Hannah and Her Sisters (15.)
Directed by Woody Allen. 1986
Starring Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey, Woody Allen, Dianne Wiest, Lloyd Nolan, Maureen O'Sullivan, Max Von Sydow, Carrie Fisher, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julie Kavner, J. T. Walsh, John Turturro, Tony Roberts, Joanna Gleason, Sam Waterston and Daniel Stern. 104 mins
Released on blu-ray from Arrow Academy or as part of the Woody Allen: Seven Film – 1986-1991.
Hannah and Her Sisters is everything that is insufferable and smug about Woody Allen's cinema, but delivered with such beautiful packaging that you get sucked into its cheerily complacent misery. It's a kind of ennui porn, appealing to everyone who's ever daydreamed of committing Manhattan infidelities to a Bach accompaniment, or going through an existential crisis on the Upper West Side.
It is also the nearest you'll get to an Allen family OK magazine spread, with shots filmed in Farrow's own apartment with the children they were bringing up together at the time. (Yes, apparently the future Mrs Allen, Soon-Yi Previn, can be seen in the party scenes.)
Like the other standout title in this collection, Crimes and Misdemeanours, Hannah is a comedy drama with a strict demarcation between the comedy and the drama. Woody handles the comedy part. Mickey Sacks is basically Alvy Singer from Annie Hall but instead of being a performer he's the producer of an SNL-like show. He even has the same best friend as Singer, an uncredited Tony Roberts, who has left to be very successful in LA, just as he had in Annie Hall. This time Allen is a hypochondriac who after a health scare decides to drop out of the rat race and find a meaning to existence.
Over in the serious part of the drama, Hannah's husband, Elliot (Caine), is trying to woo her sister Lee (Hershey) away from her older lover, the great painter Frederick (Von Sydow), while her other sister Holly (Wiest) is flopping around from audition to audition and doing a bit of catering. Holly is insecure and intimidated by Hannah's accomplishments; Elliot loves Hannah but finds her too self sufficient and wants someone that he can give things to and do things for; Lee is dazzled by Fredrick's intelligence but is daunted by being his only link with the outside world. We know all this because they tell us. They are all also tremendously talented: they tell us that too.
(Poor old Hannah, universally resented simply for an ability to hold things together and not be a neurotic drunk. I can't remember another film where somebody gets so knocked for a lack of “needs.” What so great about needs, who needs needs?)
The trade off between the two strands works really well here, just like it does in Crimes and Misdemeanours (thought the split there is a straight 50/50, here it's closer to 2:1.) The comedy parts are like a reward for making it through the drama bits and the drama bits are much easier to take because you know that the whole film isn't going to be like that, so you give them more respect. The ability to write killer one liners makes you forgive the clunkier line of straight dialogue. (Though by this time the Nazis have become Allen default punchline – there are at least three lines about the Nazis in the film, the best of which would be Woody's father “How the hell do I know why there were Nazis. I don't even know how the tin opener works.”) As the film progresses a kind of cross pollination happens between the two parts and by the end they have reached an accommodation and merged into one. It would've been better if it had been like that all the way through but you're grateful for it none the less.
Another reason the film works is the title cards. The film is divided into little chapters and every five minutes, approx, a black card with white writing will tease us with a quote or heading that introduces the theme of the next section and who it will be about. Quite why this helps I can't quite put my finger on, but I think it undermines the pomposity of the characters and helps establish the time frame, two years measured out in family Thanksgiving dinners.
Hannah also demonstrates Allen's skill for picking actors. Among those getting early breaks here are John Torturro, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Richard Jenkins. But the major casting choice is getting in Michael Caine to be the first actor to have a bash at playing that most thankless of roles, The Woody Surrogate. This would be a challenge that has brought down many a fine actor over the decades and maybe only John Cusack and Owen Wilson have really got through it successfully. Caine's take is complicated by it happening in a film where there is also an Actual Woody Performance, but that probably helps by taking the focus off it a bit. For the role he has been put in big glasses and cardigans and they've given him a chestnut, granddad Dr Strangelove hairstyle and he is always made to look oversized and lumbering in every scene, like he's out of scale with these shrunken New York intellectual types. I'm not sure his lolloping Lothario turn really works (though they gave him an Oscar for it) but it's worth it just to hear him deliver the line, “I have my answer, I have my answer, I'm walking on air,” which for me is right up there with “You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off,” or “You're a big man, but you're out of shape.”
