MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY 1993

I've had a kind of love/hate relationship with the films of Woody Allen since my teens. The love affair originated in the early 1970s, when Allen’s films were largely comedic and he was at the height of his popularity as the mainstream darling of the campus arthouse set. Things started tilting toward the hate end of the spectrum when, in the latter part of the decade, pretentiousness began to seep into his work to the degree that a film like Interiors (1978) had me seriously wondering if all that WASP solemnity was meant to be taken as an intentionally poor parody Bergman. When I realized he was in earnest, my mind flew to Alvy Singer’s line in Annie Hall: “What I wouldn't give for a large sock with horse manure in it!” 

As a director whose work tends to vary most significantly in terms of quality, not content (theres a good reason no one ever asks "What's it about?" when you say you're going to see a Woody Allen movie), Allen is perhaps one of the most safely reliable directors around. I’ve seen virtually every film Woody Allen has ever made, struggling through his sometimes grueling attempts at significance (Stardust Memories - 1980), and reveling in his deliriously inspired comedies (Love and Death - 1975). Although my admiration for Allen palled considerably after his very public, more-than-I-wanted-to-know, full-tilt-disclosure breakup with Mia Farrow (try as I might, I can’t enjoy the icky May-December “romance” of Manhattan anymore); I find I still can’t help but be impressed by how he has managed, lo these many decades, to remain the last of the true auteur filmmakers of the '70s. An independent director/writer/actor, whose amazingly prolific output has kept me, if not always entertained, most certainly intrigued for over 40 years. 

Murder, She Read

Of course, the problem inherent in absorbing so much of a single director’s work (especially one as fond of covering the same territory, film after film, as Woody Allen) is the gradual over-familiarity one develops with said director’s favored themes and tropes. In Woody Allen’s case, this invariably means: the city of Manhattan—Allen's all-white version of it, anyway—as a participating character in the narrative; flimsy philosophical theorizing; rampant psychoanalysis; labored homages to personal idols Ingmar Bergman and Charlie Chaplin; and stories centered around affluent, neurotic, Jewish/Anglo pseudo-intellectuals occupying a New York curiously underpopulated with people of color, but with an overabundance of “brilliant” men, and “beautiful” women insecure about not being “smart enough” for elfin, elderly, serial-worriers.

When Allen uses these recurring leitmotifs as fodder for satire, no one can touch him. But when he dons his “Woody Allen: Deep Thinker” cap and tries for wisdom and tortured insight into the human condition (and BOY does the effort show), he can come off as woefully out of his depth—his insights are often shallow and self-serving—the results, frequently insufferable.

House Party
Elderly couple,Paul and Lillian House (Jerry Adler, Lynn Cohen,l.) get chummy with their neighbors, the Liptons (Allen & Keaton)

Happily, in what was initially intended as another Allen/Farrow onscreen pairing, Woody Allen followed up 1992's squirmingly autobiographical Husbands and Wives (which plays much better now, thanks to the healing distance of time) with the hilarious Manhattan Murder Mystery; a splendid return to the Woody Allen I discovered in the '70s: the funny Woody Allen.
But as happy as audiences were for the return of Woody-lite, Farrow’s departure and the ugly reasons behind it almost proved an insurmountable PR roadblock for the film before the very engaging Diane Keaton stepped in to take Farrow’s place. Keaton and Allen, last paired in 1987s Manhattan (she had a lovely cameo in Radio Days - 1987), co-starred in just four films (Farrow and Allen appeared in seven films together, but not always as a couple), but to many, they were the beloved Bogart and Bacall of contemporary comedy. The unofficial reuniting of Annie Hall and Alvy Singer engendered so much nostalgic goodwill that the recent damage to Woody Allen’s image was temporarily eclipsed (and softened) by the welcome return of Diane Keaton, the actress with whom Woody Allen arguably shares the best onscreen chemistry.

Woody Allen as Larry Lipton

Diane Keaton as Carol Lipton

Alan Alda as Ted

Anjelica Huston as Marcia Fox

The plot of Manhattan Murder Mystery is playfully simple. When the wife of an elderly neighbor dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances, a middle-aged couple worried that their marriage has settled into a comfortable routine (Allen & Keaton) soon find themselves caught in circumstances where life imitates art. That is, if the art in question is Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai, and Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Vertigo. Reluctantly donning the cloak of amateur sleuths, our neurotic Nick & Nora of the '90s embark on a comic investigation into a possible murder which winds up unearthing more than a clue or two about their own marriage.  

Like the best of those old Bob Hope or Abbott and Costello comedies which successfully combine mystery with outlandish slapstick, Manhattan Murder Mystery is a consistently funny comedy—laugh out loud funny, at times—that still manages to sustain a satisfyingly puzzling and suspenseful (if implausible) murder mystery at its core.

Mystery Incorporated
Looking like the cast of an AARP-funded version of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Carol and Larry enlist the help of friends/rivals Ted and Marcia (Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston) in unraveling a mystery.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I saw Manhattan Murder Mystery when it premiered in Los Angeles in 1993. And although the film opened with a rendition of Cole Porter’s “I Happen to Like New York” by society supper-club crooner Bobby Short that nearly had me running for the nearest exit before the film had even begun; my fortitude was rewarded by being treated to one of the funniest, most entertaining Woody Allen films I'd seen in a long while. Following the uneven Alice (1990) and the largely terrible Shadows and Fog (1991), Manhattan Murder Mystery proved to be the kind of silly character-comedy I had begun to doubt Allen was still capable of producing. 

