Wednesday 29 December 2004

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) - ickleReview (video from TV)

Woody Allen movie starring Mia Farrow, Michael Caine, Carrie Fisher, Dianne Wiest, and Woody Allen. Hannah (Farrow) is the most successful of three sisters, making the other two feel inadequate in comparison. Only problem: her husband Elliot (Caine) follows through on a crush on her sister Lee (Barbara Hershey). Meanwhile, Allen plays a hypochondriac who thinks he has brain cancer and drops out of his TV work. You know the story: it's a Woody Allen movie. Come on!

It has a great jazz soundtrack and a gratuitous sequence where an architect takes Holly and her colleague, April, around New York to point out his (and presumably the filmmaker's) favourite buildings. There's a brilliant moment when Frederick (Max von Sydow), Lee's partner (a reclusive artist) stays in watching TV, which he doesn't normally do. He thinks it shows the whole spectrum of society: Nazis appear alongside deoderant salesmen. There's another great scene where a rich musician comes to Frederick's studio to buy a painting to fill up some wall space in the new place he's just bought in the Hamptons. Frederick refuses to sell on principal: his works are not to be referred to interior designers before they are purchased to see if they match the colour schemes and the sofa. "It's not a sofa, it's an ottoman!" Dusty, the musician, replies.

The film is structured in little episodes with intertitles, such as "We all had a terrific time", "The big leap", "Summer in New York" and "Lucky I ran into you". The writing has the feel of some of Allen's best stuff from the days in the 70s when he used to publish short funny stories and anecdotes in The New Yorker (collected in The Complete Prose).

Nugget: Woody on good form. As dependable as a BFO* oak sideboard.

* BFO = Big fuck-off

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