Manhattan 1979

Critics score:
98 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

TIME Magazine: The film should not come as a complete surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to Allen's doings lately. This is the movie that Annie Hall hinted at and to which last year's Interiors, flawed as it was, seems to have served as a necessary prelude Read more

Vincent Canby, New York Times: Mr. Allen's progress as one of our major filmmakers is proceeding so rapidly that we who watch him have to pause occasionally to catch our breath. Read more

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader: Woody Allen's great leap forward into character development and dramatic integrity. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: Allen serves up a nostalgia that was utterly of its time; he incarnates an idea of the city that, even now, remains as strong as its reality and refracts his disappointed ideals into high existential crises. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: If Manhattan was only a romantic comedy, it would be a very good one, but the fact that the movie has so much more ambition than the 'average' entry into the genre makes it an extraordinary example of the fusion of entertainment and art. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Seeing it again I realize it's more subtle, more complex, and not about love, but loss. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: Woody Allen's gem of comic kvetching. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: Allen has, in black and white, captured the inner beauty that lurks behind the outer layer of dirt and grime in Manhattan. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Manhattan is not just Woody Allen's dream movie. Wistful as it is witty, it's his dream of the movies. Read more

Gary Arnold, Washington Post: With Manhattan, a sparkling romance about the overspecialized anxieties of overintellectualized New Yorkers, Woody Allen has bounced back from the sobriety of "Interiors" to an exhilarating new comic high. Read more