Love and Suspicion: Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery
Written: Sep 10 '01 (Updated Mar 17 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Witty screenplay, terrific chemistry between Allen and Keaton
Cons: Extended homage to The Lady From Shanghai feels tacked on
The Bottom Line: Allen and Keaton: together again. What's not to like?
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| WilliamJones's Full Review: Manhattan Murder Mystery |
If you're a Woody Allen fan, Manhattan Murder Mystery is as comfortable as an old shoe. Every time it plays on TV I find myself watching it—I've probably seen it, oh, six or seven times now—even though it's not Allen's best.
Best, for me, are notable Allen films from the 70's: Annie Hall (1977), Love and Death (1975), Sleeper (1973), and Manhattan (1979).
Manhattan Murder Mystery is a notch or two below those terrific works. But it's still worth watching.
Originally, Mia Farrow was to star opposite Allen, but...well, you know the story. The two broke up (very publicly) and Allen, who likes to work with familiar faces, turned to his prior leading lady, Diane Keaton.
Manhattan Murder Mystery also reunites Allen with writer Marshall Brickman (the two share screenwriting credit here as they did on Annie Hall and Manhattan). Like those films, this one contains some very funny one-liners. I also liked the whole set up (the murder mystery of the title). And there's terrific chemistry between Allen and Keaton, who play sort of grown up versions of their roles in Annie Hall.
What I don't particularly care for, however, is an extended homage to Orson Welles's The Lady from Shanghai—specifically, the famous mirror sequence—that's pulled out near film's end. It feels tacked on. Allen really gets caught up in this scene-stealing idea that, for me, comes off as ill advised. While it is true that there's a murder mystery in the Welles film, the two movies are completely mismatched. Shanghai is dark and noir-ish, while Manhattan Murder Mystery is a light comedy that takes its cue from The Thin Man series.
Apart from that, I really enjoyed the back-and-forth between Allen and Keaton. Allen plays Larry Lipton and Keaton plays his wife Carol. He's a book editor at Harper's and she's looking to open a little restaurant ("basically French, although international cuisine would be fine"). They live in Manhattan and have a grown son in college. Their marriage is comfortable, but Carol feels Larry's become rather stodgy and fears turning into "a dull, aging couple" like the older couple in the apartment down the hall.
Early on they spend an evening visiting this couple and are then surprised when a day or so later the wife turns up dead. It's deemed a "classic coronary," but Carol becomes suspicious of the husband (played by Jerry Adler), who seems "a little too perky." On a subsequent visit to offer condolences she stumbles upon an urn in his kitchen and recalls an earlier conversation where the widower's wife had talked about twin cemetery plots. So why then does it appear he had his wife cremated?
Right from the beginning Larry doesn't buy into her suspicions. But an old friend Ted (Alan Alda), a recent divorcé who has a thing for Carol, goads her into thinking that maybe their neighbor killed his wife. A few scenes later Carol actually breaks into this guy's apartment looking for clues à la Hitchcock's Rear Window. Larry thinks she's nuts, but she feels he's being a fuddy-dud, that it was a cinch to get the key from the super and she has caught the widower in yet another lie. He's not going snorkeling with his brother in Florida, as he previously told them, but instead has tickets for two to Paris.
The mystery gets even more complicated and I don't want to give much away because there's some fun surprises. Part of that fun involves Anjelica Huston, who plays Marcia Fox, a "dangerously sexual" novelist who has a thing for Woody Allen's character.
To deflect her advances, Woody sets her up with Alan Alda because deep down he really loves his wife and he doesn't want to mess that up, although the movie plays with the notion that the two are growing bored with each other—that they might both be attracted to other people.
It's the murder mystery that adds some juice to their marriage. At least that's the way Carol sees it: "Look, Larry," she says, "we've got plenty of time to be conservative. You know what I'm saying—it's like this tantalizing plum has just, like dropped into our laps. I mean, life is just such a dull routine and here we are, right? I mean, we're on the threshold of a genuine mystery."
As Manhattan Murder Mystery winds down, the one-liners fly fast and furious. But I also appreciate how the movie very subtly recalls Annie Hall with a reference to Wagner.
The two of them have this arrangement: she'll sit through an ice hockey game if he'll watch an entire Wagner opera. She fulfills her part of the bargain, but, as a Jew, he has a problem upholding his side ("I can't listen to that much Wagner, you know; I start to get the urge to conquer Poland").
In Annie Hall Allen was convinced that the record store salesman—a big, tall, blond guy with a crew-cut—was trying to tell him something when he announced the store had a sale on Wagner ("So I know what he's really tryin' to tell me very significantly Wagner").
In Manhattan Murder Mystery he's still that same insecure guy—a little older, but still defensive and neurotic. There's something comforting about that.
Recommended:
Yes
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WilliamJones
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Member: William Jones
Location: Lemon Grove, CA
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Tarantino's strategy: "...have the characters speak at right angles to the action..." - Roger Ebert
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