Manhattan’s Lost Its Screen Presence

Manhattan’s Lost Its Screen Presence

The other weekend, I pulled up Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979) on YouTube because I’ve been starved for the highbrow and the funny, a rare marriage that movies used to achieve with some regularity, but now hardly ever bother to attempt. Let’s disregard the plot, here, and the characters, for there is a great deal about both that resists easy or simple discussion in the present American climate, and focus instead on the surface: the look of the fi…