Curator Watchlist
A beautifully shot, sharply written New York relationship comedy-drama that pairs romantic yearning with moral messiness. Its reputation is complicated by the filmmaker’s off-screen history and the film’s own uncomfortable premise, but as a work of style, performance, and urban melancholy it remains a major… Read more
Where to watch: Buy
Wed · 1h 36m
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Michael Murphy
Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.
Woody Allen
Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Michael Murphy
A beautifully shot, sharply written New York relationship comedy-drama that pairs romantic yearning with moral messiness. Its reputation is complicated by the filmmaker’s off-screen history and the film’s own uncomfortable premise, but as a work of style, performance, and urban melancholy it remains a major late-70s American film.
Manhattan is one of those films that can be admired and argued with in the same breath. It is gorgeously photographed, wryly written, and full of the kind of observational confidence that makes even small conversations feel like set pieces. The city is rendered as both fantasy and emotional weather: luminous, restless, and a little self-mythologizing.
At the same time, the film’s central relationships are intentionally, and sometimes uncomfortably, tangled. That tension is part of its design, but it also means the movie can feel less like a romance than a portrait of self-justifying desire. The performances, especially Diane Keaton’s, give the film its warmth and friction.
If you respond to sophisticated banter, romantic ambivalence, and a very specific late-70s New York sensibility, it’s an essential watch. If the premise itself is enough to shut the door, there’s no shortage of other urban relationship dramas that offer the style without the baggage.
maria (2★) · 2974 likes
no amount of beautiful b&w cinematography can save this self indulgent, pretentious and perverted dogshit
megan (2.5★) · 2128 likes
can you believe that woody allen actually directed and starred in his own biopic???
mary (5★) · 1393 likes
beautiful movie about bad people
Mike D'Angelo (5★) · 1335 likes
100/100 I don't understand how you make a film that looks like this and then go on to make 32 subsequent films (and counting) that look nothing like this. But then, neither do I understand how you achieve the perfect synthesis of your many gifts and somehow conclude that you totally whiffed, to the point where you beg the studio to destroy the negative. Each of the film's tricky balancing acts—between visual beauty and verbal dexterity, between wit and pathos,… more
Kall S (3★) · 1252 likes
As if any of those women would actually put up with Woody Allen's annoying face for five minutes.
Shares the same neurotic, conversational romantic-comedy energy and a similarly intimate view of modern relationships.
A sharp, bittersweet city romance that balances wit, loneliness, and ethical compromise.
If you want the banter and emotional intelligence of a New York relationship film with broader warmth.
A smart, adult comedy-drama about ambition, attraction, and self-deception in professional life.
An ensemble relationship film with overlapping romantic entanglements and a similarly urbane tone.
For viewers drawn to wistful romance, fantasy, and a tender love letter to moviegoing and city life.
Another New York-set character comedy that mixes melancholy, affection, and showbiz absurdity.
A light, talky romantic farce with period charm and a similar interest in desire and mismatched couples.
For the blend of wit and moral unease, with serious questions lurking beneath polished dialogue.
A chilly, elegant study of adult dissatisfaction, infidelity, and suburban emotional drift.
A dialogue-driven romance that lives on chemistry, conversation, and the feeling of a city at night.
A literate, socially observant ensemble piece about youth, class, and self-conscious intellectual life.
romantic longing, moral ambiguity, New York City, middle-age crisis, self-mythology, urban melancholy, intellectual banter, relationship dysfunction
romantic drama, relationship comedy, black-and-white cinematography, New York City, neurotic humor, moral ambiguity, late 1970s, urban melancholy, literary dialogue, adult relationships