Directed by Woody Allen. 1986
Starring Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey, Woody Allen, Dianne Wiest, Lloyd Nolan, Maureen O'Sullivan, Max Von Sydow, Carrie Fisher, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julie Kavner, J. T. Walsh, John Turturro, Tony Roberts, Joanna Gleason, Sam Waterston and Daniel Stern. 104 mins
Released on blu-ray from Arrow Academy or as part of the Woody Allen: Seven Film – 1986-1991.
Hannah and Her Sisters is everything that is insufferable and smug about Woody Allen's cinema, but delivered with such beautiful packaging that you get sucked into its cheerily complacent misery. It's a kind of ennui porn, appealing to everyone who's ever daydreamed of committing Manhattan infidelities to a Bach accompaniment, or going through an existential crisis on the Upper West Side.
It is also the nearest you'll get to an Allen family OK magazine spread, with shots filmed in Farrow's own apartment with the children they were bringing up together at the time. (Yes, apparently the future Mrs Allen, Soon-Yi Previn, can be seen in the party scenes.)
Like the other standout title in this collection, Crimes and Misdemeanours, Hannah is a comedy drama with a strict demarcation between the comedy and the drama. Woody handles the comedy part. Mickey Sacks is basically Alvy Singer from Annie Hall but instead of being a performer he's the producer of an SNL-like show. He even has the same best friend as Singer, an uncredited Tony Roberts, who has left to be very successful in LA, just as he had in Annie Hall. This time Allen is a hypochondriac who after a health scare decides to drop out of the rat race and find a meaning to existence.
Over in the serious part of the drama, Hannah's husband, Elliot (Caine), is trying to woo her sister Lee (Hershey) away from her older lover, the great painter Frederick (Von Sydow), while her other sister Holly (Wiest) is flopping around from audition to audition and doing a bit of catering. Holly is insecure and intimidated by Hannah's accomplishments; Elliot loves Hannah but finds her too self sufficient and wants someone that he can give things to and do things for; Lee is dazzled by Fredrick's intelligence but is daunted by being his only link with the outside world. We know all this because they tell us. They are all also tremendously talented: they tell us that too.
(Poor old Hannah, universally resented simply for an ability to hold things together and not be a neurotic drunk. I can't remember another film where somebody gets so knocked for a lack of “needs.” What so great about needs, who needs needs?)
The trade off between the two strands works really well here, just like it does in Crimes and Misdemeanours (thought the split there is a straight 50/50, here it's closer to 2:1.) The comedy parts are like a reward for making it through the drama bits and the drama bits are much easier to take because you know that the whole film isn't going to be like that, so you give them more respect. The ability to write killer one liners makes you forgive the clunkier line of straight dialogue. (Though by this time the Nazis have become Allen default punchline – there are at least three lines about the Nazis in the film, the best of which would be Woody's father “How the hell do I know why there were Nazis. I don't even know how the tin opener works.”) As the film progresses a kind of cross pollination happens between the two parts and by the end they have reached an accommodation and merged into one. It would've been better if it had been like that all the way through but you're grateful for it none the less.
Another reason the film works is the title cards. The film is divided into little chapters and every five minutes, approx, a black card with white writing will tease us with a quote or heading that introduces the theme of the next section and who it will be about. Quite why this helps I can't quite put my finger on, but I think it undermines the pomposity of the characters and helps establish the time frame, two years measured out in family Thanksgiving dinners.
Hannah also demonstrates Allen's skill for picking actors. Among those getting early breaks here are John Torturro, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Richard Jenkins. But the major casting choice is getting in Michael Caine to be the first actor to have a bash at playing that most thankless of roles, The Woody Surrogate. This would be a challenge that has brought down many a fine actor over the decades and maybe only John Cusack and Owen Wilson have really got through it successfully. Caine's take is complicated by it happening in a film where there is also an Actual Woody Performance, but that probably helps by taking the focus off it a bit. For the role he has been put in big glasses and cardigans and they've given him a chestnut, granddad Dr Strangelove hairstyle and he is always made to look oversized and lumbering in every scene, like he's out of scale with these shrunken New York intellectual types. I'm not sure his lolloping Lothario turn really works (though they gave him an Oscar for it) but it's worth it just to hear him deliver the line, “I have my answer, I have my answer, I'm walking on air,” which for me is right up there with “You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off,” or “You're a big man, but you're out of shape.”
