Manhattan Murder Mystery

First, we have an announcement to make…

The next few movies we write about will be ones that are dear to us and conjure up romance in honor of our Wedding Anniversary which we plan to celebrate all weekend :).

So here’s the first – Woody Allen’s Manhattan Murder Mystery. Those who know me may be surprised to know that this is really my favorite Woody Allen movie. Or maybe that’s not so surprising – you tell me. While the critics actually liked it, it is not a “critic’s favorite” among Allen’s work, nor was it commercially successful, nor is it the intellectual feast that is The Purple Rose of Cairo (an Accidental Critic Classic). Maybe this is my favorite Woody Allen film simply because it portrays Woody Allen’s best side if not the best of his work.

The movie features Allen’s ultimate love and greatest character, Manhattan. In it we meet a middle-aged Manhattanite couple living in a high rise apartment. Comedy ensues when Carol (played by Diane Keaton) starts to suspect an elderly neighbor of murdering his wife. Carol’s husband (played by Allen) ends up joining in her amateur sleuthing to keep his marriage alive. What follows is really just a light-hearted series of events that swirl around a true mystery in an old fashioned whodunit style. In the end, our Manhattanites find a bit of spontaneity and adventure to rekindle their romance. No gripping dialogue or tortured souls…though the movie does deliver one of my favorite movie lines ever – “I can’t listen to too much Vagner, it makes me want to conquer Poland.”

To me, this movie is simply the height of a good, entertaining movie that somehow manages to make you feel good (even with a murder lurking in the plot). And maybe that was not only Allen’s intent for his audience, but something he was trying to achieve for himself at the time. This movie was released in 1993 at the height of Allen’s divorce from Mia Farrow and the ensuing public drama and legal battle associated with his “child bride” (in fact, Keaton’s role was originally written for Farrow). In a recent interview, Allen talked about how movies for him have always been an escape, an oasis from the “terror of the universe”. This movie certainly offers that as it effortlessly transports you for a couple hours.

One interesting thing to note as you are enjoying this film is that it contains a small shout-out to Orson Wells in a scene where the characters face off in a “hall of mirrors” while an Orson Wells movie plays in the background. Wells’ movies contemplate evil while here Allen seems to be intent on not facing it directly.

Honestly, I don’t think this movie truly rose to the top for me until I watched it again this weekend, snuggled up with my husband (who really introduced me to Woody Allen films). There was a lovely sunset coming in through our big windows and Dr. Dan was lightly chiding me about how he could imagine me suddenly taking us on an amateur investigation (and of course he’s right). I guess I found the charm of the couple on the screen within the couple on the couch in a way that made me deeply smile and appreciate how romantic we have always been. Just a day before, we had celebrated our years of togetherness in a much more grand style with a local, professional photographer coming out to our farm and a romantic dinner. But for me, this moment of quiet reverie on the couch was the real deal, the real celebration of our life together. How he truly knows me (and loves me anyway)…how romantic he is (he has written me a love poem every year that we have been married) and how blessed I am to have a husband who truly cherishes me and has never taken me off of the pedestal he put me on when he asked me to be his wife. Just deeply knowing that I have always been his first choice is something that no amount of money or romantic displays can buy.

While I certainly hope that we never have the opportunity or need to embark on an amateur murder investigation, I can honestly say that there is no one I would rather sleuth with.

The Purple Rose of Cairo *****

When we read the Cave Allegory from Plato’s “Republic” we all think of the movies; when Woody Allen reads Plato it leads to a movie.

In the “Purple Rose of Cairo” Wood Allen creates a movie within a movie, showing you scenes from a fictitious black and white depression era movie (also entitled The Purple Rose of Cairo) because his heroine can’t help but watch it over and over again. For her it is escape and an impossible inspiration. According to the fictitious movie, the purple rose of Cairo is supposed to grow in a pharaoh’s tomb - the expression of a perfect love. Of course no rose is purple and flowers do not grow without light. It is an impossible inspiration. It’s all Plato’s fault.

According to him our relationship to the truth is dreadful. We are like people chained facing a wall in a cave, behind them a fire, and between the fire and their benches men parading objects whose shadows project upon the wall. Hankering for the truth, the viewers take shadows for reality. But Plato has another important point. Although our sense of reality is shadowy at best, we are only capable of understanding anything, thanks to a set of ideals which are beyond real experience. The impossible inspiration guides us through our shadows and intimates that there is more.

The movies are all that counts for the heroine of “The Purple Rose of Cairo”. Her chains are the miserable life to which she is subjected by the depression of the 30’s and her abusive husband. After too many hours in a theater watching her new favorite movie, about people with ideal life styles, one of its characters impossibly leaves the screen, and while comically attempting to establish himself in the real world, falls in love with her.

Screen characters running free in New Jersey, is bad for the movie business. So the actor who played the role is enlisted in the task of capturing his shadow and returning it to the screen. When he also falls for our heroine she has the ultimate Platonic choice: perfection or reality. Which would you choose?