Movie Review

"Manhattan," The Movie Woody Allen Tried to Buy Back

Back when it was fashionable to like Woody Allen, I saw the movie Manhattan for the first time. Some say it was one of Allen’s greatest works, a classic in American cinema. I saw it again very recently, and it’s quite a different experience. I watched it because Manhattan has references to Manhattan’s tony prep school the Dalton Academy. In fact, there are some exterior shots of Dalton in the movie. Even in uber-rich Manhattan, Dalton is an expensive proposition. Tuition right now is $61,120 a year, but the Dalton school website is quick to announce they don’t charge for lunch, art supplies, or musical instrument rentals and they give their students access to a computer or iPad for free. Hey, give me $61,120 and I’ll give you a laptop and a hamburger, too.

My interest in Dalton relates to Jeffrey Epstein, who was probably their most famous math teacher even though he only taught there two years. Jeffrey Epstein was hired by Donald Barr, father of former attorney general Bill Barr, both of whom are intelligence officers. Donald Barr hired the young Epstein although he didn’t have enough credentials to get a job teaching at public school. But the fanciest most elite prep school on earth hired Epstein without the proper credentials and no recommendations. But that’s a story for another day. Epstein isn’t in this movie; he taught there in the 1970s and Manhattan was filmed in 1979, after Epstein had moved on to Wall Street.

Manhattan is a movie that is both a romance and a comedy but in my recent viewing, I would say it’s most impressive for being the supporting structure to a magnificent soundtrack, opening with Gerschwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Some have called it a love letter to Manhattan and the movie is at its best and most wholesome when it’s seen as the story of a neurotic man who has a pure and passionate love for his home town. From the skyline at dawn to iconic eateries like Elaine’s and even a horse-drawn carriage ride through Central Park, this is a picture postcard Valentine. It’s a black and white film, but the lighting is so masterful, you won’t lack for eye candy.

The troubling thing about this film is that the main story line involves a 42-year-old man dating a 17-year-old high school girl. Manhattan is, of course, an elitist enclave, and this sort of romance is taken in stride by the characters, despite occasional mild jokes intended to mock it. And remember, Jerry Seinfeld would have a romance with a 17-year-old later on in Los Angeles. And we used to sing songs about girlfriends saying, “You’re 16, you’re beautiful, and you’re mine!” So pushing this into a cultural context, the age gap is enormous (25 years—he’s more than twice her age) but the notion of an older man dating a teenager is not exactly alien to our culture.

In this story, the older man, Isaac (Woody Allen) is out with his girlfriend Tracy (Mariel Hemingway in her first role, which earned her an Oscar nomination) and another but more appropriately age-compatible adult couple, Yale (Michael Murphy) and his wife Emily (Anne Byrne). Yale is having an affair with an age-appropriate woman named Mary (Diane Keaton) who pops up in the film often enough that Isaac makes a play for her. It is kind of odd that Isaac, dating a beautiful and very young woman, suddenly finds an odd, older, and strangely annoying woman more attractive, but Isaac is soon trying to break up with Tracy. In fact a lot of this movie is about Isaac’s half-hearted attempts to break up with his teenage girlfriend. He ultimately succeeds.

Manhattan is a movie about immaturity and it is ironic that its youngest character, Tracy, is the most mature of all the characters. She is in love with Isaac and knows it; she says it out loud. She acts like it. She is flummoxed and confused by Isaac’s inability to love her back. Meanwhile, Yale cannot be faithful to his wife Emily, and Isaac can’t resist bedding Yale’s girlfriend. I doubt that Isaac would have ever made a play for Emily, Yale’s wife, but he finds Mary irresistible, despite her bossy ways. There is even an awkward scene where Isaac and his teenage girlfriend Tracy meet Mary. Yale can’t bring himself to leave his wife Emily for Mary, which is convenient since Mary is not interested in anything like a substantial relationship with Yale. And in-between drifts Isaac, who is abruptly unemployed but busies himself chasing Mary while pushing Tracy away, but not really wanting either of them.

