己的。然后安全地扮演人类精神遗产的继承者与宣传者的角色 ，像牧师一样，在那些脚踏实地的质朴的人们面前卖弄。总之，他们是社会的寄生虫。或许艾伦仅仅是表现了知识份子社会生活中两性关系的一面，或许这是他最感兴趣的，最拿手的，因而放弃了对其他方面的表现。但是，一位伟大的导演不应该把眼光仅仅投降这样一个狭窄的方面。学院派知识份子有着与生俱来的局限，其中最致命的就是逃避生活，对人类实实在在的痛苦漠不关心，热衷于所谓的精神困扰。但是，我真的没看出来这困扰得以真实存在的基础，那只是他们为了美化自己的空虚而不停地寻找着猎物。他们用一切手段来逃避，最拿手的手段当然是谈论文艺。注意是谈论文艺，而不是创造艺术。所以我说，他们太丑了。是那种长得很丑，但又拼命浓妆艳抹的。这部片子中，有哪个人物是可爱的呢？只有那个十七岁的女孩。其他的人，都如同行尸走肉，当然，他们觉认为自己时时刻刻都冲充满生命活力，可以接二连三地引诱不同的异性，可以为自己的虚伪、自私、背叛、贫乏寻找种种借口，并且在此过程中感享受作为一名善于进行智力活动的人的优越感。寻找借口，是他们生活的的重要内容，在一个好的、包裹着高智商的借口未被找到之前，他们就觉得自己不存在。男主角真的爱十七岁的女孩吗？他这种人根本就没有爱的能力，因为他太自卑了，只能以所谓的“聪明”来吸引笨女人（文艺女，基本都很笨）。他们从两性关系中试图减轻自卑感，从而确立身份。是的，他们知不知道自己是什么，因为他们很清楚自己什么都做不了。只只能把莎士比亚、乔伊斯嚼了又嚼。
   男主人公被那位所谓足够漂亮、足够聪明、足够年轻（实际上，在我看来是足够怪异、足够贫乏、足够皱纹）的女文艺甩掉之后，躺在沙发上，思考为什么要活下去这个问题。先说说他为什么要在这种情况下想这个问题吧。只是诸多情场追逐中的一次失意，就让他想到了这样一个涉及生与死的问题。可见，男主人公多么扭捏作态了。当然，我也可以设想这是最真实的反应，但这也不会好到哪去。因为这也说明他是多么脆弱，多么无力，多么不堪一击。接着说说，他找到的那些让他活下去的理由，与他自己直接的生活有关的就是他的儿子与十七岁女孩的脸，其余都是艺术家的经验世界。是的，我当然理解，我自己在最痛苦的时候，艺术往往能够给我更有效的安慰。但是，我同时觉得，这也是一种很高傲很可怜的状态。博尔赫斯，有一首诗歌，似乎是《你不是他们》，在这首诗中，他继续使用着他惯用的排比句，举了一个又一个艺术家的名字和作品，其中有一句似乎是莎士比亚的诗救不了你，你正处在自己脚步织成的迷宫的中心。
   男主人公，与上面这位所谓的尤物交往之前，尤其是在开始交往之时，鼓励十七岁的女孩离开自己。但是，被尤物甩了之后，又恬不知耻地让女孩回来。女孩坚持去伦敦学习六个月，同时也进行了对老男人的爱情许诺。只是，仅仅六个人月的时间，他都经不起，他害怕女孩变了。而女孩说“并不是所有人都容易改变”。这个老男人真的配不上她。他本该保持清醒，履行一位长者的职责，引导女孩发展她的个性，完善她的生活。但是，当情场失意后，内心脆弱，嫉妒沮丧的他，想到的只是如何让自己尽快摆脱不良心境，还美其名曰爱情，只是他的爱情是个瘸子，把女孩当作拐杖。他们都太容易变了，并且还责怪彼此善变。他们无所事事，不弄点事出来，不把生活弄得乱一些，就觉得是智商退化的征兆。
    批判到此为止。总的来说，我讨厌的是影片的人物。但画面很不错。