Manhattan Murder Mystery is a genuine throwback to the Woody Allen of old, and is, at least as far as I’m concerned, his last really funny film to date. What works for me is that it’s one of those comedies wherein a significant part of the humor is derived from seeing characters associated with one kind of film (a Woody Allen neurotic comedy) forced to contend with the plot-driven constraints of a specific genre (the stylized film noir or suspense thriller). Peter Bogdanovich achieved something like this with What’s Up, Doc?, when he dropped laid-back '70s actors into the center of the controlled anarchy of a '30s screwball comedy; but it's perhaps Love and Death (my absolute favorite Woody Allen film) that best exemplifies this kind of anachronism-derived humor. 

Manhattan Murder Mystery takes two of cinema’s most famously jittery individuals and posits them within the cool-as-a-cucumber universe of the suspense thriller. Instead of hard-boiled heroes unfazed by danger, or fearless femme fatales impervious to menace; we’re given a talky, excitable, slightly dowdy middle-aged couple unable to stop analyzing their lives and emotional insecurities, even in the face of impending danger. No one does high-strung hysteria like Keaton and Allen, and Manhattan Murder Mystery gets funnier in direct proportion to the degree of jeopardy they face. Comic high points: the malfunctioning elevator scene, and the telephone sequence with the synchronized tape recorders.

Woody Allen pays tribute to the classic "hall of mirrors" scene from Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai

PERFORMANCES

I really adore Mia Farrow, and under Woody Allen’s direction, she gave some of the best screen performances of her career. That being said, outside of the total character transformation she affected in Broadway Danny Rose which revealed a heretofore-unexplored brassiness in the preternaturally waifish actress that contrasted nicely with Allen’s sweet-natured talent agent; I can’t say I’ve ever much cared for Mia Farrow and Woody Allen’s onscreen chemistry.

In that transference that seems to happen with any actor appearing in an Allen film more than once, Mia Farrow began to adapt Woody Allen’s patterns and rhythms of speech so thoroughly that (compounded by their shared pale and thin countenances) she became more like his female doppelganger than costar. In their scenes together, there was no contrast for either to play off of…it was just Woody Allen whining in stereo.

Diane Keaton, on the other hand, is perfection. While she still strikes me as being too pretty for him (although not in that stomach-turning, Julia Roberts way of 1996's Everyone Says I Love You), Keaton is so innately likeable that she sufficiently softens Allen’s sometimes-annoying persona enough to make him and his overarching self-involvement bearable. They blend together seamlessly and have an easy rapport that radiates from the screen. As good an actress as she is, I have to say that, outside of the unsurpassed work she did in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), I've rarely enjoyed Keaton in any of her films to the degree I've liked her in the ones she has made with Allen. Keaton seems to bring out the best in Allen as no other co-star has before or since.

The ceaselessly stylish Anjelica Huston is always a pleasure to watch. Disregarding the scenes where she's called upon to make blunt overtures to the grandfatherly Allen (they play out like a science fiction movie), I get a real kick out of the way Huston's self-assured cool is contrasted with Keaton's diffidence. Far left, that's 18-yr-old Zach Braff making his film debut.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Murder mysteries aren't easy to pull off under the best of circumstances, a comedic murder mystery-cum-homage to The Greats of the genre…even less likely. But in Manhattan Murder Mystery, Allen’s comic detour into Agatha Christie territory manages to be a first-rate mystery of considerable twists and surprises. And, mercifully, none of it is the least bit Scandinavian or Bergmanesque. In fitting with the tone of the genre, Allen keeps the dialogue witty and the plotting brisk, most of it serving to support its sweet subtext regarding growing older and the fear of losing one’s taste for adventure. 

In this, the second of three films he made with Woody Allen (Crimes & Misdemeanors, Everyone Says I Love You), Alan Alda plays a divorced playwright harboring an infatuation with Diane Keaton

No matter what names they go by, the characters Keaton and Allen play in Manhattan Murder Mystery are Annie Hall and Alvy Singer. And that's fine by me. As someone who fell in love with Diane Keaton in his teens and laughed through the "nervous romance" of Annie Hall more times than I can count; seeing these characters 16 years later (albeit in the guise of Larry Lipton, publishing editor, and Carol Lipton, wannabe restaurateur), looking all rumpled and lived-in, yet still relating to one another with the same spark of undeniable affection and magnetism...well, it just takes me down a nostalgic road I can't help but feel is entirely the film's point.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Of the Woody Allen films I number among my favorites: Annie Hall, Love and Death, Radio Days, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Bullets Over Broadway, Cassandra’s Dream, Broadway Danny Rose, Everyone Says I Love You, September, Blue Jasmine—Manhattan Murder Mystery ranks somewhere near the top. I know many of his films are tighter, smarter, and funnier, but this is the closest Allen has come to making a comfort food kind of movie for me. In deference to the plot-driven machinations of the suspense genre, Allen's darker obsessions take a back seat to his lighter anxieties (avoidance of physical pain, losing sleep, etc.), and the entire enterprise just leaves me smiling and satisfied. It's Woody Allen at his most accessible (meaning tolerable), with Diane Keaton the perfect sardonic foil. They create a kind of movie magic together, the kind that keeps me returning to rewatch Manhattan Murder Mystery long after the mystery of the murder has been solved.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

I got Diane Keaton's autograph back in 1981 when I working at Crown Books on Sunset Blvd. Given how much I adore her, it puzzles me how little I remember of this encounter. All I recall is that I was standing behind the cash register and there was Annie Hall standing in front of me with a pile of books. I have no memory of asking for her autograph or even gushing "Gee, Miss Keaton, I just love all your movies..." or some such nonsense. I must have passed out and woke up with this pinned to my shirt.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2013