This is a romantic comedy with some pretty good comic moments but not a lot of real romance, unless you considers Isaac’s love affair with Manhattan.

Now to the problem. Way back in 1979 when Manhattan was released, it was considered a great film, possibly one of Allen’s very best, and a delight. At the time it was released, the Isaac-Tracy relationship was not alarming. At most, it was quirky. It was eccentric, it was off-beat, but Woody Allen made eccentric, off-beat movies. The character of Isaac in this movie is like most Woody Allen roles: a quirky, neurotic, verbally adept small Jewish man who makes self-deprecating jokes as he navigates a confusing life.

This brings up an interesting tidbit of cinematic history. Allen shot the film under contract with United Artists, as he usually did. They had a long-standing and mutually profitable business relationship making movies. Allen said when he first saw Manhattan, he did not want it released. He was so adamant he offered to make a film for free for United Artist, essentially trying to figure out a way he could buy back the film and moth-ball it. “I was very disappointed at the time,” he said about seeing Manhattan. He thought the photography was great, the acting was competent, but the script was “too preachy.” United Artist wouldn’t listen to his request to ditch the film. It was released to success beyond their wildest dreams.

Then 1992 happened and maybe Allen’s instincts were right. In 1992 Woody Allen started fighting Mia Farrow in a messy divorce that exposed a lot of unhappy family dirty laundry including allegations of child molestation. In 1997, Woody Allen married Soon-Yi Previn, who is Mia’s adopted daughter and had been Allen’s stepdaughter although they are not related by blood. Things went from bad to worse and Woody Allen was more or less blackballed from the movie business. In fact, Woody Allen became the sort of poster boy for how big-shot celebrities get away with molesting children. (Photo is Woody Allen with his stepdaughter-wife, Soon-Yi Previn Allen. Don’t tell me any jokes about hillbillies and country folk who marry their cousins. Elitists marry their stepkids.)

Mariel Hemingway, the actress, was just 17 when she played Tracy, the same age as her character. In her book, Out Came the Sun, she revealed that Allen propositioned her on the set, but she refused him. She said of the idea of having an affair with Allen, “I was too young.” According to Hemingway, Allen never pursued her after that.

Seen through the lens of 2024, the film has some major cringe. Isaac is old enough to be Tracy’s father, but he and his friends all accept the relationship as reasonable. Isaac wants to break up with Tracy, but not because Tracy is too young, it’s because she really loves him. Isaac does not seem particularly troubled or even interested in the age differential. He is sort of freaked out that this beautiful young woman loves him.

Isaac seems to mix up love with loss; he likes that sweet syrupy regret we sometimes cultivate over our past, and he can’t push Tracy quickly enough into his past. He wants her in the past, not the present, because in the past, she can be a controllable ghost, whereas she is a rather disquieting figure in the present. He has the person of Tracy now, but he wants her as a memory that can be folded and manipulated to suit him without entangling him in messy emotions.

That’s the beauty of the way Allen organized this film. Tracy isn’t a full character. In fact, she isn’t really a believable character. She’s the memory Isaac wants, come to life as a sort of a puppet. Although she’s a teenager, her parents play no role in this film and we never meet anyone from her family or circle of friends. She’s an isolated individual, whereas Isaac’s world is replete with ex-wives, girlfriends, colleagues, guy friends, and bosses. Isaac is a guy with an orbit of characters circling him, but Tracy stands alone. She also stands a good bit taller than Isaac and this misalignment in heights is very noticeable. At times, the camera angles seem to play it up. Tracy is not a big woman, but she’s bigger than Isaac. A good bit bigger. Even when they sit, she’s taller. She seems like her shoulders and body are bigger than Isaac’s, but not in an ungainly way. Tracy is the right size. It’s Isaac who is too small.

