Allen: Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

In the late 80s and early 90s, Woody Allen released a string of fairly heavy movies. Between September and Husbands and Wives, a new strain of existential angst crept into his work, disquieting even his most comic moments with a brooding fixation on mortality and finitude. Add to that the fact that Allen’s personal life had more or less collapsed by the time Manhattan Murder Mystery was released, and it’s nothing less than a miracle that such a concerted will to joy could have come to fruition, let alone blossomed into Allen’s most carefree, resilient film since Annie Hall. In part, that’s because it’s essentially the original version of Annie Hall, which Allen and Marshall Brickman conceived as a murder mystery before it became the romantic comedy we know so well today. Teaming up with Brickman and Diane Keaton for the first time since Manhattan, Allen offers a great, late tribute to their collaboration, by way of two Manhattan couples – Allen and Keaton, Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston – who gradually realise that they’ve become privy to the perfect crime. None of Allen’s films are so tightly plotted, allowing him to elasticise his frenetic, handheld cinematography as never before, until it feels as if every image arrives at cross-purposes, jostling for elbow room, ebbing and flowing from frame to frame with a conversational texture and momentum that’s utterly intoxicating. On the one hand, that syncs perfectly with Allen’s screwiness, his taste for capers so crazy they’re already self-parodies. But it also introduces a new kind of classicism, almost a new stateliness, as Alvy and Annie brace themselves for 90s Manhattan, taking stock of the past with an extraordinary poise and candor. Keaton, in particular, radiates as only Allen made her radiate – it’s her film really, one of her last absolutely great roles, as she skirts all the pitfalls of baby boomers behaving badly to become something like the city’s great remedy or apology for itself, distillate of all its balms and tonics. And perhaps that’s why more of it is shot on location than any Allen feature before or since – it outdoes even Manhattan – as he curates one of his most effusive, effervescent tributes to his greatest love, finally finishing the masterpiece he started some twenty years before.