But while Tracy emerges in many ways as a larger-than-life character, she is curiously blank. There is no backstory at all to her, and not much front-story, either. We don’t know who she is or what she wants. We don’t know how she met Isaac. We don’t know who her family is or what they think about her dating a middle-aged man. And that is how Tracy emerges in the film as some sort of icon of the “perfect woman.” Tracy is perfect—she’s young, she’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s madly in love with Isaac, and she’s sexually available at his beck and call. She also has no past and no future, just a little stretch of present.

Tracy gets an opportunity to study abroad in London, and she wants to stay with Isaac. Isaac sees her London opportunity as a perfect out. He can beg her to break up with him—and look altruistic in the bargain. He’s only doing it for her sake! He’s looking out for her interests! But when Mary dumps Isaac, he literally runs back to Tracy. Since Isaac left her, she decided to pursue some schooling in London. You would think Isaac was in high school himself the way he navigates among these hapless relationships and not some prominent member of the elite ruling class. (Maybe this explains the Harry and Meghan phenomenon!)

Isaac encounters Tracy at the entrance to her apartment building as she lugs her suitcase, ready to leave for the airport. Her parents are nowhere around, neither are any family or friends. She’s got her bag packed to go to London for half a year, and she’s all alone. Again, this has to be an artistic contrivance. Tracy isn’t a real person, she’s an avatar. She’s a fleeting image of the perfect woman.

In their last twirling, swirling conversation, Isaac’s profound immaturity, his selfishness, his delusions, and his hopes all surface. He wanted to break up with Tracy when it was in his best interest, and now he wants her back because it’s in his best interest. Even in this moment—where Isaac has more at stake than Tracy—Tracy is the one who shows actual emotion. Isaac just shows a manipulative desire to serve himself.

Isaac asks Tracy flat out, “Do you still love me?” but he doesn’t get an answer.

I watched this film to see the exterior shots of Dalton Academy but I knew there would be some pretty deep cultural waters to wade. No one today would dare to make a film about a middle-aged man dating a high school girl 25 years his junior and certainly Woody Allen should not be making any films about underage girls. Despite the cringe factor, the film is not nearly as creepy as I expected. The relationship between Isaac and Tracy was meant to be off-center, jarring, and inappropriate but perhaps not as inappropriate as it seems today. Isaac was older but he was a needy, selfish romantic in search of a lost cause.

The traditional values of middle America, namely that men and women of similar age fall in love, marry, and raise children, are far too unsophisticated for these Manhattan denizens. Isaac, Yale, Emily, and Mary are all elitists who play by their own rules and wonder why they keep failing. Tracy with her fresh face and genuine emotions ends the film as a mystery. Would she grow up to be a failed and failing as these adults around her? Or would she get out?

I found it alarming that the Dalton Academy was mentioned in this film. It may have just been another Manhattan icon, a well-known symbol of that privileged elitists’ world where Allen set the film. At the time he taught math at Dalton Academy, Jeffrey Epstein was just a young guy from Coney Island with no real pedigree and no influential friends, unless you count his new friends in the intelligence community. Mr. Epstein, math teacher, was not some creepy predator at this juncture in his life; he was only a few years older than the seniors in his class. But he clearly learned a lot at Dalton Academy. I think what he learned was how this Manhattan world—the elitist cabal—really works. For Mr. Epstein, his stint at Dalton was building a portfolio of connections and contacts and useful friends. It was a time to get insight into their character, or rather lack of it. The world that supports characters like people like Yale and Isaac and Mary is very disturbed.

It’s like a spin on that old Aretha Franklin song… Who’s groomin’ who?

To me, it looks like Donald Barr sent young Jeffrey Epstein to Dalton to be groomed for his new role as some sort of spy to compromise these elitists. It wasn’t about Mr. Epstein teaching calculus to the progeny of the elitist class. It was about the elitists teaching young Mr. Epstein the rules that don’t apply to elitists.